Carol Smaldino's The Human Climate

Tony Gaskew is Professor of Criminal Justice and Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. He is a Critical Race theorist and teaches Critical Race Theory at the U. of Pittsburgh as well. He is currently a full Professor of Criminal Justice and Africana Studies, Director of the Criminal Justice Program, and Founding Director of the Prison Education Program at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford.

Tony has worked in and written of policing, of prison re-entry and education while in prison. His is a strikingly articulate and profound voice, and his experience covers work in the Middle East as well. His most recent title is: Stop Trying to Fix Policing: Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of Black Liberation. (2021)

Tony is a teacher of Black incarcerated students, and he sees education as one way to move from humiliation to humility. He is about claiming the right and experience of resistance of Black people in a systemically racist society in which white people, liberals included, benefit from white privilege.

Tony manages to be fierce while not being full of hatred; he apologizes for nothing but humility and love are also his remarkable attributes.

Tony does not flinch in his vision which can be controversial to white people, and no doubt to some Black people as well.

Mark Vonnegut, is a pediatrician, write and son of iconic author Kurt Vonnegut.

Mark is a pediatrician who cares deeply about the availability of medical care for all. He was at a commune he started in Canada when he suffered his first mental breakdown. He wrote The Eden Express about the beginnings of falling apart. Then he became a pediatrician, attending the only school that accepted him, Harvard.

He wrote Just Like a Person Without Mental Illness Only More So, about his successive mental breakdowns, and the book includes much about his personal life as well. 

His book The Heart of Caring is recent, and in it, Mark includes much of the wisdom he has gleaned from patients as well as stories of victory and defeat in his work. Always humanizing he speaks of journeys to Haiti and to Honduras, where he learned to value native authenticity. He cannot abide the current medical system which leaves out so many people in need.

In addition Mark probes some of his history with his father Kurt, along with the price of fame in his father’s life.

Mark is testament and gives testimony to the idea that one can be mentally ill and have a productive and passionate life.

Rather than seeing life as a closed affair based on competition, Niki Harre sees it as an open game based on rules evolving as we go along, 

And as Niki is inspired by psychological research and social activism, she shows how the game of life can be open ended and open to new and diverse players. Nikki’s more recent research addresses issues of sustainability, values and care for the common good. The question that drives her is how to engage people in creating a more sustainable and equitable society. She has been motivated to research and teach on the area of psychology and sustainability.

Niki Harre is professor of psychology at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand.

Rosalind Wiseman has for many years been inspired to to foster civil dialogue and work with communities to build strength, courage and purpose. Rosalind is the founder of Cultures of Dignity, the author of the curriculumOwning Up: Empowering Adolescents to Confront Social Cruelty, Bullying, and Injusticeand a multiple New York Times bestselling author including Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World.

Rosalind and her staff, including students, create curriculum for teachers and students including adopting practical methodologies for interpersonal and family relationships. She also concentrates on diversity and on having difficult dialogues in respectful styles.

Mary Gordon is founder and director of Roots of Empathy in Toronto, Canada. Empathy, she realizes is a foremost resource for both individuals and groups and nations, etc. The innovative theme of her program is the practice of teaching empathy to children in schools.

A baby is brought by a caretaker into a given classroom where the stages of development and the meaning of the baby’s cues are taught to the children. The class becomes attached and better equipped to read the baby’s cues, and a wide variety of children, from autistic to acting out to isolated refugees, are positively influenced by these experiences. Mary, is both full of empathy herself and understands what happens in a world where it is missing. Her conferences include world leaders and her admirers include the Dalai Lama.

Jennifer Thompson founded Healing Justice Project based on her experience with a failing criminal justice system. After being raped at knife point she was propelled to identify the wrong person, Ronald Cotton, who went on to spend 11 years in prison. With new DNA material, he was freed and after some further guilt and heartache, Jennifer met with Ron and they have since become friends.

She went on to found Healing Justice which proposes and enacts restorative justice, a healing rather than a punitive pursuit. They have services related to victims, exonerees and the families of all parties.

Jennifer has been to hell and back and she has found the capacity to enjoy her family and her commitment to Healing Justice. She herself is a lay therapist who is mightily aware of the systemic racism in our criminal justice system and how often there are instances of false confession and wrongful confession. Jennifer is an activist and a healer, and brings stories of inspiration from the field.

James Trainum is an ex-detective living and working in Washington, D.C. After realizing that he personally had imposed a false confession in his work, he left law enforcement and became a consultant helping families navigate the criminal justice system. Jim is an expert in the psychology and dynamics used in inducing and obtaining false confessions. He also teaches people within law enforcement agencies and is a strong advocate for the more respectful police treatment of criminal suspects.

Jim is the author of: How the Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation Room.

I first read of Ben Tumin in a New York Times profile in July 2021. Ben is a “historical satirist”. He is loath to be called a historian because for one he isn’t but also perhaps “real” (quotation mine) historians would take umbrage. However he reads a lot and knows a lot and seems to be always learning, even to the extent of following facts that might be controversial at least for writers of typical textbooks. 

Ben is the founder of Skipped History, a movement/blog—some entries are for members only-- that uses satire and theater to promote learning about times in history that have been skipped over. Among other topics he is quite expert on various US invasions and invasions across the globe.

Larry Siems’s career in human rights and free expression advocacy includes 17 years directing Freedom to Write and International Programs for PEN, the international writers’ organization. At PEN, he designed and coordinated global campaigns to protect writers and defend the right of all to freedom of expression, and supported the efforts of writers in more than a dozen countries to defend journalism, literature, and free speech. 

Larry has been an impassioned critic of US military torture and collaborated with the ACLU to write The Torture Report. And his editing of Guantanamo Diary allows for the full benefit of Mohamedou Slahi’s spirit and humor, his friendships with peers and with guards. As such the reader does not easily become overwhelmed by the acts of torture described, only because they do not eliminate the other parts of Mohamedou’s human experience. 

Wolfgang Fasser, born and raised in the countryside outside of Zurich, was always most at home in nature and in looking for God. He became blind at 18 and went on to study music therapy and physical therapy. He became a healer and receiver of healing in Lesotho, a small country in Africa, where he continues to travel a few months per year. Wolfgang worked for many years at Romena, a spiritual retreat center in the Casentino, a rustic area of Tuscany in Italy. In addition to leading groups for week long silent working meditations and therapeutic groups, he has taken groups of sighted people through the forest in the dark. Recently Wolfgang has returned to Switzerland where at 66, he can receive more care for himself, and where he continues to practice his therapies. In addition he plays the saxophone in an ongoing Klezmer band started in Italy. We touch on the phenomenon of putting people on pedestals, the fact that he is often seen as “amazing”, something he protests.

In this episode Carol discusses normalizing the angst about climate change as an ingredient for less loneliness and greater effectiveness, with Steffi Bednarek, climate and trauma psychologist practicing in Brighton, England. Steffi Bednarek was born in Germany, and now lives and practices in Brighton, England. She works as a clinician privately and also in conjunction with the Climate Psychology Alliance. She is part of a movement that includes climate cafes, one that encourages the normalcy of extreme existential angst about climate change, change that has already begun and is threatening to have increasing horrific effects. The experience of not being shunned or judged, helps a person to metabolize and share anxieties in such a way as to become more resilient in actual activism. And this can help a person feel less odd and less lonely. A paper that is quite profound and provocative is Climate Change, Fragmentation and Collective Trauma: Bridging the Divided Stories we Live by. (https://futuref.org/climate_change_fragmentation_and_collective_trauma_en)

Steven Drizen is a lawyer and professor of law at Northwestern University. He is the founder and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions in Chicago. He is an expert on the dynamics of false confessions and in is work is a prominent advocate of innocent suspects as well as exonerees that often exit prison sentences with a plethora of life problems and traumas. Steven Drizin appears in his role of attorney in the documentary “West of Memphis” about the West Memphis 3, a trial that wound up being championed by Hollywood celebrities such as Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder. He is featured in the Netflix documentary “Making a Murder” that includes the stunning and disturbingly oppressive questioning of a then 16-year-old, Brendan Dassey. Steve Drizin and his colleague (and co-director of Center on Wrongful Convictions) Laura Nirider, has a podcast called Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions, that explores fascinating, upsetting, and at times positive and inspiring stories.

Sue Erikson Bloland, is author In the Shadow of Fame: A Memoir by the Daughter of Erik Erikson. The book is about her role, her pain and and eventual evolution as the daughter of psychologist and psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, and his wife Joan. It is about the dynamics of fame and the underlying fragility in famous people, both in her own family and in our culture.

For those of us who have revered her father to the extent of putting him on a pedestal, the book is both disturbing and liberating as Sue helps the reader see what we all sacrifice when aiming to be on a pedestal ourselves, or when supporting the fragile ego of the underbelly of fame in others.

The book describes Sue’s trials, including the family’s secret experience of the birth and institutionalization of a child with Downs Syndrome, sharing details which some friends and colleagues considered a betrayal of her parents’ reputation.

The memoir also reveals aspects of health, including her own as Sue blossoms authentically through social work school and into becoming a psychoanalyst.

For the Youtube video conversation go to: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS2i0PkG5rjjaOSrRzUotRQ

Evelin Lindner is the founder and Linda Hartling the director of the international Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies group. 

They unite professionals and seekers who are doing research and work in activism to deal with social, psychological and economic efforts at healing global inequalities and urgencies. They have yearly conferences in New York and yearly trips to diverse places in the world where there are meetings and studying of the culture.

Evelin is from Germany and has written a plethora of books regarding inequality. She is a global citizen who lives with diverse citizens who offer her both hospitality and passionate interest. Linda is a psychologist whose specialty has been in humiliation studies. 

Linda and Evelin are fascinating, generous, kind and brilliant. They combine to create programs and to keep communication open between members and new members. They have a publishing company, World Dignity Press, which also published The Human Climate.

The organization has resisted efforts to accept nominations for a Nobel Prize because the do not want to be obligated to commercialize their efforts.

Nicholas Casey is the New York Times Bureau Chief of the New York Times in Madrid, Spain; he also covers Portugal and Morocco. Nick is the author of a captivating and poignant New York Times Magazine piece, “My Father Vanished When I was Seven; The Mystery Made me who I am”, in June 2021. Our conversation probes some of the fascinating aspects of Nick’s life that was in some ways been dominated by the charismatic and confusing role of his father. His stability was in ways salvaged by his mother. We discuss some of what has formed Nick until now, and some of the details are jaw dropping. We also discuss the role of race which for Nick is different than what we might expect, given our times.