Conversations online

Periodically Home Pages, the newspaper for IU faculty and staff, brings you audio interviews with notable commentators from around the world.

Oscar Arias on moral leadership and the prospects for global peace

September 2002
As part of the Patten Foundation Lectures, Nobel laureate Oscar Arias talks to Scott Sanders, distinguished professor of English about moral and ethical leadership. Arias, the former president of Costa Rica who in 1987 negotiated a peace plan for an unstable Central America, says the motto of his political career goes like this: “Tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear.”

Wells meets Shostakovich

Historical conversation
In conjunction with the Herman B Wells 100th birthday celebration, to be held June 7 at the Wells Plaza in Bloomington, IU Home Pages presents a 12-minute audiostreamed interview with Wells that was recorded in 1990 and recalls his trip to Moscow 40 years earlier when he met composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Nature vs. nurture: the talk in birdtown

April 2002

For most people, the chirping of birds is the language of springtime. For us, bird song hints of unfolding leaves, blooming gardens, whispering breezes. But what are these chatty birds really gossiping about? Well, it’s not necessarily that poetic.IU’s Meredith West is professor of psychology and biology, and along with her post-doctoral student, Dave White, she tells us all about what those birds are really saying. West studies bird language and behavior at her aviaries just north of Bloomington. Much of her work has focused on starlings and their mimicry abilities, and the behavior of cowbirds, whose parents employ a sort of nanny system. That is, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds species to be hatched and raised. So the question here is, how do they know they’re cowbirds?

A pow wow in Bloomington

March 2002

Charlie Nelms, vice president for student development and diversity at Indiana University, and Wesley Thomas, an IU Bloomington anthropologist and organizer of the campus’ inaugural pow wow, scheduled March 28-30, discuss the event and its importance to highlighting the history, culture and arts of American Indian tribes across the country.

John Updike

February 2002

Author John Updike has created some of American literature's most memorable antiheroes, so wouldn't you love to know who his heroes are today? Find out in this interview between Updike and IPFW's Lidan Lin, assistant professor of literature.

A visit with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

January 2002

What roles would they have loved to play? How do young African American actors get started in the business today? Is the notion of a Black National Theatre practical or even feasible? These are just a few of the questions John McCluskey Jr., professor of Afro-American Studies and English at IU Bloomington, asked award-winning actors and civil rights activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.

War and remembrance

December 2001

At one time, public memorials were built in a grand classical style well after the event or person intended to be commemorated had passed into history. In the wake of 9/11, discussion of public memorial has developed a new immediacy. New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman talks about recent memorial art: Rachel Whitebread's Holocaust monument in Vienna, Maya Lin's design for the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Oklahoma City National Memorial in a conversation with Betsy Stiratt, director of the IU School of Fine Arts Gallery in Bloomington. Kimmelman was IU's inaugural Dorit and Gerald Paul lecturer in Jewish culture and arts.

When bad things happen to good people

October 2001

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner discusses the content of his books, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and Living a Life That Matters, in a conversation with Kathleen Gilbert, a faculty member in the IU Bloomington Department of Applied Health Science and a researcher on the subject of bereavement. Kushner was a speaker at the Polis Center-sponsored Spirit & Place Festival in Indianapolis in November 2001.

The sound of silence...

April 2001
Marcel Marceau, the world-famous French mime, discusses his unique art form in an interview with IUB anthropology professor Anya Royce. Marceau, a legend in his field, was on the IUB campus in April for two public lectures and class visits arranged through the Department of Theatre and Drama as part of the Ralph L. Collins Memorial Lecture series.

Wendy Wasserstein

March 2001

IPFW's Susan Domer in conversation with playwright Wendy Wasserstein as she reminisces about her life in the theater. Wasserstein first gained fame in 1978 with her off-Broadway "Uncommon Women and Others," a saga of her years at Mount Holyoke College in the late '60s. The play would propel the early careers of Swoozie Kurtz, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jill Eikenberry. Wasserstein discusses her Seven Sisters' years, her "voice" as a writer and her new book of essays to be published this spring. She appeared recently at an IPFW Omnibus Lecture.

If music be the food of love...  

February 2001

The Beatles have been a staple of the young and young at heart for more than 40 years, and a new album, The Beatles 1, with an associated interactive Web site, indicate that all things old are new again. Rock fan Jonathan Plucker, who teaches learning, cognition and instruction at the IU School of Education and is a recent recipient of a Mensa Education and Research Foundation prize for research related to human intelligence, chats with rock historian Glenn Gass. Gass, who is a composer, wrote the textbook A History of Rock Music and originated the nation's first for-credit history of rock 'n roll class at the IU School of Music. How does pop music have the power to convey emotion, express the inexplicable and defy time? Listen to this conversational duet and find out.

Anxiety is your friend! Oh, really? 

December 2000

Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Institute at IU Southeast, and Kathleen Gilbert, associate professor of applied health science at IU Bloomington, talk about shyness, the art of "small talk" and coping skills for that demanding social circuit called "the holidays."

A conversation with musician Ray Charles 

November 2000

Remember Ray Charles at the piano as the opening credits ran for the TV sit-com Designing Women? It's a musical moment on Charles' mind, too. He can't go anywhere in the world without playing his rendition of IU alumnus Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia On My Mind. IU broadcast producer Byron Smith interviews Charles, who appeared in concert on the IU Bloomington campus Oct. 27.

Deciding how to vote

October 2000

Why do Americans vote the way they do? Some reasons may surprise you. Join IU historian James Madison as he interviews political scientist Bob Huckfeldt, IU Endowed Professor of human studies. Huckfeldt has been involved in a number of national and cross-national studies evaluating the ways in which citizens process political information in a democracy.

A conversation with South African dramatist Athol Fugard  

September 2000

Bruce Burgun of the IUB Department of Theatre and Drama discusses the art and practice of theater in the 21st century with distinguished South African playwright, director and actor Athol Fugard who served as the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor. The Fugard papers are housed at IU's Lilly Library.