February 11, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Backstory: Love Me Did ~ A History of Courtship in America." (2010).
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 31:36.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 18:54.
The American History Guys (Backstory) are back with an examination of the history of courtship in America: "Considering the stereotypes about Puritan New England, you might be surprised to learn that young lovers in the 18th century were not only allowed to sleep together before marriage � they were encouraged to! As long, that is, as they did it within the confines of the parents� home. It was known as 'bundling,' and although sex was theoretically not involved, the practice coincided with a huge increase in premarital pregnancy. By the end of the century, one-third of all brides were pregnant by the time they reached the altar. In this special Valentine�s Day edition of BackStory, the History Guys will trace the history of courtship conventions from the colonial era to the present. Along the way, they will explore the social, economic, and technological forces that shape courtship, and examine the changing relationship between courtship and marriage. Did economic considerations used to play a greater role in coupling? How has popular culture structured the way lovers spend time together? Has the idea of 'romance' itself morphed over time?" Participating in this edition of Backstory are historian Beth Bailey (author of From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America), who discusses the origins of American �dating� and how it has evolved, and historian and blogger Pam Epstein (http://advertisingforlove.com) who discussed 19th century personal ads. For more information about Backstory and the American History Guys, visit their Web site at: http://www.backstoryradio.org/.

Segment 2: "The Passionate Poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 2:32.
Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84-ca. 54 BC) was a Roman poet known for his intense and highly erotic poems, many related to his love affair with "Lesbia," reputed to be -- in real life -- one Clodia, an aristocratic member of the Claudian family (married to Metellus Celer). Catullus' poems reflect a range of emotions about Clodia -- reflecting the evolution of their relationship. Perhaps one of the most famous of the 116 poems he left behind for posterity, is this one -- Carmen #5:

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Here we present three LibriVox readings of this poem, one in Italian and two in English. A latin reading of his poem is available here -- along with links to readings of many of Catullus' other poems: http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/l5.htm. Here is a direct link to the MP3 recording of the latin reading of VIVAMUS MEA LESBIA . . .. For short biographies of Catullus, see: http://www.dl.ket.org/latinlit/carmina/catullus/people/catullus.htm and http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/LatinAuthors/Catullus.html. For more versions/readings of this poem, go to LibRiVox at: http://librivox.org/to-lesbia-by-caius-valerius-catullus/.

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Feb 4, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "C. L. R. James' Life and Thought: (2010)"
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 28:00.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:52.
From Against the Grain, we bring you this conversation with David Austin, author of You Don't Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of CLR James (AK Press, 2009): "The great Trinidadian intellectual CLR James was an anti-colonial fighter, radical historian, cricket expert, Marxist theoretician, Melville scholar, playwright, and novelist. David Austin talks about James's life, ideas, and wide-ranging influence, from Caribbean and African anti-colonial and post-independence struggles to the Caribbean diasporic New Left in Canada."

Segment 2: From the Archives: "An Interview with Che Guevara (1964)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:42
On December 16, 1964, while visiting the United State to address the U.N., Cuban finance minister Che Guevara met with a group of journalists at the Cuban Mission headquarters on East 67th Steet in New York City. Among those present was Pacifica Radio reporter Chric Couch who recorded the interview. An edited and narrated version (also produced by Couch) was later broadcast on Pacifica radio stations. We present it here, in its entirety, with our thanks to Pacifica Radio Archivies. Those interested in Guevara's UN speech can go to the following site for a transcript: http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1964/12/11.htm. The well-annotated Wikipedia entry on Guevara is also a good place to start for an overview of his life and career and contains many excellent links and a bibliography for further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara.

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Jan. 28, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "A Small Southern Town: The Nation's Capital in Slave Times ~ Escape to the Pearl (1999)"
PART 1: Real Media. [MP3 unavailable] Time: 31:28.
PART 2: Real Media. [MP3 unavailable] Time: 21:02.
"A Small Southern Town: The Nation's Capital in Slave Times ~ Escape to the Pearl," combines dramatic readings of personal accounts and contemporary commentary to tell the story of the "largest mass escape of slaves in American history." Produced by Richard Paul and WAMU (American University), this program explores one family's response (to slavery in Washington D.C. and their participation in a flight from bondage. Paul is joined by freelance writer Mary Kay Ricks as the documentary weaves its way through dramatic readings and reconstructions based on 19th century sources and contemporary commentary. In part II of the production, Paul is joined by James Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University. Horton is the co-author of In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Protest, and Community Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700 1860. For more information about the events explored in this production, see: William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months A Prisoner (For Chairty's Sake) In Washington Jail including A Narrative Of the Voyage and Capture Of The Schooner Pearl (Negro Universities Press, 1855); John Paynter, Fugitives of the Pearl (Associated Publishers, Inc., Washington, DC, 1930); Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formally a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, (1849).

Segment 2: From the Archives: "Gov. Orval Faubus and Desegregation (1957)."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:21
Here is a short edited selection from a Mike Wallace interview with Orval Faubus (conducted on Sept. 15, 1957). Faubus, governor of Arkansas, spoke to Wallace in Little Rock in the midst of his standoff with Eisenhower over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. For the full interview, go to the Harry Ransom Center's on-line collection of Mike Wallace interviews. Here is a direct link to the Faubus interview: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/faubus_orval_t.html.

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Jan. 21, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "The Story of the Haitian Revolution. (2010)"
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:56.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 22:42.
From Pacifica Radio's Against the Grain series, we bring you this discussion of the Haitian Revolution of 1791 -- a conversation with Historian Laurent Dubois: "It was a cataclysmic event, the first and only successful slave revolution in the Americas. In 1791 brutally exploited slaves on a small Caribbean island rose up and eventually won emancipation. Their story, a legacy that has inspired and instructed people and nations for centuries, is told in Laurent Dubois's Avengers of the New World."

Segment 2: From the Archives: "Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt ~ Roosevelt at NYS Governor."
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:52
With all of the turmoil in New York State today between the Governor and the legislature, we thought we would look back to another period of turmoil in New York State government. Here is a LibriVox (www.librivox.org) reading of a portion of Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography, in which Roosevelt recalls some of his trials and tribulations as Governor of New York from 1899 to 1900.

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Jan. 14, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Project 62: Martin Luther King Jr. Documentary (1962)"
PART 1: Real Media. [MP3 unavailable by request of the producer]. Time: 31:07.
PART 2: Real Media. [MP3 unavailable by request of the producer]. Time: 22:36.
Here is a 1962 documentary on the life and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and originally aired on the CBC Radio program �Project �62.� It was recently re-broadcast on CBC's radio series "Rewind." We present it here in its entirely.

Segment 2: From the Archives: "Sweatt v. Painter."(1950).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:52
Here is a LibriVox (www.librivox.org) reading of a portion of the unanimous 1950 Supreme Court decision that helped pave the way for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. It concerns a challenge to segregated higher education policies of the University of Texas and specifically to its Law School. The challenge was initiated, with NAACP support, by Herman Marion Sweatt, an African American who was refused admission to the School of Law of the University of Texas and who then sued the School's president, Theophilus Painter, for admission. At the time, integrated schools were prohibited by Texas' constitution. Here is a brief summary of the case: "The Texas trial court, instead of granting the plaintiff a writ of mandamus, continued the case for six months. This allowed the state time to create a law school only for blacks, which it established in Houston, Texas, rather than in Austin. The 'separate' law school and the college became today's Texas Southern University; the law school is known as the Thurgood Marshall School of Law. The trial court decision was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court denied writ of error on further appeal. Sweatt and the NAACP appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. W.J. Durham and Thurgood Marshall presented Sweatt's case. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision, saying that the separate school failed to qualify, both because of quantitative differences in facilities and intangible factors, such as its isolation from most of the future lawyers with whom its graduates would interact. The court held that, when considering graduate education, intangibles must be considered as part of 'substantive equality.' The documentation of the court's decision includes the following differences identified between white and black facilities: the University of Texas Law School had 16 full-time and 3 part-time professors, while the black law school had 5 full-time professors; the University of Texas Law School had 850 students and a law library of 65,000 volumes, while the black law school had 23 students and a library of 16,500 volumes; the University of Texas Law School had moot court facilities, an Order of the Coif affiliation, and numerous graduates involved in public and private law practice, while the black law school had only one practice court facility and only one graduate admitted to the Texas Bar." [Wikipedia / "Sweatt v. Painter"]

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Jan. 7, 2010
Segment 1 and 3: "Divorced Kid. (2009)"
PART 1: Real Media. MP3. Time: 27:25.
PART 2: Real Media. MP3. Time: 24:26.
"Award-winning former American RadioWorks� producer Sasha Aslanian explores the "divorce revolution" of the 1970s through the perspective of kids--like herself--who lived through it, and experts who have had three decades to make sense of it. This program debuted on Minnesota Public Radio. . . . Using a lively blend of first-person storytelling, (surprising scenes like playing the reel-to-reel audio of her own parents' wedding vows back to them), interviews with Avery Corman, the author of Kramer vs. Kramer, and revisiting the now-grown kids who wrote "The Kids Book of Divorce" in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1979, the first half of the documentary reports on the lessons learned from the 1970s. The second half of the program examines how the experience of divorce has changed for kids since the 70s." For more information, see: http://www.americanpublicmedia.org/divorcedkid.

Segment 2: From the Archives: "Dustin Hoffman on Kent State and the Weather Underground."(1970).
Real Media. MP3. Time: 3:15
This is a selection from a 1970 Pacifica Radio interview with the actor Dustin Hoffman: "Most people have a sense of who Dustin Hoffman is both on film and as an advocate for the acting profession. In 1970, when this conversation was recorded, He was receiving accolades for his work, including his 1967 breakthrough performance in Mike Nichols� The Graduate, John and Mary with Mia Farrow (1969), and his iconic role as �Ratso Rizzo� in Midnight Cowboy. His film Little Big Man was in theaters and he had already signed on to be the lead in Sam Peckinpah�s current project Straw Dogs. What we love about this recording is its informality. It isn�t about selling a film� it�s not part of a film press junket� but simple conversation about the craft and experience of acting. In addition to talking about the cinematic art form, being a Pacifica station, the conversation always includes the politics of times� which in 1970 included the Vietnam War, the Kent State killings, the youth movement in general and the role of social/political movements such as the Young Lords and The Black Panthers. Hoffman also comments on the Black Panther Party and Young Lords, who designed breakfast programs and education and health centers to help their community. Dustin Hoffman and his wife survived living next door to a Weather Underground stronghold in Greenwich Village. On March 6, 1970, just before this interview, The Weather Underground members were assembling bombs when they accidentally set them off killing 4 and completely destroying the townhouse." This is a short selection from that interview.

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