Views of Islam Part I: Religious Violence

Last year at this time, especially in the state of Utah, a whole lot of attention was captured by an anniversary. 9-11, the 150th anniversary of the massacre at mountain meadows. By coincidence, we all hope by sheer coincidence, the anniversary has been shared now for seven years by another massacre; one perpetrated in Manhatten, in Pennsylvania, at the Pentagon. Thinking Aloud turns its attention to questions about Islam, the nature of its association with religious violence, and by way of comparison, the connection between ANY religion and the phenomenon of violence. Join us for Thinking Aloud, on the anniversaries.

Are We There Yet?

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=8/21/2008

BYU professor Susan Rugh has a new book about the golden age of American family vacations - a time of open roads, new cars, cheap gas, and countless destinations. More Americans were seeing more of America. Unfortunately, not everyone was welcome on the road. Rugh also reveals a harsh underside of the vacation at this time, when African Americans were denied food, lodging, and even access to restrooms. The title of the book is Are We There Yet?

Mobile Phones and Forbidden Romance

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=8/14/2008

Romance in Morocco may look like a dream on film but for Moroccan teenagers, romance means straddling the fence that lies between cultural norms and Western influence. In the last decade or so, cell phones have dramatically affected gender and generational relations in the Middle East and North Africa, specifically in Morocco. BYU Researchers published the article Globalization, Mobile Phones and Forbidden Romance in Morocco, in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of North African Studies. They will join us to discuss this increasing rift between globalization and forbidden romance in Morocco.

Feminazis or Ardent Advocates?

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/30/2008

When tracing the genealogy of human rights activism, it’s hard to know precisely where to begin. But in the English speaking world, the lineage of human rights as it relates to women can almost certainly be traced back to one Mary Wollstonecraft today. We’ll examine a tradition of rhetorical prowess, from Wollstonecraft to Virginia Woolf.

Happy Birthday William Clark

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=8/1/2008

Today is the birthday of William Clark, a giant among American explorers. He helped connect our young East to our expansive West, leaving behind an overwhelming amount of detail in his journals. His role in the Lewis and Clark expedition assured him a place in American myth. But has history been too kind to Clark? He was only thirty-six when he returned from his trans-continental journey. What about the other thirty years of his life? Historian Jay Buckley treats the explorer's later life in his new book, William Clark: Indian Diplomat .

Emigrant Nation

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/25/2008 Thirteen million Italians didn’t “get the boot” but “left the boot” between 1880 and 1915. The story of this massive emigration is epic by reason of sheer scale. But it’s also a quirky story, for a very curious reason. If you were an Italian emigrant, your country let you go, but at the same time held onto you. By calculated strategy, Italy became more idea than just place. Scholar Mark Choate traces the intentions and politics that pursued these travelers in his new book, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. That’s the premise of our story, with historian Mark Choate, on our Thinking Aloud.

Posting on Postman

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview on a related topic: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/11/2008

Twice now (in over three hundred Thinking Aloud interviews) the title Technopoly by the late Neil Postman has been mentioned. A third allusion would be the charm. (Any bets on how soon?) Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to have Technopoly crop up again in just about any interview touching on human behavior or cultural trends—or at least Postman’s name. So today I’m thinking about Neil Postman, a cultural commentator on things related to media and education. Nowadays we all fancy ourselves media experts; there’s little point in distilling any ideas from Technopoly in this post. A simple weblink suffices; you can Google the rest. Do I endorse the book? Yes … probably … haven’t read it yet, actually. But as I think about this title and its author—who three years before his death delivered the August 2000 commencement address at BYU (an address that in its extreme brevity seems to have met the minimal length requirement to justify conferral of an honorary degree), I can’t help but wonder if, in coming years, a general education at any reputable university (including BYU) will not of necessity include a prerequisite course along the lines of media-and-technology-literacy, so that, as Postman put it, the educated person will be in a position to “use technology rather than being used by it.” I’m not a card-carrying member of the truly wired generation. But even those of us who grew up watching Walter Cronkite and Gilligan’s Island (premiere broadcasts of the latter!) … we older, perhaps wiser folk know that technologies push not only content but values at us that we wouldn’t necessarily choose to pull. Even something as archaic and outmoded as television did that to me (for far too long, I’m ashamed to say). The internet does it to me. Alas, almost no barrier is sufficient to prevent the pushers. (Didn’t that word have really nasty connotations in the 60s?) Finally, a really nice Postman quote for you: “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” (from The Disappearance of Childhood [1982]).

-Marcus Smith

A New Era in News and Information

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/11/2008

The world wide web ... a saturated world of fact and fiction, diaries, opinions, videos, photos, buyers and sellers, and oh so much more...I can’t even list them all. Indeed, the landscape is changing in news and information. A new era has arrived in media consumption. The internet traffic can be overwhelming for some of us, with seemingly endless blogs and vlogs, podcasts and vodcasts. All you have to do is “google” this or “yahoo” that and download it or Facebook it. Some say, this is how they stay connected with their “friends” and show them their pictures. And I think to myself, isn’t that what we use hotmail.com and yahoo.com for?

And then I think, when did we lose our personal touch? What happened to our more intimate encounters where we met face-to-face for lemonade, hot chocolate, or shared a milkshake? Did we lose it around the time when Alexander Graham Bell made that first telephone call and later proclaimed to his father of seeing a future when "friends converse with each other without leaving home" (http://www.americaslibrary.gov/). Well, Mr. Bell, it’s become a lot more than you bargained for.

These days, I have to try to decipher my friends’ tone of voice through their text messages. It seems our hand held devices and computer screens get more face time than those near and dear to us. In fact, it reminds me of an email chain I read that in essence says we’ve traded the postal stamp for an email account and within the last several years, we’ve traded the email account for a networking site or a blog space. It seems like our treasured “friends” are now part of our Facebook or are invited to read our blog and post their own thoughts, rather than being invited to share a meal with our family or spend a night out on the town listening to a live band.

Things have become too convenient. We’ve become so self-important that everything we want to say finds it way on an internet blog or posted on a Facebook “wall.” There’s just too much traffic. Yet, what’s the alternative? Technology is streamlining our communication. I remember the day when it dawned on me that I would no longer be able to communicate with my two best college friends the way I wanted because they lived overseas and phone calls became too expensive. Even now, I dread making phone calls to friends who live in the states because time zone differences make it difficult to call within my “free” cell phone minutes... as no one provider offers everything you need for just the right price.

Yes, the landscape has changed immensely and I’m wondering when we’ll eventually stop communicating face-to-face and just rely on our Facebook to have profound relationships with people we call “friends.” I wonder when we’ll blog our ideas instead of getting together for neighborhood meetings. Will the internet become so crowded with all of our “stuff” that we’ll have to start paying hefty tolls just to be part of the Web community? Don’t get me wrong. I love new technology. How great are our iPods? Huh? We don’t have to carry around a bunch of CDs in some felt covered pack anymore...right? How great are text messages ... especially when you just need to say a few words because you don’t have time to talk. Without a doubt, new technology makes communication easier and accessible to many ... but at what cost? As with anything, people can abuse and misuse great technology and ideas. I hope that this new landscape in news and information ... this new era in media consumption doesn’t turn us into Sandra Bullock’s character in the movie The Net. Hopefully, we don’t turn ourselves into these islands where our only human contacts are done in binary code. Maybe there’s a way to bridge the personal with the technological without becoming too superficial. Perhaps only time will tell. Or maybe I just need to wrap my head around this new world of communication and realize that this may be as “personal” as it’s going to get.

-Nkoyo Iyamba

Scots in Utah

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=11/24/2006

Like their nostalgic melody, the Scots themselves have rooted themselves abroad, far from home but always longing for it. Even though countless Scottish emigrants have set up shop in Utah over the years, just try to find a community of émigrés, a Scottish neighborhood or enclave. Independently minded Scottish emigrants to Utah can be found only where they are; and you’ll find two of them on Thinking Aloud.

Utah County Archeology

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/14/2008

It almost seems silly to say, but a reminder couldn’t hurt: archaeology need not be pursued in exotic places like Egypt, Greece, or Central America. We’ll talk to archaeologists who know the valleys of the Wasatch Front and outlying areas of the Great Basin and Intermountain West, in a survey of peoples and cultures past but not entirely forgotten: Peoples we sometimes call the “Fremont” or the “Anasazi,” and other indigenous inhabitants of the place we utahans call home.

Utah State Archaeologist Kevin Jones

How Much Does Machiavelli Matter Today?

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=7/7/2008

"The authentic Machiavelli,” says one daring scholar, “is one who subordinates personal interests for the common good…”

If that’s true, it turns common wisdom on its head, and makes a saint out of a sinner.

Who was Machiavelli, and how much do his ideas still matter today. A historian’s view, on our next Thinking Aloud

German Latter-day Saints in WWII

Listen to this Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=5/30/2008
BYU professor Roger Minert explores the untold stories of Latter-Day Saint soldiers and civilians in his forthcoming book, German Latter-Day Saints in WWII . Join us as we discuss the harrowing experience of Nazi Germany from the perspective of a small religious minority. For more information on this subject visit German LDS in WWII

Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling

Listen to this Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=5/16/2008

Thinking Aloud brings back Richard Bushman in an interview that first aired on the bicentenary of Joseph Smith's birth. Bushman's biography of Joseph Smith has now taken its rightful place as a respected and hugely important scholarly work about the man who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Houses of Birth and Houses of Death

Listen to this Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=5/8/2008

It may be hard to believe today, but there was a time when young doctors walked straight from their research in the morgue to the delivery room. Childbed fever killed more than a million women in nineteenth century Europe. Modern medicine, and most people born today, owe much to the pioneering work of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. We're talking with K. Codell Carter about his book Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Ignaz Semmelweis.

The Fall of Constantinople

Classical 89 Thinking Aloud Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=5/29/2008
On May 29, exactly 555 years ago, Mehmet the Conqueror marched into Constantinople. We're talking with Professor Glen Cooper about how the Byzantine Empire influenced the modern world. If it weren't for Muslim scholars, it's likely we wouldn't be discussing people like Plato, Herodotus, or Homer today. From the ancient world to the modern, we'll discuss this particular flow of ideas and how the fall of Constantinople helped bridge the gap.