The Radical Centrist

Kent Nerburn occupies a prominent place in the pantheon of writers who observe and document native life in a world where real people meet the challenges of real life amid the simplistic mythologizing/pathologizing characterizations of Native people to which we all a drawn from time to time. 

Kent does not avoid controversy in his writing process, he sees it as exploring what Jonathan Rauch calls "The Constitution of Knowledge" a healthy and robust discussion of ideas that allow us to develop revealed knowledge and truth from frank and often-ongoing dialog. Precisely what we advocate in The Radical Centrist Podcast series.

This podcast celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first publishing of "Neither Wolf Nor Dog - On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder", documenting Kents travels through Indian Country with a Native American Elder he calls "Dan".

This podcast is dedicated to the memory of Charles "Bud" Thompson, founder of the Canterbury Shaker Museum, in Canterbury, New Hampshire; and, at 68, Founder of the Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner NH. Though Kent and I have never actually met, both of us knew Bud and count him as among our most cherished mentors.

If you have not yet seen the Netflix biopic "Rustin" a project of Barach and Michelle Obama, it is a movie well worth your time. The movie unveils the extraordinary genius and timeless persistence of Bayard Rustin who in a very short 2 month window of time pulled off the Magnum Opus of citizen action. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 

Richard Kahlenberg

The climax of the movie is the 1963 March on Washington, an obvious place to end this movie but less than satisfying for its failure to pose the broader and more important historic questions about the direction of change that was to follow the March. 

This series of questions are the ones raised in Richard Kahlenberg's critique of the movie. His satisfaction with the pure recognition of Rustin is apparent but so too is his disappointment that the Obama's failed to use this movie as a teachable moment, beyond introducing this extraordinary man to a generation of citizens who have missed an important moment in time and the contributions of a gay, black man, persistent in a time when he was, at best, a second class citizen, even among those in the movement.

Kate Burgess is a Salazar Center partner and serves as the National Conference of Environmental Legislators NCEL’s Conservation Program Manager, where she enjoys collaborating with legislators on a variety of land, water, wildlife, and human issues. In this podcast she shares with us the new (yet old) push for nature-based solutions to climate and biodiversity challenges.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - The Rebel Girl Continues to Educate, Incite and Inspire

Appropo of the current moment in our country, New Hampshire is currently embroiled in a legal battle at the intersection of history, free speech, labor law, and women's rights. Earlier in the year the state's department of historic resources approved and erected a historical marker recognizing the birthplace of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, known as the "Rebel Girl" who was born in Concord in 1890. 

Guests Arnie Alpert and Mary Lee Sargent, who have filed suit to restore the marker to its agreed location in Concord along with Attorney Andru Volinsky who is representing them against the state, join host Wayne King in this episode.

The Sixth Passenger: David Concannon

The OceanGate Titan Tragedy: Looking Back and Looking Forward.

Since the June 18, 2023 disaster aboard the OceansGate Titan submersible, David Concannon, "The Sixth Passenger" on the ill-fated Titan submersible, who was scheduled to be the "Titanic whisperer" (aka the subject matter expert) aboard the Titan when a last-minute business conflict forced him to give up his spot on the vessel's voyage to the shipwreck.

This podcast, his first extensive interview since the Titan Disaster, represents an opportunity for David to look both backward and forward.

He recounts the events that transpired after the Titan was launched with five souls and when communications was lost; he reflects on the loss of the crew and the submersible, the inept, opaque and feckless approach of the US authorities in the Coast Guard, and the US Navy, and the frustration and heartbreak of the outcome when it was finally revealed.

And he makes the case for continuing the quest to explore the planet and the universe.

Don Kreis and his daughter Rose Keller make a formidable team. Whether as guests on a podcast or fighting the battle against Cystic Fibrosis. This year when Don turned 65 he announced that he would get 65 rose tattoos on his body if he could raise $65,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. But when he called to tell his daughter Rose about his plan, Rose told him he wasn't thinking big enough. After all, if he was going to sell that kind of real estate on his body it should be worth a lot more to the foundation dedicated to working on a cure for Rose's genetic disorder than a mere $65,000, she challenged him to raise it to $650,000 and he accepted the challenge. In this episode Don and Rose open up about the challenges of living with Cystic Fibrosis as a dad and a daughter with C.F. and their team effort to end it once and for all.

Tony Wagner is one of the world's most respected and distinguished Educational thinkers. Where the names of John Dewey, John Holt, Piaget, Wigginton and others have been on the lips of prospective teachers and educators in the past, today, and in future years Tony Wagner’s name will be joined with them. Why?  Because Tony Wagner, for more than 20 years has been urging and cajoling political, economic and educational leaders, as well as citizens, to recognize that rethinking education in this age of innovations is urgently needed. Not simply reform of the outdated “seat-time” model we have employed for generations but a recognition that the world has changed and our system for educating citizens and entrepreneurs must reflect the new world in which we live.

You’ll understand after listening why I wanted to speak with Tony for this special edition of our “Rediscovering Our Song” series. As you might guess, I am an enthusiastic proponent of Tony Wagner’s ideas.  I think after listening to this podcast, and following some of the links on our show notes to learn more, you will be as well.

Mark Blyth is the Carl Sagan of economics. Making the topics that usually cause our eyes to glaze over understandable, and approachable, dare I say, even fun.

In 2016 a Political Economist and the Director of the William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance, within the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at Brown University predicted that Donald Trump would win the Presidential election. Despite the fact that nearly every poll and the broadly held belief in political circles was that Clinton would win in a rout . . .That lone voice was the voice of Mark Blyth.

At the time, economists and pundits both looked at Blyth's prediction as a humorous anecdote they could toss into their various presentations about the upcoming election. They soon would be consuming large quantities of CROW.

In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, Blyth was seen as prescient and his theories that wove together economics and historic trends and precedents were suddenly highly sought after.

To Blyth, the growing disparty of wealth was a potent driver in the growing divisions infecting the body politic and a systemic existential threat to democracy. But Mark Blyth had not only seen the danger ahead. As they say these days - he brings the receipts.

Chris Hedges is one of our greatest public intellectuals and a prodigious writer with 14 books, a Pulitzer Prize and other prestigious awards to his credit. All of these achievements have come over the course of a long and storied career as a war correspondent, NPR, Christian Science Monitor, and New York Times journalist, and the wisdom and perspective on the human experience that few have endured. At the height of his career he quit his job at the New York Times rather than to be muzzled by the paper on his opposition to the war in Iraq. He can claim as mentors the great Sheldon Wolen, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Berrigan, Václav Havel, and Cornell West, among others.

Hedges often speaks of a quote - ostensibly from St Augustine of Hippo: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” In this interview Christopher Hedges speaks of both compellingly. 

A joint podcast with NH Secrets, Legends & Lore

Tom Irwin, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, joins me on this podcast along with Roger Stephenson of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Biologist Dr. Cynthia Walter of the NH Network, to discuss one of the newer technologies in solid waste management called Advanced Recycling. Tom succinctly outlines the scope of the problem with respect to dealing with plastic waste

But plastic waste is only one of the issues that we need to address moving forward. Reduction and substitution is also a critical component of building a future where plastics do not pose the threat that faces us today. Finally, there is the overarching issue of climate change and the question of whether Advanced recycling will improve carbon emissions associated with the disposal of plastics or make the problem worse.