Claude Levi-Strauss in 1989.

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At the imperial dawn of the 20th century, there was the “civilized” world and the “savage” or “primitive” world, and one felt free to judge the other.

By the century’s end, the whole idea of primitive man as separate from civilized man was pretty well gone. And with it, the “savage mind.”

Much of the banishing was the work of the towering anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss has died at 100 in his native France. We are all, he said, driven by deep myth and common structures of thinking — even to our own extinction.

This hour, On Point: The mind and work of Claude Levi-Strauss.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nur Yalman, professor emeritus of social anthropology at Harvard University. He is also a professor of Middle Eastern Studies and has looked at issues of cultural diversity and international conflict. His 1967 book “Under the Bo Tree: Studies of Caste, Kinship, and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon” was influenced by Levi-Strauss’s work. Most recently he’s co-author of “A Passage to Peace: Global Solutions from East and West.”

Rosemary Joyce, chair of the anthropology department at the University of California at Berkeley. She is also an archaeologist whose primary work is in Central and South America, with a focus on Honduras. Her books include “Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives” and “Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theory and Practice.”

Producer John Comerford, who appeared on our show this year to talk about his film “Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense,” suggested before the show that we might look to contemporary pianists Matthew Shipp, Vijay Iyer, or Jason Moran to talk about the Monk legacy. (John’s project is still rolling along; check it out at the “Icons Among Us” Facebook page.)

Shipp indeed made an appearance on our Monk segment, with biographer Robin Kelley. 

Here’s Shipp grooving in person:

A pianist who has pushed the boundaries of jazz — much as Monk did in his day — Shipp told host Tom Ashbrook that the Monk legacy endures:

I’m like a third or fourth generation of pianists that was really touched by Monk’s discipline, his belief in himself, and just the humanness in his music. I mean his music is obviously an Afro-American … jazz music. But at the same time, he has just such an open mind, that he takes in everything … and brings it into his own idiom, where he kind of really discovered the essence of what makes him work as a composer and a pianist. And he was able to just really develop this music that was his vision. So I think that type of thing has really influenced me and other pianists.  

Shipp said Monk’s first generation of heirs includes musicians like Randy Weston, Mal Waldron, and Cecil Taylor. He also mentioned later players, like Anthony Davis and Moran. “The figure of Monk is just a pervasive, pervasive figure,” Shipp said during our show, “…Monk offers an infinity of responses.”

At the end of his book, Kelley also plugs Shipp, Iyer, Moran, and Davis, in addition to Jessica Williams, Marcus Roberts, Danilo Perez, Gonzalo Rublcaba, and Fred Hersch. He writes in his book that those musicians are “just a fraction of the post-Monk generation of pianists/composers whose ideas have been profoundly shaped by a serious engagement with Monk’s music.”

Moran is on tape talking about Monk:

Here’s Vijay Iyer in studio:

And Jessica Williams on stage:

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This segment was originally broadcast April 16, 2009.

Long before “Dancing with the Stars” brought rappers and bullriders to the ballroom floor, there was Fred Astaire, bringing song and dance to the big screen.

In musicals from “Top Hat” to “Funny Face” and “Silk Stockings,” he wooed Hollywood’s leading ladies — and viewers around the world — with his elegance, grace, and impeccable dance.

Cultural critic Joseph Epstein brings a fresh take to the story of Fred Astaire, from vaudeville days to enduring icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

This hour, On Point: The art and life of the extraordinary Fred Astaire.

You can join the conversation. Did you grow up watching Fred Astaire’s footwork in movies like “Top Hat,” “Swing Time,” and “The Gay Divorcee”? Does “Puttin’ On the Ritz” make you get up and dance?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from Evanston, Illinois, is Joseph Epstein, essayist and bestselling author of “Snobbery: The American Way” and “Friendship: An Expose.” His new book, “Fred Astaire,” appears in the “Icons of America” series from Yale University Press. Read an excerpt (pdf).

From New York, we’re joined by Elizabeth Kendall, dance critic and author of “The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy in the 1930’s” and, most recently, “Autobiography of a Wardrobe.” She’s a professor at Eugene Lang College, The New School of Liberal Arts.

You can see our Web special featuring Fred Astaire’s reflections on his own life.

Here’s Fred Astaire and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” …

Here’s Astaire and Ginger Rogers in “Swing Time” …

And here they are “Dancing Cheek to Cheek”…

Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard is the reigning master of the American crime thriller.

He started with Westerns, way back in the 1950s — “3:10 to Yuma” and more. He made his big name with smart, tight, fast thrillers that readers — and Hollywood — couldn’t get enough of: “Get Shorty,” “Jackie Brown,” “Be Cool,” “Out of Sight.”

Now Elmore Leonard is out with his 43rd: “Road Dogs.” It goes right at sex, friendship, loyalty and money — and whether anyone, especially a crook, can have them all.

This hour, On Point: The master, Elmore Leonard, on the crime thriller and “Road Dogs.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Elmore Leonard joins us from Detroit, Michigan. He’s the bestselling author of over 40 novels – Westerns and crime thrillers and mysteries. The New York Times calls him “the greatest living writer of crime fiction.” His new book, out this month, is “Road Dogs.”

You can read the first eight chapters of “Road Dogs” at HarperCollins.com.

From Cambridge, Mass., we’re joined by Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States and professor of English at Boston University. His review of “Road Dogs” appears in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

Pauline Bonaparte at Galleria Borghese, by Dhfeinsmith/Flickr

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Pauline Bonaparte, favorite sister of the French emperor, was a terrible role model.

Faithful to her famous brother — but not to her husbands. A legendary beauty who liked bathing in milk — and being carried in a chaise longue. She collected jewels. And fashion. And men.

But La Paolina, as the Italians called her when she married Prince Borghese, was more than a sum of her frivolous parts. Courageous, canny and cunning, she might have had an empire of her own had she been born a century or two later.

This hour, On Point: Pauline Bonaparte, “Venus of Empire.”

You can join the conversation. Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte had a formidable little sister? What are your questions for biographer Flora Fraser about the Bonaparte clan, the Napoleonic wars, and the art of piecing together a life for the page?

You can join the conversation. What’s your story of friendship through the years? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guest:

Joining us from London is Flora Fraser, author of “Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire.” An acclaimed biographer, she is the author of three other books about scandalous women, including “Beloved Emma: the Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton.” She is also the co-founder of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, named for her grandmother, who wrote about the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria.

Read an excerpt from “Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire.”

More links:

Here are reviews by The New York Times (title: “Twisted Sister”) and The Washington Times.

The Girls from Ames (cover).

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You’ve got to have friends, as Bette Midler sang back in the ‘70s.

But not many people hold on to their friendships for four decades, and counting.

Eleven girls from Ames, Iowa have done just that — through college, marriage, children, divorce, the death of family members.

They’ve stuck together, even though they’ve gone in many directions and now live all over the country. A new book tells their remarkable story of friendship. It’s a testament to how women bond.

This Hour, On Point: the girls from Ames.

You can join the conversation. What’s your story of friendship through the years? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Jeffrey Zaslow, author of the new book, “The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship.” He is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and co-author, with Randy Pausch, of the New York Times bestseller “The Last Lecture.” Click here to read an excerpt from “The Girls From Ames.”

Jane Nash is one of the women profiled in Zaslow’s book. She is a professor of psychology at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.

Angela Jamison is also one of the “girls” from Ames. She now runs her own public relations firm in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

More links:

Here’s a video montage of the Ames girls’ pictures together through the years.

Photo from Coraline (2009)

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Film director Henry Selick, who brought us “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach,” relishes the darker side of children’s imaginations.

His new animated film, “Coraline,” takes us into a magical and sinister world. Coraline is a plucky young girl, starved for attention from her own parents. Then she discovers a secret passageway to an alternate family, filled with enchanting singing, delicious food, and attentive parents.

But that beautiful world quickly unravels. And that’s when Selick really starts to have fun.

This hour, On Point: Henry Selick on his new film, “Coraline.”

You can join the conversation. Have you seen the film? What did you make of it? Would you take your kids? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation this week.

Guest:

Writer, director and producer Henry Selick joins us from Portland, Oregon. The Los Angeles Times calls “Coraline” “a remarkable feat of imagination, a magical tale with a genuinely sinister edge.”

The film’s rich website allows you to explore Coraline’s world. You can watch the trailer here:

Jon Nelson (Photo: Kate Iverson)

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Mashup music isn’t new. All the way back in the ‘60s, fans were remixing Elvis and “Blue Suede Shoes.” Eminem — Slim Shady — laid his vocal track over AC/DC and Vanilla Ice.

But we’re living in a mashed-up musical world right now. From the mainstream to the underground, songs are being sampled, pulled apart, remixed, mashed up. If you’re a fan, you know that Girl Talk does it. Danger Mouse. DJ Spooky. Negativland.

And it’s not just music. My guest today, Jon Nelson, mashes music and found sound — from old movies, laugh tracks, the news — to make what he calls the audio dreamscape of the media age.

This hour, On Point: Music, dreams, and the mashup.

You can join the conversation. Are you a mashup fan? Do you mix your own? What does it say about our era that we’re so into the recycling, layering, mixing of sound? Tell us what you think — and what you’re listening to.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jon Nelson joins us from Duluth, Minnesota. A pioneering sound collage/mashup music artist, he’s hosted the radio show “Some Assembly Required” for the past ten years. Most everyone in the underground world of collage and mashups has come through his show, from Evolution Control Committee to the current mashup phenom Girl Talk. His new album, under the name Escape Mechanism, is called “Emphasis Added.” You can listen here.

And joining us in our studio is Tim Riley, music critic and editor of the Riley Rock Index, a new music site. His latest book is “Fever: How Rock Transformed Gender.”

More links:

U.K. sound artist Vicki Bennet records and remixes tunes, often with a surreal twist, under the name “People Like Us.” California-based sound collage artist Jon Liedecker, a.k.a. “Wobbly,” has a long record of creative tracks. And Turnstylz, an emerging act from New York City, is mixing up a wide variety of genres, with a hip-hop focus.

Annie Leibovitz speaks about her gallery exhibition, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005, at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington on Oct. 9, 2007. (AP)

Originally broadcast: Oct. 17, 2006

You don’t get higher-profile than the celebrity portraits of photographer Annie Liebovitz.

From the covers of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair to the Hollywood heights, she has famously photographed Demi Moore nude and very pregnant; John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono; Michael Jordan looking godlike.

Her new book on how she’s done it is “Annie Leibovitz At Work.”  I talked with her about her last collection, and the life and death of her longtime companion Susan Sontag.

This hour, in a holiday archive edition of On Point:  photographer Annie Leibovitz.

-Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guest:

Annie Leibovitz, contributor to Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, formerly Rolling Stone’s chief photographer. Her books include “Women” and “American Music.” Her most recent collection is “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.”

Clockwise from top left: Nicole Kidman in "Australia," Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in "Revolutionary Road," Tom Cruise in "Valkyrie," and Jeffrey Wright in "Cadillac Records."

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Clint Eastwood walks tall one last time. Meryl Streep is one tough nun. Beyonce and Mos Def jam it up in old Chicago blues.

Hollywood’s holiday movie rush is about to break on us. “Gran Torino.” “Doubt.” “Cadillac Records,” and a whole lot more.

A Hollywood Frost interviews a Hollywood Nixon. Tom Cruise rides as a Nazi rebel in “Valkyrie.” “Titanic” lovers Leo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet are off the boat in “Revolutionary Road.” We’ve got “Milk” and “Australia,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button.

This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with top critics on the holiday haul at the movies.

You can join the conversation. What’s the year-end film you’ve already loved? What are you looking forward to? Are the movies still our escape in hard times — or are they too expensive? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

With us in our studio is Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe. He blogs at Movie Nation.

And joining us from Pasadena, Calif., is Claudia Puig, film critic for USA Today.

Designer Isaac Mizrahi, the irrepressible New Yorker with his eye-popping color palette and non-stop patter, was the first high-end fashion designer to step into the chain stores and make magic for the masses.

He brought high fashion to Target. He made the runway life public in the 1995 film “Unzipped.” He made Scarlett Johansson mad when he weighed her tatas on the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

Fashion stuff. Mizrahi has an opinion on every fashion question — Sarah Palin, big Oprah, slim Barack. And most of all, everywoman.

This hour, On Point: A conversation on life and style with Isaac Mizrahi.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Isaac Mizrahi is an award-winning fashion designer. He is the new Creative Director for Liz Claiborne and has his own collection. He started a five-year collaboration with Target in 2003 to create an inexpensive and chic line of clothes and accessories. He is the subject of the 1995 documentary “Unzipped.” He hosts the daily show, Watch Isaac, which plays on his website, isaacmizrahiny.com. His new book is “How to Have Style.”

Photos from “How to Have Style”
(after you click on the main image below, click on the arrows box in the lower-right corner to view photos at full-screen size; click the box again, or use the Esc key, to return to this screen.)

Photos from Isaac Mizrahi’s “Spring-Summer 2009 Show”
(after you click on the first image, click on the arrows box in the lower right corner to view photos full-screen)

Big Apple Circus

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The American circus has a long history, and Paul Binder has lived a colorful chapter of it. For three decades he’s been ringmaster of the Big Apple Circus. Top hat. Tails. Booming voice. Flying trapeze, horse, clowns, lights, dogs, and dazzling oom-pa-pa.

In 1977, a young Paul Binder had come home from Europe with the dream of launching a new, old-style one-ring circus in America — and he did it. On a stretch of landfill in lower Manhattan, the Big Apple Circus was born.

Lots of people dream of running away to join the circus. Binder started his own. Now, after three decades as ringmaster, artistic director, and circus boss, Binder is hanging up his hat.

This hour, On Point: A life in the circus — the Big Apple Circus — with Paul Binder.

You can join the conversation. Do you still fall for the magic of the circus? The Big Apple Circus? In the era of MP3s and DVDs, can the circus still compete?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us in our studio is Paul Binder, founder and artistic director of Big Apple Circus. He joined the circus as a juggler in Europe with the Nouveau Cirque de Paris in the 1970s. In 1977, with juggling partner and co-founder Michael Christenson, he launched the Big Apple Circus. He is stepping down after 31 years as ringmaster.

Gladis Espana, member of the famed Flying Espanas, who have appeared in circuses in Mexico and the U.S. She is known for her work on trapeze, and has now retired from high-flying work.

Alida Wallenda-Cortes, a 7th generation performer from the Flying Wallenda family. She has performed in circuses since the age of three, and currently performs in The Flying Cortes trapeze act for Big Apple Circus.

Clockwise from top, Motown albums by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, the Jackson 5, The Temptations, and Diana Ross & the Supremes.

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Half a century ago, American popular music was nearly as segregated as the rest of American life.

And then came Motown: from a little house on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, hit after hit that soared across the color line and left a generation of young Americans — coast to coast, North and South, black and white — dancing to the same tunes.

The Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five. It was a pop music earthquake.

This hour, On Point: Motown, and its legacy, at 50.

You can join the conversation. What made the Motown sound work across the country? What made the country ready for Motown?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Lisa Robinson. She covers music and the music industry for Vanity Fair. Her feature story in the December issue, “It Happened in Hitsville,” is an oral history of Motown.

Joining us in our studio is Tim Riley, a music critic and frequent contributor to PRI’s “Here & Now.” His latest book is “Fever: How Rock Transformed Gender.”

From Los Angeles, we’re joined by Suzanne de Passe, the former president of Motown Productions. As creative assistant to Motown founder Berry Gordy, she discovered Jackson 5 and The Commodores. A winner of Emmy, Golden Globe, and Peabody awards, she’s now CEO of de Passe Entertainment.

And from Amsterdam, we’re joined by Raphael Saadiq, the singer, songwriter, and award-winning producer for artists such as Joss Stone, The Roots, and Snoop Dogg. His new album, “The Way I See It,” is new material in the style of ’60’s soul. He describes it as “the culmination of a lifetime of experiences informed by the music I grew up on.” He’s currently on tour with John Legend.

More links:

Motown Records’ Classic Motown site offers a rich interactive timeline covering the label’s history and the 50th anniversary music video below:

The Hitsville U.S.A. building in Detroit, Michigan, which served as Motown’s headquarters from 1959 until 1968:

Michael Crichton in December 2004. (AP Photo)

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For four decades in America and around the world, when technology ran amuck and humans ran scared, you could look for the hand of Michael Crichton.

In blockbuster bestsellers and movie thrillers across decades, Crichton unleashed reconstituted dinosaurs, deadly viruses, nanotech swarms, killer gorillas and more human threats to the status quo — female sexual predators and fiendishly clever bank robbers.

He created “ER” and “Jurassic Park,” “The Andromeda Strain,” “Congo,” “Prey,” “State of Fear.” This week he died at 66.

This hour, On Point: The man who gripped us, Michael Crichton.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lev Grossman, book critic for TIME magazine. Earlier this week he wrote an appreciation of Michael Crichton as “A Master Storyteller of Technology’s Promise and Peril.” He’s the author of the novels “Codex” and “Warp.”

Lynn Nesbit, Michael Crichton’s literary agent for 37 years. She signed him in 1965 while he was still a medical student.

Chris Mooney, contributing editor to Science Progress. His forthcoming book, “Unscientific America,” deals in part with science and Hollywood. He’s also the author of “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming” and “The Republican War on Science.” He blogs at The Intersection.

More links:

The official Michael Crichton website has a tribute to the author and information on all of his books and movies.

NPR.org remembers Crichton here.

The New York Times’ Charles McGrath offered an appraisal of Crichton this week, headlined “Builder of Windup Realms That Thrillingly Run Amok.” The Times’ obituary is here, along with an archive of features on his work.

Last May, Slate’s Jack Shafer wrote that Crichton’s 1993 Wired magazine essay, “Mediasaurus,” in which he predicted the extinction of mass media, now looks to be on target.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows sounds a similar note, and offers a thought for his friend Michael Crichton.

Director Mike Leigh at the premiere of "Happy-Go-Lucky" outside the Glasgow Film Theatre in April 2008. (Photo: Stuart Crawford)

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British director and screenwriter Mike Leigh has made a career just as far from Hollywood as he could get. Forget the divas, the starlets, the million-dollar-a-day actors. Mike Leigh works differently.

His films are gritty and urban. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always looking to portray everyday people at work and at home in the drama of something like real life. From a 1950s housewife who doubles as an abortionist in “Vera Drake,” to a young black woman who seeks out her white birth mother in “Secrets & Lies,” Mike Leigh’s films make you think.

This time out, he’s making us think about smiling, laughing compassion as a principled stand. This hour, we talk with director Mike Leigh about his far-from-Hollywood life in film, and his latest release, “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

You can join the conversation. What Mike Leigh movies have spoken to you? “Naked” … “Life Is Sweet” … “Vera Drake”? How about his upbeat new film “Happy-Go-Lucky?” Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Mike Leigh, joins us from London. He’s been making movies for 35 years and has been nominated for five Oscars. He won the Best Director award at Cannes for his 1993 film, “Naked.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday calls the heroine of his new film, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “this year’s most unforgettable and even revolutionary screen protagonist…. at a time when — in Hollywood, at least — violence, bleakness and pessimism are continually confused with moral seriousness.”

The official “Happy-Go-Lucky” website is suitably upbeat and there’s even a “daily dose of happiness” widget which you can watch here:

]]> http://www.onpointradio.org/2008/11/mike-leigh/feed 14 http://www.onpointradio.org/2008/10/paul-newman http://www.onpointradio.org/2008/10/paul-newman#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:00:26 +0000 Hilary Barngrove McQuilkin http://www.onpointradio.org/?p=7712

Paul Newman in the film"Cool Hand Luke."

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As a young man, actor and Hollywood star Paul Newman was so beautiful that his beauty itself — the blue eyes, the sculpted planes — became a danger to his ambition to be more than a pretty face.

By his life’s end, late last week, of cancer at 83, that was a battle Paul Newman had won, hands down.

He played the alcoholic, the convict, the cowboy, the lover, the lawyer — in “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Hustler,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Verdict,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and more. He helped define American manhood, and reached out of the move theater deep into the tough parts of life: in his ground-breaking work for charity and sick kids, Newman carved a unique path in art and activism.

We’re not finished thinking about him and his career. This hour, On Point: remembering icon, actor and activist Paul Newman.

You can join the conversation. Did his blue eyes make you weak in the knees way back when? In what film? Did his career help you understand what it means to mature — in art, in life?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Mark Harris, columnist at Entertainment Weekly and author of “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.”

See this special photo gallery at EW.com, annotated by Harris, showing Newman in 30 of his unforgettable roles.

Jeanine Basinger, chair of the film studies department at Wesleyan University and author of “The Star Machine.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

More links:

“Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83″ — The New York Times obituary of Paul Newman from Sept. 27.

Newman’s Own, the hugely successful premium food company started by Paul Newman in 1982 — which donates all profits and royalties after taxes for educational and charitable purposes — offers its tribute to Newman’s life and legacy. The company’s motto: “Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the Common Good.”

Watch the scene from “The Hustler” (1961) in which Newman’s character Fast Eddie plays the final game against Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason):

"The Castle" cast: Angel Ramos, Vilma Ortiz Donovan, Kenneth Harrington and Casimiro Torres. (Photo by Filip Kwiatokowski)

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We’ve heard the statistics. As of the beginning of this year, one out of every hundred adult Americans was behind bars. But to many of us, the people behind these numbers remain a mystery.

In a provocative new play, “The Castle,” four real ex-convicts, with 70 years time between them, come forward and tell their stories — of life in prison, and out.

We’ll talk with three of the performers, as well as the director of the show: a longtime advocate for prisoners and former prisoners.

This hour, On Point: Prisoners’ tales, and life on the outside.

What would you like to hear about life behind bars, and about life outside for people who have done time? You can join the conversation right here.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

* * *

Guests:

We’re joined from New York by David Rothenberg, director of “The Castle” and founder of the Fortune Society, which works to improve prison conditions and help ex-convicts re-enter society, and by three of the performers who appear in and wrote “The Castle”:

Vilma Ortiz Donovan served two terms in state prison and now works as a receptionist for the Fortune Society.

Casimiro Torres spent 16 years in prison after 67 arrests, and now works as a youth counselor.

Kenneth Harrigan also spent 16 years in prison, and now works as a counselor for the Fortune Society.

Links:

“The Castle”
More on the play from the Fortune Society, including links to reviews, showtime and ticket information.

“Four Ex-Convicts Tell of Lives Lost and Found”
The New York Times’ Jim Dwyer devoted a recent column to “The Castle.”

Tadanobu Asano as Genghis Khan in Picturehouse's movie "Mongol"

Genghis Khan rose from nomadic obscurity in outback Mongolia to build, with his descendants, the biggest contiguous empire the world has ever seen.

He did it on horseback, with swords and arrows. In conquered lands from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to Beijing, his name became synonymous with hordes and plunder.

A new film, “Mongol,” in Mongolian and out of Russia, paints the youth of Genghis Khan, his softer side and the trials that made the conqueror. It’s stunning.

This hour, On Point: Mongol Genghis Khan, the first great globalizer, and the story of his rise.

- Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Morris Rossabi, professor of Mongolian and inner Asian history at Columbia University

John Man, historian and author of “Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection”

Sergei Bodrov, award-winning director of “Mongol”

Learn more about the new movie “Mongol”