Patt Morrison for Thursday, November 18, 2010

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Thursday, November 18, 2010

1-3 p.m.

TIMES NOT FINAL

 

CALL-IN @ 866-893-5722, 866-893-KPCC; OR JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE ON THE PATT MORRISON BLOG AT KPCC-DOT-ORG

 

 

 

1:08:30 – 1:19:30

OPEN

 

 

1:26 – 1:54

At Home:  A Short History of Private Life

Bill Bryson is a master at using the isolated and mundane fact to tell imaginative and entertaining stories about the stuff of life. And he’s done it again in his latest work, At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Bryson says, “the history of household life isn’t just a history of beds and sofas and kitchen stoves, but of scurvy and guano and the Eiffel Tower and bedbugs and body-snatching and just about everything else that has ever happened. Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Think about it – what story does your home tell?

Guest:

Bill Bryson, writer whose books include A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Small Island, In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words, A Short History of Nearly Everything, which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. He lives in England, where he is the Chancellor of Durham University

CALL HIM:

 

 

2:08:30 – 2:19:30

CSU Fresno student body president; double major; impending college graduate; illegal immigrant

As the always controversial DREAM Act, which would create a path to citizenship for young people living in the country illegally who attend college or join the military, prepares to go before Congress for another vote, you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of undocumented students in school.  Pedro Ramirez, a political science & agricultural economics double major at Cal State Fresno who is also the student body president, initially didn’t want to be held up as one of those examples.  Ramirez had a fruitful academic career, a valedictorian of his high school class and a popular student body president at CSU Fresno, who did not speak publically about his immigration status.  In fact, Ramirez didn’t realize he was undocumented before he started applying to colleges—born in Jalisco, Mexico his parents brought him into the U.S. when he was 3-years-old.  On Tuesday the campus newspaper ran a story on Ramirez’s immigration status after receiving an anonymous tip and he was forced to go public with his story.  How many more Pedro Ramirez’s might be in California schools eagerly watching the outcome of the DREAM Act?

 

Guest:

Pedro Ramirez, Student Body President at Cal State Fresno

WILL CALL IN

 

 

2:26 – 2:54

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

Biographers usually choose to profile people.  Simon Winchester is taking on the Atlantic Ocean.  Applying Shakespeare’s seven stages of life—infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood—to his subject, the New York Times bestselling author chronicles the life and times of a massively important body of water in his latest book.  From its geographical origins 370 million years ago to humankind’s regard for it—from the Europeans’ initial fear of the impenetrable barrier to their embrace of it as a bridge spanning old and new worlds and ushering back immense wealth, to a battlefield of power struggles—the Atlantic has earned its place, Winchester argues, as the axis of Western civilization.  Now threatened by overfishing, greed and pollution, and overlooked as a primary means of transportation or communication, the Atlantic bares its soul through Winchester’s tapestry of history, science, folklore and memory.

 

Guest:

Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of Krakatoa and The Professor the Madman; his most recent book is Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

IN STUDIO

 

 

 

Jonathan Serviss

Producer, Patt Morrison Program

Southern California Public Radio

NPR Affiliate for Los Angeles

89.3 KPCC-FM | 89.1 KUOR-FM | 90.3 KPCV-FM

626.583.5171, office

415.497.2131, mobile

jserviss@kpcc.org / jserviss@scpr.org

www.scpr.org