ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

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ChatChat - Claudia Cragg episodes

  • Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago
    Claudia Cragg () speaks here with about her new memoir. Linda Gartz () is a six-time Emmy-award-honored television producer, blogger, essay writer, and author. Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement,  exposes the racist lending rules that refuse mortgages to anyone in areas with even one black resident. As blacks move deeper into Chicago’s West Side during the 1960s, whites flee by the thousands. But Linda Gartz’s parents, Fred and Lil choose to stay in their integrating neighborhood, overcoming previous prejudices as they meet and form friendships with their African American neighbors. The community sinks into increasing poverty and crime after two race riots destroy its once vibrant business district, but Fred and Lil continue to nurture their three apartment buildings and tenants for the next twenty years in a devastated landscape―even as their own relationship cracks and withers. After her parents’ deaths, Gartz discovers long-hidden letters, diaries, documents, and photos stashed in the attic of her former home. Determined to learn what forces shattered her parents’ marriage and undermined her community, she searches through the family archives and immerses herself in books on racial change in American neighborhoods. Told through the lens of Gartz’s discoveries of the personal and political, Redlined delivers a riveting story of a community fractured by racial turmoil, an unraveling and conflicted marriage, a daughter’s fight for sexual independence, and an up-close, intimate view of the racial and social upheavals of the 1960s.
    43 min
  • 'What Would Happen If The President of the USA Went Stark Raving Mad?'
    Claudia Cragg (@KGNUClaudia) speaks here with Jack Knebel, son of , to discuss '', his late father's prescient novel. This has just been republished by Vintage Books.    "A president who rages in private about conspiracies against him by the news media and his political opponents. A controversial alliance with a ruthless Russian leader. A key Supreme Court justice named Kavanaugh." "Well, in  the justice’s name is spelled “Cavanaugh,” but close enough." "The political thriller, a best-seller when it was published in 1965 but long out of print, has enough eerie parallels with today’s political debate that it has gained new attention from and others." "Vintage Books is reissuing the novel as an e-book, an audiobook and a paperback wrapped in a stark, black-and-white overwrap that asks: “WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A. WENT STARK-RAVING MAD?” "That was the tagline for the original book. The story by the late journalist Fletcher Knebel wrestles with the debate, never fully resolved, over how the nation’s political system can and should respond if there are suspicions that a commander in chief has become mentally incapacitated." [, by Susan Page | USA Today]
    22 min
  • Alexandra Kitty, on 'When Journalism Was a Thing"
    , aka the 'World's Most Dangerous Woman', is a Canadian author and academic who says that "journalism used to be everything, until the day it became nothing." In her new book, she argues that journalism used to be a powerful and wonderful thing, yet now it has become a curiosity, and not even the Internet can resurrect it. When Journalism was a Thing considers the downfall of journalism and the reasons why, but also offers a model for a new approach to the once-noble profession. Kitty is the author of three books, including , and . She had two different columns in two major daily newspapers by the time she was 23. Her articles have been published in academic journals such as Skeptic and Critical Review, trade publications such as Quill, Editor & Publisher, Current, and Presstime, and newsstand magazines from Elle Canada to Maisonneuve. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
    20 min
  • Xi JinPing's 'Red Flags...' from George Magnus
    In light of the and that country's retaliation, Claudia Cragg (@KGNUClaudia) speaks for "' with  George Magnus (). He is the author of , in which he explores four key issues that he believes China must confront and overcome in order to thrive - debt, middle income, the Renminbi and an aging population. At the end of this month, Xi and Trump with meet in Buenos Aires for the What is Xi Jinping doing to combat these issues and what more can be done? In addition, how might China’s evolving relationship with the US impact future growth? And is the Belt and Road initiative proving successful in bolstering China’s influence in Eurasia.
    31 min
  • Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman - a life. With Robbin Légère Henderson
    (@KGNUClaudia) speaks for @KGNU #ItsTheEconomy with, about her grandmother, Rabinowitz’s illustrated memoir challenges assumptions about the lives of early twentieth-century women. In , Rabinowitz describes the ways in which she and her contemporaries rejected the intellectual and social restrictions imposed on women as they sought political and economic equality in the first half of the twentieth century. Rabinowitz devoted her labor and commitment to the notion that women should feel entitled to independence, equal rights, equal pay, and sexual and personal autonomy. Rabinowitz (1887–1963) immigrated to the United States from Ukraine at the age of thirteen. Radicalized by her experience in sweatshops, she became an organizer for the from 1912 to 1917 before choosing single motherhood in 1918. " once wrote, "a book could be written about Matilda," but her memoir was intended as a private story for her grandchildren, Robbin Légère Henderson among them. Henderson’s black-and white-scratchboard drawings illustrate Rabinowitz’s life in the Pale of Settlement, the journey to America, political awakening and work as an organizer for the IWW, a turbulent romance, and her struggle to support herself and her child.
    28 min
  • "Your future isn't going to pay for itself" So, use 'Common Financial Sense'
    @KGNUClaudia, , speaks here with Harris Nydick and Greg Makowskfor @KGNU Denver/Boulder/Fort Collins and #ItsTheEconomy. Their new book,  lays out the basics of 401(k) and 403(b) planning in simple, easy to understand language. They say that, the decisions you make about your 401(k) or 403(b) plan today will have a huge impact on your life tomorrow. And, starting with as little as $1 - 10 a week, you can make a difference to your financial security going forward.  They discuss how to:- Choose the investments best suited for you Avoid common misconceptions about retirement planning Calculate the optimum amount to save each year Be calm in the face of market fluctuations Get to retirement with a large enough nest egg
    30 min
  • "The Marble Faun" speaks: Jerry Torre on the Life and Influence of Grey Gardens
    The #MarbleFaun of #GreyGardens, the touching and at times haunting memoir about his teenage days as caretaker of , the now-celebrated mansion chronicled in the iconic documentary Grey Gardens and two feature-length films. Claudia Cragg, @KGNUClaudia, speaks here with about the book, co-written with film historian , is a behind-the-scenes look at "" and "" and their bizarre and reclusive life of squalor amidst the tremendous wealth of East Hampton, the family bond that developed between Jerry and them, and the day everything was turned upside down forever with the arrival of documentary filmmakers What began as a teenager coming upon what he assumed was an old, abandoned house takes on new dimensions when suddenly Edie appears on the porch draped in a shower curtain with an apron tied around her head. "You must be the Marble Faun," she tells the stunned Jerry. Rather than chasing him away as he at first feared, she invites Jerry to meet her mother upstairs. So begins a strange and unusually close friendship with the two women as Jerry takes on the task of volunteer gardener of their estate, often sleeping nights in their living room and staying out of the way of mother-daughter arguments. The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens is Jerry's look back on the filming of Grey Gardens but also how the notoriety the movie achieved changed his life along with the Beales's as their private world is shared with audiences everywhere.
    33 min
  • Still relevant in 2018, Roland Philipps on 'Cambridge Spy', Donald Maclean
    Claudia Cragg (@KGNUClaudia) speaks here for @KGNU with Roland Philipps, about his new book, the first full biography of one of the twentieth century’s most notorious spies. Donald Maclean. Maclean was one of the most treacherous spies of the Cold War era and a key member of the infamous "#CambridgeFive" #spyring, yet the full extent of this shrewd, secretive man’s betrayal has never been explored—until now. Drawing on a wealth of previously classified files and unseen family papers, A Spy Named Orphan meticulously documents his extraordinary story. Roland Philipps unravels Maclean’s character and contradictions, informed by a domineering father in a childhood at once liberal and austere. Maclean became infatuated with Communism during his school days, even before his time at Cambridge. A model diplomat, he rose through the ranks of the British Foreign Office rapidly, never arousing suspicion of his chilling double life. He married an American woman despite his sexual ambivalence and increasing antipathy to the United States. He was prone to alcoholic binges that should have blown his cover, yet they never found their way onto his record. A sworn enemy of capitalism, he had access to some of the greatest secrets of the time, transmitting invaulable intelligence to his Soviet handlers on the atom bomb and the shape of the postwar world. Maclean was a spy who loved and loathed the role. In a brazen escapade, he successfully eluded the incredulous authorities to defect to the Soviet Union, where he worked and lived unrepentantly for the next thirty years. Philipps offers memorable portraits of Maclean’s coconspirators—Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt—as well as the gifted Russian spymasters of the period; a vibrant evocation of Cambridge and London between the wars; colorful descriptions of Maclean’s postings in Paris, Cairo, and Washington, D.C.; and a riveting re-creation of the tense international code-breaking operation that ultimately exposed him. A gripping tale of blind faith and fierce loyalty alongside dangerous duplicity and human vulnerability, Philipps’s narrative will stand as the definitive account of the mysterious and elusive man first codenamed "Orphan."
    33 min
  • "Saudi America" - How US fracking is unsustainable, with Bethany Maclean (c.f. Enron expose)
    This program is made possible by .  (Please note: this program for the October 2018 KGNU Fund Drive is posted with community pledges. If you would prefer to listen to the full Bethany McLean interview without these, it will be posted separately shortly.) #Saudi America - How US #fracking is unsustainable, with Bethany Maclean (c.f. Enron expose) Bethany McLean may be reached at  The US fracking industry has boomed so much that America is producing enough oil that the country is now a formidable player in the global market. But Bethany McLean, the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World, says financial risks are lurking beneath the surface. The US fracking industry was able to grow so quickly on the back of ultra-low interest rates. This is unsustainable, she says, because interest rates are rising and fracking companies have hundreds of billions of dollars of debt.  It’s made even worse because for many of them, the cost of operations is more than they are bringing in from production. McLean compares it to the dot-com bubble that burst at the start of the century. “As long as investors were willing to believe that profits were coming, it all worked — until it didn’t,” she wrote. (This show is reproduced here with the kind permission of @RadioMaeve, KGNU News Director, Maeve Conran.)
    59 min
  • FULL INTERVIEW Bethany McLean
    #Saudi America - How US #fracking is unsustainable, with Bethany Maclean (c.f. Enron expose) Bethany McLean may be reached at  The US fracking industry has boomed so much that America is producing enough oil that the country is now a formidable player in the global market. But Bethany McLean, the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World, says financial risks are lurking beneath the surface. The US fracking industry was able to grow so quickly on the back of ultra-low interest rates. This is unsustainable, she says, because interest rates are rising and fracking companies have hundreds of billions of dollars of debt.  It’s made even worse because for many of them, the cost of operations is more than they are bringing in from production. McLean compares it to the dot-com bubble that burst at the start of the century. “As long as investors were willing to believe that profits were coming, it all worked — until it didn’t,” she wrote.
    35 min

About ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

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Feature interviews from journalist and broadcaster, Claudia Cragg