 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive That's what I have in mind Of the year it is not unusual to look back over the previous year With an eye for what might have been missed what needs to be reconsidered as we discussed in episode 16 We have discovered that one hour a week is often not enough to discuss everything We'd like to discuss about a given topic We have the urge to explore some issues further we revisited several issues in that episode As we have continued to produce our show we have continued to wish we could discuss more on many of the topics We've raised so as we did with episode 16 in this episode We have decided to revisit a few topics last summer We went out to the center of the universe, which is the interpretive center at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria and how did the moon with science educator and sometimes singer songwriter Don Enright? We looked at how science education and culture Interacted this experience sparked a memory of our own childhood science Education's and specifically the ways in which creative expression and scientific exploration are often stifled in kids Scientific knowledge is often constructed as something any curious person can pursue as a practical matter However scientific knowledge is often contingent upon status in which those afforded the status of quote scientist close quote Make assertions that are regarded as quote scientific facts close quote History has proven that such assertions can become nonsense in a hurry as paradigm shifts and new discoveries Change scientific thinking on a regular basis why people often forget this is a matter of culture not science On Halloween we aired a satirical radio play that we produced we reflect upon why radio plays are no longer a popular form of radio And why it might be a good thing to bring them back Along the way we explore exactly what radio and television offer and what they lack as media During our discussion about sex toys We left out a discussion about monogamy the rather obvious omission for a married couple This is especially true of us because we often dismiss or reject the moral language on which many of the pro monogamy arguments aren't Rounded in a pragmatic case we made for monogamy Can a couple discuss this without arguing? Well, no But as it turns out the argument need not last that long Last week we touched upon why having a voice is an important aspect of cultural production and how much is lost When diversity of voices is contained We explore this further as we look at how language is a repository for knowledge What exactly do we lose when a language becomes extinct? Today, we look back on four issues that we raised during previous episodes About which we had to say just a few more words science education radio plays monogamy and the lost languages This week's episode is entirely yet another thing Back in the summer on july 18th In episode 11 that we called howl at the moon we did some reflecting upon science education And one of the things that we left unsaid during that time was a discussion about our own science education in particular How things have changed in our lifetime We're going to start out kind of talking about Well something that Happened to carl when he was in elementary school that ended up with a rather satisfactory ending in his adulthood But from there we're going to talk a little bit about paradigm shifts Tell us about science education carl Okay, I was in fifth grade and we went on a field trip to the local university which will remain nameless And we all set around to listen to an astro professor talk about predictably astro for about an hour And when he opened it for questions, I asked him about water on the moon He told me unequivocally that there was none Being young precocious and imaginative. I said well, there could be he said no there couldn't I said well, there might be in the rocks or somewhere And he assured me that I had no hope of being gratified Okay, this was bad enough for reasons that I'm going to make more explicit later But my fifth grade teacher whose name was ann wooten Had the audacity to rat me out to my parents about the incident and I got in real trouble for arguing with a university professor About his specialty. Who did I think I was anyway, naughty naughty You precocious little child you yes. Yes. What did I think I was doing? Well, what I thought I was doing was trying to learn trying to be imaginative trying to explore other possibilities Thinking that this might have something to do with science But apparently ann wooten's conception or this profs or both Was that science was something conducted only by people who'd been assigned the social role It was completely authoritative not iterative. Yeah, how dare a nine-year-old think about this stuff. Exactly Well, 20 years past as often does in these instructive tales And The americans set up a little something called clementine in its space Clementine was equipped with radar clementine flew by the moon particularly close to the south pole thereof clementine scanned the moon with radar and discovered from the patterns that returned that there might well be ice on the moon in the southern polar region This was in 1996 The scientists at the time Postulated that about three to four billion years ago a comet might have crashed into the moon And water droplets on its tail were left in the bottom of a crater somewhere And the temperature is close to absolute zero Wow, it's that cold there? Yeah. Oh, I had no idea It's not all the way to absolute zero, but put it this way it's closer to absolute zero than it is to zero Celsius The possibility of ice on the moon raised a lot of speculation Not only among scientists, but among the public And was a topic of some Of some interest for some time because it had previously been asserted by people like the astro professor who Annoyed me as a child that there could not possibly be any because blah blah scientific explanation blah blah scientific explanation Yeah, but we won't go ahead Naturally, this was not going to go over without a fight Some astronomers at Cornell's aracebo observatory in Puerto Rico what the Cornell observatory is doing in Puerto Rico You may only speculate Assured everyone that there couldn't possibly be Any ice on the moon this in 1997 astronomy prof. Donald Campbell from Cornell I'm very careful to get the names right on this said quote We don't see anything that suggests ice close quote citing a more precise study supposedly that they had done in 1992 From the Puerto Rican observatory. He got away with that for about another year When the Americans set up lunar prospector, which was another of their low-cost unmanned Robot ship. Yes. Yeah Lunar prospector used science in the form of the neutron spectrometer It was also equipped with a gamma ray spectrometer. And I think what was the other one? I found it cool an alpha. I believe something involving alpha. You can tell that I um I was a pure math major An alpha particle spectrometer Okay, and did other experiments with those scientific experiments It was the neutron spectrometer That confirmed the existence. Well, I said confirmed Raise the probability Of ice on the moon to the point where certainty was very close indeed A quote here from dr. Allen binder who was the lunar prospector principal investigator From the lunar research institute quote. We are elated at the performance of the spacecraft and its scientific payload As well as the resulting quality and magnitude of information about the moon that we already have been able to extract close quote This is 1998 Probability of water ice at the north pole was also Introduced with a high probability by the lunar prospector experiments So there is A very high probability That your fifth grade is postulation that there could be water on the moon Was correct and you haven't heard the best part yet. Okay. The best part is that Some of gene shoemaker's ashes. That's ashes were on board Lunar prospector Shoemaker was the shoemaker of shoemaker levy fame He died between the time of the shoemaker levy discovery and the time the lunar prospector was launched So as a symbolic gesture, nasa put some of his and with the consent of his widow Obviously put some of his ashes aboard the craft But the best part is that shoemaker was famous because of shoemaker levy The levy of shoemaker levy fame was an amateur an amateur astronomer Not somebody with the approved label of Official real a priori pre-existing scientist Or science educator or science class what you're talking about you're talking about a priori, but that's not really what we're talking about We're talking about somebody who Is in the class called scientists. That's right. Someone has been assigned the social role of scientist Well, I don't like the word assigned Because that suggests that they didn't choose it at all It's not like an assigned role In the same way that being a woman or being black is an assigned role I mean people go to school To become scientists But nonetheless to suggest that science should be limited to only those people who have gone through the ritual of university training Is in fact Antifetical to what science ought to be about. Okay, you've got me on the terminology One point is this use the term paradigm shift earlier That term was originated by thomas kuhn in the structure of scientific revolutions published in 1962 before i was even born And it was his dissertation which just kills me man talk about getting it right the first time This professor should have read this the the guy that I argued with when I was in fifth grade And my fifth grade teacher should have read this too before they shot off their mouth about something that they clearly Do nothing about and I did Even though I didn't know how I knew I knew Moreover the more important point I think here is that scientists argue among themselves all the time And that's something that scientists will never they look at as anomalous never mind that it's always happening Oh, no, that that's not a real thing The real thing is we agree on everything and although we didn't have it right before and every previous time in history We've got it right now And kuhn as you might imagine had some thoughts on the subject Yeah, in fact, that's not what science does Science is a discipline in which people argue all the time and it is out of those arguments That new ideas are formed new discoveries are made new constructions are created and so forth As it turned out the water on the moon was as I suggested Quote in the rocks close quote not in the big hawk and rocks that they brought back on the Apollo missions Because they weren't in the right place We are but more than it was in itty bitty. It was mixed in with the itty bitty rocks They call the surface of the moon is actually dust and or itty bitty rocks They're not being that great a distinction between them the technical term for this substance is regolith and in fact the water ice that exists Is probably not in the form of ice sheets. They were talking about playing hockey on the moon I think that one's going to have to um take it back see it. Although I could be wrong. I hope I am If you have a good zamboni, you could take Yeah, clean all the the rocks and just leave the ice. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah But the ice is quite probably in the form of itty bitty particles of Water ice mixed in with itty bitty rocks and or dust called the regolith So I was right about it being in the rocks. Although not in the way I intended And I should receive extra credit for this. Have you heard um the educational theory that when you're nine You are at your genius Uh, no There is a theory out there that the point at which you are the smartest in your life That is capable of learning the most capable of processing the most information capable of absorbing Through all your senses everything you can learn is age nine that that's the Acme of when you can learn That up to that point I have no idea whether this theory is true And I don't know how you would prove this but up until you're nine years old There's a lot of developmental stuff in the way and after nine. There's a lot of social Um static in the way, but at nine years old you are capable of knowing at all All that you could ever know it wasn't so much that my imagination was that good I mean, I'm sure a number of people sci-fi writers and others have imagined all sorts of things about the moon Including the ice part and they've imagined that more than once I took a look at the literature and it's shown up again and again It's that The prof in question and my fifth grade teacher whose name was ann wooten But you're not bitter. No just vindictive. Yes Just assured me that everything had already been thought of that was just inconceivable Well, I think what was inconceivable to her was that a fifth grader could think of anything else It wouldn't have bothered her of another scientist to debate at him If you had gone and watched a debate between a scientist who said there was water on the moon And a scientist who said there wasn't that would be perfectly legitimate Then she was a mediocre fifth grade teacher. Yeah, you're listening to first person plural on cfu v Victoria's public radio 101.9 fm 104.3 cable And on the internet cfu v dot uvig dot ca Giving sociology an edge On halloween, we uh took the opportunity to do A radio play that we put together that was uh Well, shall we say allegorical? Let's say satirical Say for that way. Yes, it's safe for that way I kind of wanted we didn't really do any kind of discussion That week because we spent the time with the radio play So in this episode we wanted to take time to kind of Reflect upon doing the radio play do a little bit of discussion It was fun doing the radio play. Yeah, I enjoyed it Radio play is kind of a lost art, isn't it? Well, I wouldn't say lost I'd say deliberately jettisoned Yeah, I hear it more in canada than I did in the states. You hear it on cbc all the time Well, not all the time, but almost daily. Yeah, I would say most days you can pick up a radio play of some sort It was very shocking to me. I remember when we first came to canada And we were picking up a cbc out of vancouver on our way from Ossoyous to vancouver after we had come into canada and I was quite shocked to hear both Reading of a short story There was a margaret atwood short story And then about a half an hour later There was a segment of a radio play And I hadn't heard that on radio in years other than an old time radio show That used to come on on sunday nights in gainsville in gainsville florida Yeah, there's a huge underground following of old-time radio, which is what this crowd calls radio plays and little radio sitcoms and pre-television radio stuff or Whatever you would call it from the 30s to I guess the 50s maybe even into the early 60s And this was when radio did what television does now they do a half hour sitcom an hour-long drama Or made what would be a made-for-tv movie now a made-for radio Play a radio drama in junior high school. I took Drama class in seventh grade. I guess this was seventh grade would be like 1968 69 for me And one of our assignments was to Create and record a radio play They still come up from time to time cbs radio mystery theater Which aired from the mid 70s to the early 80s was the first retro attempt at this in the states So why do you think it died? You think television killed it television? Pure and simple. Yeah It's not one that requires a lot of analysis Because television was a huge humongous ginormous hit radio was left without a role to fill People stopped listening to the radio for this purpose. They stopped using the radio for this purpose in the mid 50s We don't like top 40 radio now at least I can't meet anyone who will admit to liking it The top 40 radio probably saved radio I've read an apocryphal story about the guys who started the first top 40 station they were simply radio execs Who were having their business stolen out from under them by television and they didn't know what to do next They were sitting around getting drunk And they noticed that people were continuing to pop quarters into the jukebox Or dimes at that time probably they were listening to the same songs over and over and over In defiance of what quote reason close quote would have suggested And these execs said to each other, okay lesson learned We're going to play the same songs that are run over We'll just pick the most popular songs throwing some ads and voice breaks here And they're maybe the news at the top of the hour But the rest of the time we're going to play like a three or four hour cycle All the same songs over and over That's what the people want and it worked It became more of a teenager's medium at this point Yeah, I was going to say there's an age thing going on the decision was Kids wanted to be out of the house. I think cars are another part of this. I think radios and cars made this more possible to The teenager in the 50s Had a car for the first time Teenagers didn't have cars before the 50s And they wanted music playing while they were in their cars Running around American graffiti got the cruising thing right driving around other cars listening to the radio That's what happened In the 50s and 60s. I'm actually old enough to remember this I can remember hanging out with my cousins in the early 60s who were teenagers. I wasn't But when I would go and visit my cousins What we would do what the coolest thing to do was to Run around in the car. We went to drive-in restaurants And got your malt and your burger And then we went to the drive-in theater and saw the movie And then afterwards we ran around going up and down the street playing the same radio station That everybody else in town was playing I mean you could hear the music and stereo because every car went up and down the street Was playing the same damn song. I don't think that qualifies as stereo, but I take your point. Yeah Before the 1950s Radio was essentially the way it was depicted in the tv series remember when that spelled w e and n If you were privileged to have cable television a few years ago, you might have caught a couple episodes It was on for about four seasons But it was a series about a station in penceburg during the second world war and it was 40s people in hats Reading radio plays live With somebody playing. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was live With somebody playing electric organ in the background who probably doubled as a church organist And there were sound effects too that they were doing in the background like they would have Sticks and if somebody was doing steps they would click the stick on a on a Hollow kind of thing that would make that and if it was a murder mystery that actually shoot one of the actors Yeah But it would actually shoot a gun though I'm pretty sure it had blanks and they didn't aim it in any actor. Yeah, I'm pretty sure But this image of radio turned upside down in the 50s and the reason was quite simple Television took the wind out of their sails and they had to come up with something else fast Okay, so FM radio shows up right in the 70s and it pretty well starts killing aim radio But talk radio comes back in the 80s, but it doesn't come back as Drama it comes back. Well, I don't know. Do you count helmer Howard stern as drama? No, I don't think that's the same thing at all. He's not doing radio plays He may be reading from script a non-trivial part of the time But the idea is that there is no fourth wall one is not supposed to understand that it's a play right So do you think that there's a chance it'll come back? It's conceivable I wouldn't rule it out at this point People thought aim radio the people thought aim radio was dead and it came back because someone figured out that you really don't lose that much Using aim radio versus FM if you're just airing spoken word Internet radio those full of old-time radio. I mean, it seems to be pretty popular. It's enormously popular. Internet radio has A lot of potential My guess is that it's going to realize maybe 1% of this given recent developments that we complained about in Several past episodes But one of the things that it has done is provide a home for all the old-time radio buffs Who can't live unless they get somebody else to listen to the episodes? They have archived a Vibram again molly They're all over the place. It's one of the many creative uses creative and quotations for internet radio that has come up So make the case for radio plays coming back. Why would that be a cool thing to have happen? Because frankly, I don't see A lot of things on radio that are better than that right now Right now 99% of radio decide an arbitrary objective percentage is music and ads And maybe I'm turning into an old man, but I'm sick and tired of it I'll give you another reason Acting on television is contingent upon pretty faces There is a lot of Mythos around who gets to act and who doesn't get to act that has to do when the status Of how you look. I mean as a fat woman I see this a lot that there are lots of good actresses Who I mean, I've been joking about that new movie with jack Nicholson in it and kathy bates Jack Nicholson has finally gotten old enough to have an overweight love interest You can't have a love interest. It's overweight if you're a young man And there's all this baggage cultural baggage that goes With the visual arts that can just get thrown out the window when you're just using voice and your imagination The fact of the matter is there are some very very good actors out there Who don't get a chance to do what they could be doing With their craft Because they don't look the part I can't Believe that i'm the only person who wishes that what one could pick up on the radio were simply a better quality And I can't define quality And that doesn't shake my opinion. I'd still like to hear something better on 99% of the radio stations in the world Yeah, and I think it might even could be better than some of what gets on television It's not just that it's bad on the radio It is that there is a lot of pap on the on the television too So, yeah, I think it's possible for radio plays to come back Well, I wasn't really asking whether it was possible or not. I was asking whether it was desirable or not And what i'm suggesting is that there are lots of reasons why it would be desirable And I just thought of another one and this works for the radio play that we put together You can't do things on radio Especially with humor and satire and so forth that you might not get away with on television because you would have to Create too many visual cues to have it happen I mean we created characters that were reminiscent of real life people without having to go out And make them look like real life people And that was convenient very Yeah, it was not only convenient, but it allowed it open a space up for creativity That wouldn't have been open if we were trying to do it visually And I think that's the beauty of radio It gets it sparks your imagination It sparks the imagination of the listener and it opens up a creative space for the producer On november 14th in episode 25 Where we interviewed laska maria About sex toys. I think we called it adult adults have the best toys We did some talking about sexuality then But we kind of didn't get into something that's pretty obvious for a husband and wife team And that is talking about married sex And about marriage and monogamy And this past week a friend of mine cal Does a blog on the internet called Usually left unsaid Started talking about monogamy And that's an interesting topic to me because if you've rejected That what society tells you is the absolute truth and if you question The moral basis for it And yet you still practice it you got to ask yourself why So this is an interesting question to put on the table between a husband and wife, but uh Why monogamy you got me? Hey wrong answer No, you promised me you had a reason Well, yeah, I have a reason utility And I mean social utility That's the only argument I can think of if we rule out the theocratic ones or the more or the society is built upon monogamous relationships the end. Yeah, I consider that a theocratic argument the margaret that's That's injudicious. I think it's more than that is Using what you're proving that it presumes the conclusion. Sure. You know what I'm talking about when the margaret thatcher argument Yeah, there are no such things as social groups only families. Yeah, or it was yeah, then I'm a genius. You can see why the inks kept electing her But by utility, I don't mean that margaret thatcher would find it useful. I mean that somebody's got to raise the kids Oh, no, see, I think monogamy is useful for other reasons than just having kids You mean useful to quote society close quote or no to the couple to the couple. Yeah, I'm talking about social utility not individual I'm not talking about self-interest Well, I think that that is a social utility when I say to the couple I don't understand. Okay Well, you make your argument and then I'll make my Okay, it's not really my argument. It's an argument one that I don't give a lot of credence to but one that is at least tenable The argument is sex makes babies. Somebody's got to raise them Monogamy makes it clear who's going to raise them the end It's easier that way. It saves Trouble, yeah, except it doesn't work out that way most of the time in real life It would be just as utilitarian to say parents should raise kids Whether or not they're monogamous parents I mean if we held men responsible for the babies that they made The way that we hold women responsible for the babies that they made babies would be taken care of Well, yeah, but I mean that in a way that you don't I read somewhere since they started DNA testing In support cases meaning child support meaning divorce cases that the they institute ministry of Quantitative testing is determined that between 20 and 25 percent of children born within wedlock are born To a different father. They are the one to whom the mother is married So you're thinking child support you're thinking deadbeat dads I'm thinking women sometimes lie, too That just proves my point. Oh, yeah, okay. Maybe it does Because monogamous on your point, so I can't really say if it does or what you're saying that monogamous would make sure that the baby Is taken care of I'm saying paternity tests would make sure that the baby is taken care of So I'm not sure I buy that monogamous is necessary in order to Take care of children. Well, it's no longer necessary. They didn't have DNA testing Of course with the events that happened last week And we have a whole new perspective on single parenting With cloning You know the question really remains How do you take care of the kids? That raises an interesting question though. What if the mom says I don't like the dad. I want to raise the kid myself We'll admit the rally is is unworthy of discussion and move to the issue of the more conventional single mom The one who is single by choice The one who wants a baby that doesn't want a man Are we going to tell her no no you can't do that If you let this guy inseminate you you have to put up with him for the rest of your life And if we're going to tell her that what can we base it on how can we justify aside from The interest of the kid Okay, that might be an argument. I don't know. This is a complicated one But I'm not sure that monogamy solves it is the thing that I'm saying I'm not sure that Because people get into a relationship and commit to each other that it solves the kid question The statistic that you mentioned Just because somebody is monogamous doesn't mean they've always been monogamous and it doesn't mean that the kid that you have is Obviously the the production of the monogamous relationship In that case there are no arguments for monogamy. See I think there is What is it? I think the argument for monogamy is that Sex messes things up Well, yeah, but that's inevitable. I mean there's a certain amount of In sex with a lot of different people can mess things up even more I think that it's a utilitarian thing for the couple at hand It clarifies it. I don't think it ought to be imposed from the outside mind you I'm just saying that it's useful from the inside. In other words, there are people who can handle multiple partners and work that out between them more power to them but I think that it That having available as a resource For the majority of people is not a bad thing Then I have to ask you what you mean by monogamy You're talking about something that's not imposed by society for quote social closed court reasons We're not talking about the market that your argument, which I think this is an optimally pre-existing thing that society imposes from Yeah, this is better than all other This is this is natural and therefore is necessary for the primary office to enforce it the natural argument That's natural is how they're nagging. Yeah You're arguing the utility of the couple I'm arguing that it should be an option for couples An important option. I can see why people opt for it I don't think that it necessarily has to be a legal monogamy as in marriage In order for it to work But I think that having it as an existing lifestyle is a good thing. Fine. Is this Self-imposed contract unilaterally Terminable, of course, then it's not monogamy or then I don't know what you mean by monogamy Either so I can opt out of it at any time that it isn't it's indistinguishable from polygamy, isn't it? No Why because you said you announced beforehand Yeah, you're working out between you. It's a commitment It's a commitment that you make to each other Well, yes, so it is what I'm asking about terminating it. Suppose one partner terminates it unilaterally It or is at liberty to terminate it unilaterally. How then is it distinguishable from polygamy? How can they not be? at liberty to Terminate it if they aren't at liberty to terminate it then it isn't a choice anymore It has to work as a choice And that means that either one of them can say, okay, I don't want to do it anymore They can choose to do it Then it becomes a commitment to each other if you make it that once you've chosen to do it. There's no turning back Then it's no longer choice. It's a trap Is it? I think so, yeah If the original decision is not an extorted one, how can you call it a trap? If the original decision is not it if the original decision is not an extorted one, then they won't terminate it That's absurd people change over time If they change over time, then they should be able to walk away from it Don't you think? I mean, I'm talking about this How can you have confidence that I want to stay with you? If I don't choose to stay with you Over and over and over again, you can't but we're not talking about what you want once an agreement has been reached We're talking about what you've agreed to do. I mean any contract between people can be broken. Well, yeah, of course it can That's contract law But we're talking about voluntary termination Versus breaking the terms of the contract if you terminate the contract by terms contained within the contract Then the contract has not been broken. It's been terminated. That's not the same thing And if the contract Has written into it a way to break it. It is no less a contract. I agree Okay, so why can't you have a monogamous contract between two people that has an out clause? You can't make it less monogamy. What I'm trying to determine is what in your paradigm of monogamy is Distinct from polygamy and so far the only thing I've got is You don't have multiple partners. You have to announce the termination of the contract you have to give disclosure before Going back to a polygamous lifestyle or You can have an agreement upfront As to what you have to do to break the contract. Do you follow what I'm saying? Yes so If the decision is made that You do what they call adultery now Breaks the contract. Why do they call adultery now? Well, you know what I'm saying. I don't I don't like the word adultery because it's a it's a moral word Okay, and it's full of all kinds of social and moral implications And what I'm trying to do is take the idea of monogamy away from that morality and put it into the realm of choice Right, okay, okay, so I'm suggesting to you that if I choose or you choose to go out and find another partner That might have been an agreement that we made ahead of time that that was a sign that the monogamous relationship is over So it's down to Not the consent of the other person but the knowledge of the other person. That's what distinguishes adultery from terminated monogamy if we may call it that yeah from spiritual divorce rather than the legal sort Yeah So do you follow what I'm saying? I'm saying that I think that monogamy works if It is a contracted thing between two people and that I think that the fact that it might be Uniquely determined among each couple is not a bad thing. So monogamy Is a meeting of the minds. Yeah And I think it's a good meeting of the minds because then you don't have to worry about a lot of stuff Now here's the practical part of it. Okay, and we were talking about how it's set up but just to sort of get across what I'm saying the practical part of this is That I don't have to because I know what our agreement is. I know what vows we took with each other I know what we think of when we think of marriage I don't have to spend a lot of time Worrying about disease worrying about whether or not you're going to have a child support payment That takes away from us. I don't have to worry about Whether or not I need to be shopping around I mean it takes a lot out, you know being single is Has a lot of baggage with it that being committed Takes away If you're in a committed monogamous relationship, there's a whole section of life You don't have to worry about anymore. That's fine. I'm not disputing that I agree with you. Yeah, I simply want to know how monogamy in your mind is different from temporary segments of time during a polygamous Now see, I don't believe in Syria. I don't believe that serial relationships are not monogamous That's what you're you're suggesting That if there is any other partner in your life that you've been polygamous So unless polygamous is multiple partners at the same time at the same time Yeah, so if you're never involved in a threesome, you're not an adulterer. No, I don't mean the exactly the same time Yeah, that's just one that's the question that I'm asking. I mean You're still having a relationship with one person and you start a relationship with somebody else I don't mean in bed at the exact same time But you wouldn't rule it out. No, I wouldn't rule it out. I don't want to have sex with more than one person at a time But I don't think that's monogamy. Monogamy is a commitment Monogamy says we've started something we've committed to each other and we're sticking together until the terms That we've agreed upon are violated or we walk away It's a choice and it's something that can't be imposed from above Yeah, I don't quote Socially useful reasons closed quote otherwise it becomes extorted and an extorted contract is no contract Exactly. So monogamy comes down to an act of faith. Yes Well, I think that's very sweet and I have faith in you That's good The police state is using its phallocentric organ the corporate media to control Ordinary people like you And me the last episode we're going to discuss was the one we did last week Aired the second of january. It was episode number 29 And it was entitled finding our voices It was about how we came to radio personally how the medium interacted with What our message has been to date and what we anticipate it being in the future We consider radio an important medium For reasons that we discussed briefly at that time And which we'd like to hit again now in a little more depth well One of the things that we talked about last week that we didn't really get into Was not so much radio, but language most especially Looking at the ways in which language Contains within it knowledge In fact, when I started researching for this and doing some of the writing For the episode I came across a book that I haven't read yet, but I've read a lot about And the book is called vanishing voices And it's a book by a couple of anthropologists. Actually, I think they're one of them might be a linguist That basically is looking at the fact that Languages are dying and they're dying out because the speakers of the languages are dying out There was an extremely active effort in the early 20th century to enculturate indigenous populations This was true in north america, but it was also true in south america and australia and other parts of the world Children of aboriginals were made to go to dominant culture schools Were taught the dominant culture We're told that things that came from their own cultures were not worth knowing And they walked away from it And their elders were not able to entice them back in time To teach them the language And I started wondering why is this a sad story? I mean emotionally It touched me. The first time I heard about it was On television. There was a news report. I can't remember. I think it was CNN that Had a discussion about the woman in alaska the york woman. Yeah That got me thinking about it, but I and I and I know I've had discussions in classes Before we've discussed this when I took courses about ethnicity about the loss of diversity among human beings But last week when I was working on the show Something clicked in my head that it never clicked before And that is if you regard a language as a repository of knowledge You have to see the loss of that language as a loss of knowledge There's a review. I'm going to read a little bit here of vanishing voices that I found on the web quote The greatest linguistic Diversity is found in some of the ecosystems richest in biodiversity Inhabited by indigenous peoples Who represent about four percent of the world's population? But speak at least 60 percent of its languages For centuries resource management has been carried out primarily at local levels By individual communities relying on traditional knowledge passed down orally for generations Much of it encoded in distinctive ways in their languages Some of the last speakers of dying languages are rich treasure houses of detailed local knowledge Close quote. That was the statement that I read that made it click I was like, of course, this is what the loss is It isn't just that we'll never hear this beautiful voice again Or that it's somehow symbolic of imperialistic problems There is a real pragmatic loss here and it's interesting in light of All of it is going on in the world right now About pollution about global warming and so forth That we're losing this knowledge at exactly the point that we may be needing it And to me this is more than a tragedy It's shooting ourselves in the foot It's the consequence of all of this crap that People have been doing for centuries When you say this knowledge you mean the knowledge of how to live a sustainable lifestyle Without destroying the planet in the process Yes How are you talking about natives of North America specifically? No, there are aboriginal peoples on every continent This local knowledge is being lost everywhere every continent has been touched by this And every continent is losing their local knowledge And that's important that it's on every continent and that it's local because local means in the ecosystem Western thought Has divided up the world and suggested that human beings live somewhere else other than in their context What do you mean? I mean that there's a separation in western thought between human affairs and natural affairs And that is an arbitrary separation and it is not reflective of the ways in which we really live The way we really live is weather affects us The other species around us affect us There's a there's a book called people and plagues Which makes a case That human history has been affected more by disease than any kind of politics That in fact when Diseases when germs have moved into our ecosystem Our civilizations have fallen apart I'm having trouble understanding is the argument here that cultural genocide is bad or that migration itself is bad I think the argument is that cultural genocide is bad That aboriginal people people who have lived in a place for a long time carry with them a particular knowledge of that place a particular understanding of how to sustain themselves within their local ecosystems when the immigrants have arrived And discounted especially the imperialistic immigrants the ones who have showed up and said we are coming here with superior knowledge And they have discounted the local knowledge. They are paying the price now There are any number of north american populations that were migratory Prior to the arrival of the europeans Yes, but they were migratory within a certain place and they understood the ecosystems within their migrations And in other words they summered in south dakota I mean wintered in south dakota and summered in southern siscatua But they knew both ecosystems the soon moved back and forth quite a few hundred miles, but it was the same hundred miles every year It was the same understanding in the land And they didn't pretend that they knew more about the areas the new areas that they went into than the people who were living there How is the linguistic distinction different from the sociological one to wet? What difference does it make if the languages are dying out? If and we're going to follow your imperialistic model here if the europeans weren't going to listen to the natives anyway Whether they were speaking English Or whatever their particular language was because now there's an awakening among europeans and their descendants to the consequences of Ignoring this knowledge And guess what the knowledge isn't there anymore They went to Kyoto. They came up with the accord. They said oops Our lifestyle is screwing us And now the repository that could have been available there for them now is common That's the problem And we don't know what we've lost. I mean, maybe there wasn't anything that would solve the problem now But north americans Lived here for quite a few years thousands of years before the europeans showed up They now know and they lived here in sustainable ways They might have had something that we could use now That we won't have available to us anymore. So the proposition is you kill a language. You kill a culture meaning you kill the accumulated Knowledge wisdom Whatever you want to call it. Yeah, you kill a language. You kill the knowledge that that language contains I'm thinking about it almost computerized like That carried within the language was the data That might be worthwhile looking at that we can no longer get Because we don't have the ability to pull it off the hard drive anymore That the aboriginal language that was there that could pull that out The traditions the stories The way of life That contained within it knowledge that we might could adapt now The important distinction being that the encoding process itself to use your computer analogy Contains information that attacks on me as president in every language. Yes, I'm also sure The ask-a-mose have a generic large number of words for snow Yeah, the one thing that was cited in this article is a fisherman Um, I'm not familiar with where this is exactly, but they call Pellewan traditional fishermen Had over 300 different new more than 300 different species of fish And they knew the lunar spawning cycles Of each of these species and had words for them all the western analog with the the Linnaean classification system that at some point naturalists or biologists or zoologists or call them what you will Decided that they needed to get really specific in the terminology that it had to be quote international close quote that's why persons educated in the western tradition now refer to Species and they want to be hyper technical about it by their two Latin word name right canis familiaris Phyllis domesticus and so forth right but the problem is is that by making that a universal language They miss Like these fish were named for their lunar spawning cycles that contained with it Not just knowledge of the species But also knowledge that helped you Maintain the species by knowing when to fish and when not to fish and that knowledge is lost in the Scientific classifications see the local knowledge Helped understand how to fish you knew from the name of the fish Not just what kind of fish it was but also when to fish for it You see yes, and that's lost Has to be rediscovered. It's not that it can't be rediscovered It's that why are we having to reinvent the wheel over and over again? We may not have time to do it this time With the greenhouse effects that are going on and the problems that we have in our ecology You know it took thousands of years to develop it before we don't have a thousand years to develop it again And who knows what else we're missing. I mean we're just in your talking about in ecological terms But there are all sorts of other things. I mean there's been some recovery of native law And some ideas about the ways in which natives settled disputes And we're having to reinvent that because we destroyed it I mean there are all sorts of things that we lose. We don't even know what we've lost because we lost it without regard for it Without even understanding where it came from or what it had to offer And to me that is the price of prejudice in a nutshell It's sacrificing the possibility that the other guy knows something that may be abuse to you That throws away the possibility of Mutual gain Yeah listening to first person plural Because how people get along with each other For wilkerson and dr. Patty thomas to examine social and organizational issues Music for a first person plural is performed compose and produce Wilkerson Visit our website the motor construction company dot com or email us at