Delving In with Stuart Kelter
Science & Technology News
Knowledge-seeker and psychologist Stuart Kelter shares his joy of learning and “delving in.” Ready? Let’s delve... Join Chris Churchill on the possible reasons why the search for intelligent life in the universe is coming up empty. Let’s hear from Israeli psychiatrist Pesach Lichtenberg about a promising approach to schizophrenia—going mainstream in Israel—that uses minimal drugs and maximal support through the crisis, rejecting the presumption of life-long disability. Find out what Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David Kertzer learned from recently opened Vatican records about Pius XII, the Pope During WWII. We explore the fascinating and intriguing... What did journalist Eve Fairbanks learn about race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa? Did you realize there were dozens and dozens of early women scientists? Let’s find out about them through a sampling of poems with poet Jessy Randall. How shall we grapple with the complexities of the placebo effect in drug development and medical practice? Harvard researcher Kathryn Hall confirms just how complicated it really is! But beware: increasing one’s knowledge leads to more and more questions. If that appeals to you, join us on “Delving In”! The interviews of the Delving In podcast were first broadcast on KTAL-LP, the community radio station of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The full archive of well over 100 interviews can be found at https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/category/delving-in. Please send questions and comments to stuartkelter@protonmail.com.
Location:
United States
Description:
Knowledge-seeker and psychologist Stuart Kelter shares his joy of learning and “delving in.” Ready? Let’s delve... Join Chris Churchill on the possible reasons why the search for intelligent life in the universe is coming up empty. Let’s hear from Israeli psychiatrist Pesach Lichtenberg about a promising approach to schizophrenia—going mainstream in Israel—that uses minimal drugs and maximal support through the crisis, rejecting the presumption of life-long disability. Find out what Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David Kertzer learned from recently opened Vatican records about Pius XII, the Pope During WWII. We explore the fascinating and intriguing... What did journalist Eve Fairbanks learn about race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa? Did you realize there were dozens and dozens of early women scientists? Let’s find out about them through a sampling of poems with poet Jessy Randall. How shall we grapple with the complexities of the placebo effect in drug development and medical practice? Harvard researcher Kathryn Hall confirms just how complicated it really is! But beware: increasing one’s knowledge leads to more and more questions. If that appeals to you, join us on “Delving In”! The interviews of the Delving In podcast were first broadcast on KTAL-LP, the community radio station of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The full archive of well over 100 interviews can be found at https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/category/delving-in. Please send questions and comments to stuartkelter@protonmail.com.
Language:
English
Website:
https://delving-in.captivate.fm
Episodes
#178. An Expedition into the Brazilian Amazon to Establish the Boundaries of a Totally Isolated, Uncontacted tribe.
1/25/2026
Scott Wallace is an award-winning writer, television producer, and photojournalist, who for over 40 years, has focused on the environment, vanishing cultures, and conflict over land and resources around the world. He has written feature stories for the New York Times and The Smithsonian, among other major publications, and has been a frequent contributor to National Geographic. He is the author of the bestselling book, The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, published in 2011, a firsthand account of an expedition through the land of a mysterious tribe living in extreme isolation deep in the Amazon rain forest. As a reporter for CBS News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsweek, the Independent, and the Guardian, Wallace covered the civil wars in Central America throughout the 1980s, and is the author of and photographer for Central America in the Crosshairs of War: On the Road from Vietnam to Iraq, published in 2024. In 2017 he joined the faculty of the Journalism Department of the University of Connecticut. Today’s interview will focus on his earlier book, The Unconquered.
Recorded 1/22/26.
Duration:00:55:38
#177. What African-Americans Endured Throughout the History of the Mississippi Delta
1/20/2026
Ralph Eubanks is the former Director of Publishing for the Library of Congress, former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia, and currently faculty fellow and writer-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Awarded the Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in literature and appointed cultural ambassador for Mississippi, he is the author of numerous articles in major newspapers and magazines, as well as four books, Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past, published in 2003, The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South, published in 2009, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, published in 2021, and most recently, When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land, published in 2026. Our interview will focus on his latest book, which brings out the rich and painful history of the region, its enduring consequences, and possible springboards for hope.
Recorded 1/12/26.
Duration:00:53:50
#176. Exposing How Financial Corruption is Tied to Environmental Destruction, Human-Rights Abuses, and War
1/11/2026
Patrick Alley is the former executive director and co-founder – along with Simon Taylor and Charmian Gooch – of Global Witness, an award-winning nonprofit organization, established in 1993, dedicated to exposing the links between corruption, environmental destruction, human-rights abuses and war. Since stepping down as executive director in 2023, he has continued his involvement as a board member and has also turned his focus to writing. His first book, Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption, was published in 2022, and his second, Terrible Humans: The World's Most Corrupt Super-Villains And The Fight to Bring Them Down, was published in 2024. Both books present gripping stories of high stakes challenges taken on by Global Witness and affiliated organizations, such as Citizen Lab, Sea Shepard, and the Wildlife Justice Commission in exposing evil and, in many cases, making a major contribution to eradicating it.
Recorded 1/5/26.
Duration:00:50:16
#175. Maintaining Love Throughout Her Husband's Dementia
1/4/2026
Anne-Marie Erickson is the author of the memoir, In the Evening, We’ll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love and Dementia, which bears witness to the demise of her beloved husband, Dick Cain. As might be expected, this is a sad story, but not only. Right up until the very end, about ten years ago, the couple was able to express their love of one another and, thanks to their mutual love of language, Ann-Marie was, much of the time, able to decipher Dick’s not-necessarily-intentional use of metaphor to convey deep insights into their relationship, the world, and mortality. It’s an inspirational book that assiduously avoids clichés and platitudes, deeply honest about what it’s like to stay committed to the love of one’s life. She acknowledges the heartbreak, the exasperation, and the rage that goes with this territory, but she also doesn’t allow herself to become mired in negativity, and manages to gather sacred moments as they come, of meaning and closeness, as jewels on a strand that ultimately must end.
Recorded 12/30/25.
Duration:00:55:31
#174. Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I.
12/14/2025
Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, whose main interests include philosophy of mind, metaphysics, the nature of belief, the impact or lack thereof of ethical thinking on behavior, and classical Chinese philosophy. He is the author of four books: Perplexities of Consciousness, published in 2011, Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic co-written with Russell Hurlburt, also published in 2011, A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, published in 2019, and The Weirdness of the World, published in 2024. He is also a science fiction writer and was a contributor to Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible. Starting in 2006, Eric has written a blog called, “The Splintered Mind.”
Recorded 12/9/25.
Duration:00:55:24
#173. Scenarios for Another Civil War in the U.S.
12/7/2025
Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and journalist, a scholar of philosophy and literature, and a former teacher of Renaissance drama at the City University of New York, resigning in 2007 to pursue a full-time writing career ever since. He has written five novels, numerous essays for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, and four works of non-fiction: How Shakespeare Changed Everything published in 2011, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the Twenty-First Century published in 2017, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, published in 2022, and On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, published in 2023.
Recorded 12/3/25.
Duration:00:52:10
#172. Positive Masculine Identity, As Nurtured by the Mother of a Boy Soprano
11/16/2025
Rebekah Peeples is the Deputy Dean of the College at Princeton University with oversight of the undergraduate curriculum. Previously at Princeton, she taught sociology and writing. She is also the author of two books: Wal-Mart Wars: Moral Populism in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014, and Unchanged Trebles: What Boy Choirs Teach Us About Motherhood and Masculinity, published four weeks ago, and which is the subject of today’s interview.
Recorded 11/12/25.
Duration:00:56:02
#171. The Remarkable Contributions of Unwed, Childless Women Throughout History
11/9/2025
Emma Duval is a self-described member of the “millennial generation,” who include the growing number of women who are childless and as, Emma puts it, “childfree” by choice. Although now married, Duval’s early inspirations were independent, unmarried women, and as a teenager she contemplated becoming a nun in rejection of societal norms surrounding marriage. She is the author-illustrator of the recently published book, Unwed & Unbothered: The Defiant Lives of Single Women, which celebrates the courageous lives and remarkable contributions of such women throughout history, going back thousands of years.
Recorded 11/5/25.
Duration:00:56:41
#170. The Origins and Remedies for the Rural-Urban Political Divide
10/20/2025
Suzanne Mettler is a senior professor of American Institutions in the Government Department at Cornell University. She is the author of several books, including The Submerged State and Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream, published in 2014, The Government-Citizen Disconnect, published in 2018, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, co-written with Robert C. Lieberman and published in 2024, and most recently, Rural vs. Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy, co-written with Trevor E. Brown and published just a few weeks ago.
Recorded 10/16/25.
Duration:00:56:06
#169. On Being a Wilderness Fire Watcher
10/13/2025
Philip Connors is a National Parks Service fire watcher in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness since 2002. In addition to essays in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, Connors is the author of Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, published in 2011; All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found, published in 2015; and A Song for the River -- about the threat to the Gila River, one of the last wild rivers in the western U.S., threatened by a proposed dam -- published in 2018. His work has won the National Outdoor Book Award, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Reading the West Award for Nonfiction, the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition, a Southwest Book Award, and an n+1 Writer's Fellowship. His fourth book, The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary, published just a few weeks ago, blends haiku and diary entries that beautifully convey his experience of solitude, his reverence for nature, and his witnessing of devastating forest megafires on an unprecedented scale. He also speaks to our longstanding foolish overconfidence in the ability to indefinitely prevent forest fires.
Recorded 8/8/25.
Duration:00:55:53
#168. The Power of Followers to Restrain Toxic Leaders
9/22/2025
Ira Chaleff is past President of Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates and award-winning author of several books, including The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders, published in 2009; Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told to Do Is Wrong, published in 2015; Intelligent Disobedience for Children: A Handbook for Parents and Other Caregivers, published in 2018; To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Political Followers to Make or Brake a Toxic Leader, published in 2024, and in a completely different genre, a collection of original poems about aging, Falling Apart Into Wholeness, published in 2020. Ira has conducted workshops on Leader-Follower relations for a wide range of organizations, including multinational corporations and governmental agencies. He served as Executive Director, as well as Chair of the Board, of The Congressional Management Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit group that provides management research, training and consulting for the U.S. Congress.
Recorded 9/16/25.
Duration:00:55:59
#167. A BBC Journalist and News Anchor on How His Two Identities, as Journalist and Jew, Inform One Another
9/14/2025
Tim Franks has been a journalist with the BBC since 1990, as a producer, reporter, and presenter. He has covered British politics, including the conflict Northern Ireland in the years leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, as well as international issues, as a foreign correspondent on the scene in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, and in war zones, such as Iraq during the war of 2003, and in Gaza during the current war there. Since 2013 he has been a presenter – or in American parlance, an anchor – for Newshour, the BBC World Service flagship radio news program. This interview will focus primarily on his recently published book, The Lines We Draw: The Journalist, the Jew, and an Argument About Identity.
Recorded 9/9/25.
Duration:00:54:40
Nature's Symbiotic Relationships, Some Mutually Beneficial and Others Parasitic
9/7/2025
Sophie Pavelle is a U.S. born and UK-based science writer and communicator, whose debut book, Forget Me Not: Finding The Forgotten Species of Climate-Change Britain, won The People’s Book Prize for Non-Fiction (2023) and was long-listed for the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. She worked for conservation charity Beaver Trust for four years, presenting their award-winning documentary Beavers Without Borders (2020), and also sat on the Advisory Committee of the UK based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Today’s interview will focus on her latest book, published in May of this year, To Have or to Hold: Nature’s Hidden Relationships, a wide-ranging exploration of symbiotic relationships between unrelated species.
Recorded 9/2/25.
Duration:00:56:44
#165. Why the U.S. War in Afghanistan Failed
9/1/2025
Amin Saikal is an emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where he was also the Founding Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. He has won several academic awards and is a member of many national and international academic organizations. In addition to numerous articles in international journals, he has also written feature articles in major international newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and The Guardian and has been a frequent commentator on radio and television news programs. He has written several books about relations between Islam and the West and on political developments in Iran, Arab countries, and his home country, Afghanistan. This interview will focus on his most recent book, How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan, published in 2024.
Recorded 8/26/25.
Duration:00:54:54
#164. An Actor/Playwright Reflects on Fifty Years of Deep Relationships with Holocaust Survivors
8/25/2025
Henry ("Hank") Greenspan is an emeritus psychologist and oral historian in Holocaust studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, award-winning playwright and actor, lyricist, essayist, and poet, and social activist in the area of healthcare rights. During the interview he’ll be performing one of the monologues from his remarkable play, REMNANTS, in which he channels the personalities and pivotal experiences of holocaust survivors with whom he formed deep relationships over the course of 50 years. (A video of his performance of the complete play can be viewed, at no charge, here.) We’ll also be talking about his new book, released just last week, REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors, which for the first time publishes the text of the play, as well as providing reflections on its history, production, and reception. (A long excerpt of another of his plays discussed during the interview, The Mad Jester of the Warsaw Ghetto, can be viewed, at no charge, here.)
Recorded 8/19/25.
Duration:00:55:49
#163. The Rationale and Controversies of Gender-Affirmative Health Care
8/18/2025
Psychologists Diane Ehrensaft and Michelle Jurkiewicz are the co-authors of the recently published book, Gender Explained: A New Understanding of Identity in a Gender Creative World. Diane is cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is also a researcher and professor of pediatrics. She is the author of two previous books on this subject: The Gender Creative Child and Gender Born, Gender Made. Michelle Jurkiewicz is a gender specialist in private practice in Berkeley, California and an early pioneer and trainer in gender-affirmative care with transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive youth.
Recorded 8/13/25.
Duration:00:57:02
#162. How Developed Countries Perpetuate Their Economic Power (and the Obstacles to Joining Their Ranks)
8/11/2025
Remi Adekoya is a political science lecturer at the University of York in the UK, focusing on national and sub-national identities and their role in international relations, especially as they affect Africa. Before joining academia, Remi was a journalist, whose writing appeared in major mainstream publications in Europe, the U.S. and Africa. He has also provided analysis and commentary for wide-ranging international media and is the host of the podcast How to Become a Leader in Africa. Remi’s cultural background – as the son of a Nigerian father and a Polish mother, growing up in Nigeria and living as an adult in Warsaw and now London – give him multifaceted, first hand, international perspectives. Today’s interview will focus on his book, published in 2023: It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth: How the Economics of Race Really Work.
Recorded 7/29/25.
Duration:00:57:40
161. How Women Runners Refuted the Myth of Female Fragility
8/3/2025
Maggie Mertens is a journalist in Seattle, who covers gender, culture, and sports. She has written essays and stories for such major publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Guardian and has also been interviewed on NPR affiliates, as well as national and regional television and numerous podcasts. In 2021, she was nominated for the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sports Writing. Her recently published first book, Better, Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women is the subject of today’s interview.
Recorded 7/23/25.
Duration:00:53:56
#160. The Concept of Race in Latin America
8/2/2025
Iñigo García-Bryce is a history professor at New Mexico State University and the director of NMSU’s Center for Latin American and Border Studies from 2011-2016. His research focuses on Latin American social and political history. He is the author of Crafting the Republic: Lima’s Artisans and Nation-Building in Peru, 1821-1879, published in 2004 and Haya de la Torre and the Pursuit of Power in Peru and Latin America, published in 2018. García-Bryce speaks English, Spanish and French fluently, and also has proficiency in Quechua, Latin, Italian, Portuguese and German. He has presented his research in England, Germany, Peru and Argentina. He has lived in Lima (Peru), Prague (Czech Republic), Berlin and Munich (Germany), Paris (France) and Colombo (Sri Lanka). He has also worked as a journalist and a Spanish interpreter and translator.
Recorded 4/28/20. (Note that the recording is occasionally a bit choppy, due to a sub-optimal internet connection.)
Duration:00:44:06
#158. The History of "Rule By Law" and How Autocratic Rulers Co-opt the Concept to Consolidate Power
7/28/2025
Aziz Huq is a professor of comparative and constitutional law at the University of Chicago, focusing recently on democratic backsliding and the regulation of Artificial Intelligence. He has written articles for Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other mainstream publications, in addition to many scholarly articles, and award-winning books, including Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror with coauthor, Frederick Schwarz, published in 2007; How to Save a Constitutional Democracy with coauthor Tom Ginsberg, published in 2018; The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, published in 2021; and, most recently, The Rule of Law: A Very Short Introduction, a contribution to the Oxford “Very Short Introduction” series, published in 2024. He has an active pro bono practice and is on the boards of the American Constitution Society, the Seminary Co-op, the New Press, and the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to becoming a law professor, he litigated cases in both the US Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court, and was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Duration:00:57:59