The 7th Avenue Project

Like so many other radiophiles, I was inspired to get into the medium by the work of great independent producers like the Kitchen Sisters—Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson. So it was really nice to finally sit down with Nikki and learn about her own radio beginnings. We listened to some of the earliest and still-cool Kitchen Sisters recordings ("Rattlesnakes," "The Road Ranger" and "Ernie Morgan, World Champion One-Handed Pool Player") and discussed the latest evolution of their work: "The Hidden World of Girls, Stories For Orchestra." Adapted from their "Hidden World of Girls" radio series, the new orchestral/multimedia production premieres at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music on July 28 and 29. Listening to Nikki talk, you can hear one of the essential ingredients in the Kitchen Sisters' success: a lot of passion and a lot of heart.

When it comes to science, we at the 7th Avenue Project usually stick to the professional, institutionally sanctioned variety, even when discussing unorthodox notions and minority opinions. In this episode, though, we ventured further afield, into the alternate reality that Margaret Wertheim calls "outsider physics" and that some people less generously dub "crackpot science." Margaret says the sheer number of folks who reject much or all of modern physics and persist in spinning out their own DIY theories raises some important questions about our relationship to science these days. We discussed her book, "Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons and Alternative Theories of Everything."

It's been about 50 years since Noam Chomsky conclusively established that the basic structures of human language are pre-wired in our brains, not gleaned from experience. Or… maybe he didn't. While several generations of theoretical linguists have been diligently expanding the Chomskian program, another faction says there's little or no evidence for his "universal grammar" and it's time to scale back or even scrap the theory. Former innatist Daniel Everett is in now part of the opposition. On last week's show, I aired a 2007 interview with Dan talking about his adventures as a missionary turned Amazonian linguist, and how he lost faith first in Christianity and then in Chomskianism. This time, a new interview with Dan discussing his latest book, "Language: The Cultural Tool." In it, he advances the idea that grammars and other aspects of particular languages are shaped by culture.

Dan Everett is twice a heretic, having strayed from the path of Christian missionary work to become a linguist, and then breaking with the dominant branch of theoretical linguistics led by Noam Chomsky. I did a report on Dan for NPR in 2007, but I never broadcast this longer interview, from which that piece was taken. I decided to air it now because Dan will be on the show next week, talking about his new book on the origins of language. The earlier interview provides the fascinating backstory: how he went from rock n' roller to missionary to Amazonian linguist, his years in the rain forest with the isolated Pirahã tribe, their anomalous language, and how he came to doubt Chomsky's idea of universal grammar.

I've never much liked the phrase "confined to a wheelchair," and it certainly doesn't apply to Paul Bendix in anything more than a physical sense. In his new book of essays, "Dance Without Steps," Paul writes about aging, travel, gardening, love, loss and disability with a breadth and clarity that feels liberating. Paul is an old friend, but we'd lost touch, so the release of his book gave us a chance to get reacquainted. We talked about his writing, his life, the random act of violence that left him partially paralyzed at the age of 21, and how he's adjusted (and is still adjusting) in the four decades since.

I've been nipping at the edges of this subject for a while on previous shows, and now I've found someone to tackle it head-on: Jonathan Gottschall, author of "The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human." Jonathan and I discussed the central place of narrative not only in art and entertainment, but in our deep understanding of the world and ourselves. With us humans, it's storytime all the time, or at least much of the time. We talked about storytelling's pervasive influence, possible evolutionary explanations, its hazards and if/how we ever escape its confines.

She's an avowed red-till-dead Republican (though an iconoclastic one) and daughter of John McCain. He's a self-described East-Coast liberal. Though hardly on the same ideological team, both decry the hyper-partisan bloodsport that passes for political discourse these days in America. So they conducted a little experiment in political fence-mending, crossing the country together in an RV in search of common ground. I talked to Meghan and Michael about their travels, as retold in their new book "America, You Sexy Bitch."

Joshua Mellars has a thing for world travel and world music, and he combines both passions in his latest pair of films. Play Like a Lion: The Legacy of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan is a portrait of the late Indian classical virtuoso and his son Alam Khan, who's carrying on the family musical tradition. Heaven's Mirror: A Portuguese Voyage is about Portuguese Fado music, and features some of the top contemporary fadistas (fado singers), including Katia Guerreiro, Ana Moura, Camané, and Carlos do Carmo. Joshua joined me to discuss the films and the music that inspired them.

Historian George Dyson on his new book "Turing's Cathedral," which tells the story of the Electronic Computer Project. Led by the brilliant polymath John Von Neumann in 1940s and 50s, the project laid the groundwork for much of modern computing. In doing so, Dyson says, it birthed a new, digital ecosystem, a world of self-reproducing, ever-evolving numbers that may be said to have a life of their own. Dyson is the son of famed physicist Freeman Dyson and grew up at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Von Neumann and crew did their pioneering work.

When monologist Mike Daisey was caught fibbing on This American Life, it got me thinking about competing definitions of truth—artistic and journalistic—and the way they get blurred by storytelling. In part 1 of today's show, I spoke to Craig Silverman, who's written about fact-checking and who monitors journalistic accuracy in his blog Regret the Error. In part 2, erstwhile fact-checker Jim Fingal, co-author with John D'Agata of the book "The Lifespan of a Fact."