To Our Listeners:
Welcome to If You Love This Planet Radio. We will occasionally feature new programs including my recent lectures and proceedings of conferences. Please enjoy our archive of nearly 200 interviews. The complete catalog of programs available for listening and downloading is on the Archives page. A book of 25 of my interviews called Loving This Planet may interest you. I am now concentrating on other new initiatives of The Helen Caldicott Foundation , including a two-day international symposium on the risk of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, to be held February 28-March 1 2015 at the New York Academy of Medicine. Watch this space for registration details on this important conference, The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, which will be open to the public. And be sure to visit nuclearfreeplanet.org for news, reports and other resources related to the work of my foundation.
Helen Caldicott, M.D.
June 15th, 2012
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David Bradbury
This week, we play a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s July 2011 interview with David Bradbury, described as “one of Australia’s best known and most successful documentary filmmakers” on his website. Bradbury’s 2007 film Hard Rain addresses the horrifying realities of nuclear power, and gets beneath the hype propounded by the nuclear industry. Watch a 25-minute clip here. Bradbury’s films have been shown widely in Australia and overseas, and he has won numerous prizes including five AFI awards and two Academy Award nominations (for Frontline, which profiled war cameraman Neil Davis, and for Chile: Hasta Cuando?, on the brutal military dictatorship of General Read the rest of this entry »
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June 8th, 2012
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Kristen Iversen
This week’s guest is Kristen Iversen, author of the new book, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, published this month by Crown Books in the U.S. and Random House in the U.K. Read the press release about the book. Watch the book trailer here. Iversen is Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The University of Memphis, and also Editor-in-Chief of The Pinch, an award-winning literary journal. She grew up in Arvada, Colorado near the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, and currently lives in Memphis. As background, read Iversen’s March 10 New York Times opinion piece, Fallout. Also read Naomi Wolf’s 2012 article From Rocky Flats to Fukushima: This Nuclear Folly and The day Denver was nearly lost. During the Read the rest of this entry »
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June 1st, 2012
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Arjun Makhijani
In this program, Dr. Caldicott interviews plasma physicist and electrical engineer Dr. Arjun Makhijani is the President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). A recognized authority on energy issues, Dr. Makhijani is the author and co-author of numerous reports and books on energy and environment related issues. He was the principal author of the first study of the energy efficiency potential of the US economy published in 1971. Recently, he co-authored Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (2007). Dr. Caldicott and Dr. Makhijani primarily address the hazards of the proposed thorium reactors, which nuclear scientists are now advocating. They also touch on how Read the rest of this entry »
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May 25th, 2012
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Kay Drey (Jo Mannies)
Dr. Caldicott interviews Kay Drey, a board member of Beyond Nuclear. Drey is also a board member of the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center. For nearly 40 years, she has researched the dangers of nuclear energy and nuclear waste, and advocated for the closure of nuclear plants and other uranium facilities. She was quite active in civil rights work before focusing on nuclear power. Drey and Dr. Caldicott discuss the widespread public health implications of so-called routine radiactive releases from nuclear power stations, in which many hazardous gases and fission byproducts are emitted during daily operations. Drey refers to a Beyond Nuclear pamphlet, Dirty, Dangerous and Expensive: The Truth is In About Nuclear Power. For more information, read Dr. Caldicott’s book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer which includes information from Drey’s studies.
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May 18th, 2012
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Arnie Gundersen
This week Dr Caldicott welcomes back nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen for yet another update on the stricken Fukushima plant which suffered multiple nuclear meltdowns in 2011. As background, read the May 5 article Thousands March as Japan Shuts off Nuclear Power, for Now: Japan goes nuke free for first time in four decades amidst pressure to restart and the April 7 article Fukushima Reactor 4: Life On Planet Earth in the Balance. They discuss the vulnerabilities of each of the four damaged reactors including the worldwide implications if much more radiation is released, and the psychological effects on the Japanese of the disaster. They also talk about California’s two nuclear power plants, both right on Read the rest of this entry »
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May 11th, 2012
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Broinowski
In this episode, Dr. Caldicott has another chat with academic and author, Richard Broinowski, adjunct professor in media and communications at the University of Sydney. Prof. Broinowski, Dr. Caldicott’s brother, is also a retired Australian diplomat who was posted in Tokyo, Rangoon and Tehran, and served as Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Mexico, the Central American Republics and Cuba. Broinowski is the author of three books, with a fourth due to appear this October, on the nuclear disaster at Fukushima and its implications for Japan and the international nuclear industry. Broinowski and Dr. Caldicott discuss the history of U.S. involvement with Read the rest of this entry »
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May 4th, 2012
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Gusterson
In this fascinating conversation, respected anthropologist, author and lecturer Professor Hugh Gusterson from George Mason University delves into the psychology of nuclear weapons scientists, and the culture of war. Prof. Gusterson has studied those who design nuclear weapons and those who fight to abolish them in field research conducted in the U.S. and Russia. Read five articles by Prof. Gusterson for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: An education in occupation (which Dr. Caldicott mentions on the program), The new abolitionists, Weapons labs and the inconvenient truth, The lessons of Fukushima, and The costs of war. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s earlier conversation with Prof. Gusterson.
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April 27th, 2012
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Seymour Hersh
This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s January 2012 conversations with two noted journalists: Seymour Hersh, an American Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative writer based in Wahington D.C., and Australian documentary filmmaker John Pilger, two-time recipient of Britain’s Journalist of the Year award. In the first segment, Dr. Caldicott asks Hersh about his November 2011 article Iran and the I.A.E.A. They discuss the lack of evidence of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Other topics include how the U.S. government manipulates information to justify its belligerent stance toward Iran, and why the U.S. media never questions the Read the rest of this entry »
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April 20th, 2012
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Prof. Doug Brugge
This week’s guest is Doug Brugge, a professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Navajo People and Uranium Mining and the associate editor of the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. His research includes studies of asthma; the impact of culture and language on health communication; the impact of environmental tobacco smoke; traffic pollution and cardiovascular disease; and the impact of uranium mining and processing on Native Americans. Prof. Brugge and Dr. Caldicott cover how they both started their Read the rest of this entry »
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April 13th, 2012
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Glenn Carroll
This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews long-time antinuclear activist Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South, headquartered in Atlanta, GA. Carroll has been committed to grass roots direct action for 25 years, ever since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in Russia inspired her to join efforts to stop Vogtle 1 and 2, a nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia. With a small group of volunteers, Carroll led Nuclear Watch South to shut the research reactor on the Georgia Tech campus in downtown Atlanta where the Olympic athletes were to be housed. She is the 2008 recipient of the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehmann award. In this conversation with Dr. Caldicott, Carroll explains the danger posed by the third and fourth reactors approved for construction at the Read the rest of this entry »
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April 6th, 2012
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Mary Olson
This week’s guest is biologist Mary Olson, Southeast Regional Coordinator with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) in the U.S., an organization that provides information to citizens concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues. In her 21st year of this work, Olson has come to focus on the disproportionate impact that exposure to ionizing radiation has on women and children. Her recent paper entitled “Atomic Radiation is More Harmful to Women” reveals information the National Academy of Sciences BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) VII report includes, but does not discuss.
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March 30th, 2012
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Natalie Wasley (indymedia)
This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s 2010 interview with Australian Natalie Wasley, coordinator of the Beyond Nuclear Initiative based at the Arid Lands Environment Center in the Northern Territory of Australia. Wasley has travelled extensively over the last 10 years, meeting with communities in Australia and overseas who have been impacted by every stage of the nuclear chain, from uranium exploration and mining through to nuclear weapons. The current focus of the Beyond Nuclear Initiative project is working with Aboriginal Traditional Owners who are opposed to the Australian federal government plan to force a radioactive waste dump on their traditional country. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 23rd, 2012
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Prof. Wittner
This week’s guest is Professor Lawrence S. Wittner, an award-winning American historian, writer, and activist for peace and social justice. Prof. Wittner is the author or editor of a dozen books including Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement and his recently published autobiography Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual. He is also the writer of over 250 published articles and book reviews, mostly on issues of peace, war, and international relations. Prof. Wittner is a former editor of Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research. Currently, he is a national board member of Peace Action and the executive secretary of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. Read Prof. Wittner’s March 2012 Huffington Post article How I Happened to Write My Memoirs. Check out other articles by Wittner on huffingtonpost.com.
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March 15th, 2012
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Dr. Flowers
This week’s guest is Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician and mother of 3 teenagers from Baltimore, M.D. Dr. Flowers left medical practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for single-payer health care. She served as Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the board of Healthcare-Now. Dr. Flowers has organized and participated in protests for health care, peace and economic justice which have included arrests for non-violent resistance. She was an initial organizer of the October 2011 Occupy Washington, DC. protests. She is co-director of It’s Our Economy. Also be sure to watch Dr. Flowers’s interview on Bill Moyers’s program, Medicare for All.
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March 9th, 2012
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Broinowski
In this episode, Dr. Caldicott talks with academic and author, Richard Broinowski, adjunct professor in media and communications at the University of Sydney. Broinowski, Dr. Caldicott’s brother, is also a retired Australian diplomat. After junior postings in Tokyo, Rangoon and Tehran, he was deputy chief of mission in the Australian Embassy, Manila. He has held positions as the Australian Ambassador to Vietnam (1983-85), Republic of Korea (1987-89), and to Mexico, the Central American Republics and Cuba (1994-97). Broinowski is the author of three books, with a fourth due to appear this October, on the nuclear disaster at Fukushima and its implications for Japan and the international nuclear industry. In this timely discussion, Broinowski describes his travels throughout the regions of Japan most affected by the Fukushima disaster as well as Tokyo, and how the Japanese people and government are responding to the nuclear crisis in different ways. He also touches on the U.S. relationship with North Korea toward the end of the hour.
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March 2nd, 2012
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Michel Chossudovsky
Dr. Caldicott interviews Michel Chossudovsky, the Founder and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization in Montreal, and Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. Professor Chossudovsky’s new e-book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, acted as an adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant for several international organizations. In this discussion,
Prof. Chossudovsky gives his perspective on America’s war on Libya, its willingness to use nuclear weapons preemptively on various nations, its aggressive stance toward Iran which could lead to another war in the name of oil, and how multiple Mideast wars could ignite a larger nuclear conflict involving major world powers. Read Prof. Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham’s March 2012 article War Plan Iran: Dispelling the Lies, Telling the Truth about Western Aggression in the Persian Gulf. Also read his December 2011 article Preparing to Attack Iran with Nuclear Weapons: “No Option can be taken off the Table.”. Don’t miss hearing this vitally important program.
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February 24th, 2012
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Ronnie Cummins
This week, Dr. Caldicott talks with Ronnie Cummins, founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), a non-profit, U.S. based network of 850,000 consumers, dedicated to safeguarding organic standards and promoting a sustainable system of agriculture and commerce. Cummins has been active as a writer and activist since the 1960s, with extensive experience in human rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear, consumer, environmental, and sustainable agriculture campaigns. As background, read Cummins’s January 27 article The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
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February 17th, 2012
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Michael Pollok
This week’s guest is Michael Pollok, an experienced criminal defense litigator who focuses his practice on matters in federal and New York state courts, as well as regulatory investigations and hearings. Pollok is one of a new movement of activists who are focused on reform, not revolution. He has recently been affiliated with two non-profit groups: Reasonable Solutions OWS Philadelphia, and the 99% Declaration Working Group, which have announced a National General Assembly to convene in Philadelphia the week of July 4, 2012. The 99% Declaration Working group invites participation from anyone interested in removing money from U.S. politics. The 99% Declaration is document which originated from one of the working groups of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City in 2011.
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February 11th, 2012
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February 3rd, 2012
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Father Mooney
In this episode, Dr. Caldicott interviews Father Laurence Mooney, an Augustinian priest based in Melbourne, Australia. For the past five years, Father Mooney has worked in the boutique Augustinian seminary in Brookvale, Sydney, attending to the academic, vocational, spiritual, communal and language needs of young men aspiring to be Augustinian priests in Vietnam or Australia. He has lectured on spirituality in various countries, and worked with religious groups from around the world on social justice issues. Longer show description to follow.
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January 27th, 2012
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Kono Taro
This week, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Kono Taro for an in-depth look at Japan’s reaction to the Fukushima meltdown. Mr. Kono is Director General of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party’s International bureau and a fifth-term Member of the House of Representatives in Japan. He is especially critical of the government’s pursuit of a so-called ‘closed’ nuclear fuel cycle whereby plutonium is extracted from spent fuel by nuclear waste re-processing within Japan. Mr. Kono also opposes the building of new nuclear power plants as the government has not dealt with the nuclear-waste issue. Some of the topics Dr. Caldicott and Mr. Kono discuss are the Read the rest of this entry »
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January 20th, 2012
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Seymour Hersh
This week Dr. Caldicott talks to two noted journalists: Seymour Hersh, an American Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative writer based in Wahington D.C., and Australian documentary filmmaker John Pilger, two-time recipient of Britain’s Journalist of the Year award. In the first segment, Dr. Caldicott asks Hersh about his November 2011 article Iran and the I.A.E.A. They discuss the lack of evidence of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Other topics include how the U.S. government manipulates information to justify its belligerent stance toward Iran, and why the U.S. media never questions the Read the rest of this entry »
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January 13th, 2012
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Dr. Jim Green
Dr. Caldicott interviews Dr. Jim Green this week. Dr. Green is the national nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth Australia, a federation of independent local groups working for a socially equitable and environmentally sustainable future. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with the history of the Lucas Heights nuclear plant in Sydney, and the debate over the replacement of its nuclear research reactor. Dr. Green is also a member of the Energy Science Coalition. Among the topics Dr. Green and
Dr. Caldicott discuss are how Australia contributes to the U.S. nuclear-war fighting organization, how Australia having 40% of the world’s richest uranium contributes to nuclear weapons proliferation and Read the rest of this entry »
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January 6th, 2012
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Dr. Reese Halter
In this episode of If You Love This Planet, Dr. Caldicott talks with conservation biologist Dr. Reese Halter.
Dr. Reese, as he is known, is a distinguished biologist who describes himself as an “Earth Doctor.” For more that 20 years, Dr. Reese has studied nature in both hemispheres. He currently teaches at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California. Dr. Reese founded Global Forest Science, a conservation institute which educates children about ecology. He is also a broadcaster and author of seven books Read the rest of this entry »
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December 30th, 2011
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Christine Milne (ABC)
Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne talks with Dr. Caldicott about her recent involvement in climate talks in Durban. In the interview, Sen. Milne explains why the Durban summit was a failure in terms of any meaningful agreement for the industrial world to cut emissions, and which countries and industries manipulated the outcomes of the conference. Relevant to the conversation are the articles Australian Green Party Leader: U.S. Climate Denial Machine “Being Directed Straight into Australia” Via Murdoch’s News Corp Read the rest of this entry »
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December 23rd, 2011
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December 16th, 2011
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Dr. Caldicott
This episode feature a lecture by Dr. Caldicott at the retirement community of Kendal in Hanover, New Hampshire, on March 31, 2011. The program was recorded just two weeks after the Fukushima disaster. Early in her presentation, Dr. Caldicott mentions the book Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. She mentions her debate with English writer George Monbiot a month after Fukushima. Read Dr. Caldicott’s article How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation. She also refers to her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. Some of the topics Dr. Caldicott covers in her Read the rest of this entry »
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December 9th, 2011
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Bill McKibben
This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s October 2010 interview with Bill McKibben about global warming, alternative energy and the growing need for more localized economies. Author, educator and environmentalist McKibben was described in 2010 by the Boston Globe as “probably the nation’s leading environmentalist” and Time magazine described him as “the world’s best green journalist. McKibben’s books include Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet, Deep Economy, Fight Global Warming Now and The End of Nature. In 2009 he led the organization of 350.org, which Read the rest of this entry »
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December 2nd, 2011
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Mousseau
This week’s guest is Dr. Timothy Mousseau, a professor
of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina. For the past 12 years, Dr. Mousseau and his colleagues have been studying the ecological impacts of the Chernobyl disaster on wild plant and animal populations living in the so-called zone of alienation surrounding the destroyed nuclear power plant. Dr. Mousseau is considered one of the leading world authorities concerning the impacts of low-dose radiation on natural ecosystems. For background, check out Read the rest of this entry »
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November 25th, 2011
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Steve Omohundro
Dr Caldicott interviews Steve Omohundro, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. From 1986 to 1988, Omohundro was an Assistant Professor of Computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and cofounder of the Center for Complex Systems Research. He is now President of Self-Aware Systems in Palo Alto, California. Omohundro has been an advisor to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence since April 2007, and has had a wide-ranging career as a scientist, professor, author, Read the rest of this entry »
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November 18th, 2011
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Robert Koehler
This week on If You Love This Planet, Dr. Caldicott talks with journalist Robert Koehler, who writes a nationally syndicated column for the Chicago Tribune. As the Bush administration unleashed its war on terror, Koehler became increasingly focused on current events, and refers to the column as “part political brawl, part secular prayer.” Koehler has won awards for his writing from the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (published by Xenos Press), a collection of his essays. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 11th, 2011
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