This Weekend

HOUR ONE

Social thinker and author Jeremy Rifkin’s book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis looks at emerging scientific studies that show humans are not naturally aggressive and self-interested, but fundamentally empathetic.  Rifkin’s book is a new interpretation of the history of civilization, focusing on the development of human empathy through the present time. 

Folklorists Nancy Groce and Steve Winick from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress are back to share songs and audio relating to the theme “Sickness & Health.”

In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi.  He was born in Cairo, studied medicine in London, and returned to Egypt to research bacteriology and teach. Also an accomplished artist, Shadi published several collections of poetry, wrote scripts for operas and painted. He immigrated to the United States in 1946.

HOUR TWO

Barack Obama made history by being the first African American elected to the nation’s highest post – a feat no woman has yet accomplished.  Journalist Anne Kornblut covered the last Presidential election for the Washington Post and she discusses the gender issue in Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win. 

Bob talks with former Vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro about the advances women have made and the obstacles that still remain. 

Bob spends the rest of the hour with Wall Street Journal reporter Susan Davis and women’s studies professor Bonnie Morris who share their observations on the role of women in politics.