Author Archives: Stephen Spitz

Today’s guest is the most famous comedian you have never seen and didn’t even believe existed. His name is Jack Handey (yes that’s his real name), and the name is undoubtedly familiar to fans of Saturday Night Live. Jack Handey, a long time resident of Santa Fe, is the person responsible for SNL’s consistently hilarious series, “Deep Thoughts”, along with many other sketches. On SNL Deep Thoughts was an interstitial segment between sketches that was introduced by Phil Hartman and read live by Handey (neither actually appeared on screen). Handey’s one-liners proved to be extremely popular. Hartman would intone “And now, Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey…” and peaceful easy listening music would play while the screen showed soothing pastoral scenes, much like a New Age relaxation video. Handey would then read the Deep Thought as the text scrolled across the screen. Now Handey has written his first novel, The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure. The plot is not complicated, a search for treasure in Hawaii, but the humor will definitely appeal to anyone who enjoyed Deep Thoughts. Please join host Stephen Spitz and Jack Handey as we learn how Handey got into comedy and what makes comedians and jokes “funny”. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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Michael Naranjo was born to be an artist. As a Santa Clara Pueblo native Naranjo was nurtured by a climate of beauty and culture to create dimensional art forms. His future, however, seemed to come to an end after he was drafted to fight in Vietnam and a grenade destroyed much of his right hand and his sight. Yet an artist who no longer sees, and whose hands are crippled, has somehow managed to create wondrous art forms; Naranjo’s works are now included in the collections of The Vatican, the White House, the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, and the Albuquerque Museum. How has he managed to do this? Obviously Michael Naranjo is someone of extraordinary strength, talent, and determination. And now UNM press has published a beautiful, coffee table book of his work entitled Inner Vision: the sculpture of Michael Naranjo, which shows and tells this story So please join Michael Naranjo and host Stephen Spitz as we learn the details of Naranjo’s inspirational story along with his views on life, art, PTSD, and veterans. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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Consider the following: (1) Our water supply is ever shrinking; (2) We are in the midst of a seemingly endless drought; (3) Our groundwater buffer is gone and water allocation is now a zero sum game; and, (4) Global climate change will make all of the above worse. To complicate matters, competing for our limited water are: (1) a growing population, (2) a struggling agriculture industry, and, (3) a Rio Grande ecosystem on life support. To explain how this happened, and our limited policy choices, host Stephen Spitz is joined by a true water expert, Dr. Fred M Phillips.  Dr. Phillips directs the hydrology program in the department of earth and environmental sciences at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and is the co-author of the recent book, Reining in the Rio Grande. So please join us as we explore how New Mexico got into this fix and what our future looks like. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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What is going on in the mind of a school shooter, a mass murderer, or a serial rapist? Is his mind different from a mass fraudster like Bernie Madoff? We summarily dismiss these criminals as pure  “evil” but why? Often they are psychopaths – wrongdoers who repeatedly act impulsively, and lack of empathy, guilt and remorse for the harm caused; they know right from wrong cognitively, but don’t have a feeling for what’s right and wrong. Our guest, UNM professor, Kent Kiehl, is at the forefront of emerging neuroscience research on psychopathy, and is considered one of its leading experts. His primary focus is on groundbreaking research on the brains of incarcerated inmates and his brain scans have predicted with startling accuracy the likelihood that they will offend again. So please join host Stephen Spitz and Dr. Kent Kiehl, as we explore how and why criminals are different from the rest of us. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union are American icons, and the UFW is a prime example of a union that fought hard for higher wages and better working conditions against impossible odds. Although the National Labor Relations Act does not cover farm workers, and migrant labor is particularly difficult to organize, at its height the UFW represented almost 1/3 of all California lettuce workers. And then, on the verge of success, the UFW imploded and “la causa” was no more. Frank Bardacke’s 836 page book, Trampling Out the Vintage, is the inside story of this history. Bardacke was a young Berkeley radical who in 1971 took a job cutting celery in the Salinas Valley, working in the fields as part of an otherwise Mexican work force. He joined the UFW, rose in its ranks, and, in the off-season, taught agricultural history at the University of California. Please join host Stephen Spitz and special guest Frank Bardacke for an eyewitness account of the rise and fall of Cesar Chavez and UFW. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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Improve education is the answer you usually get to New Mexico’s seemingly intractable problems. But, how do you do that? Last year more than 70% of our births were covered by Medicaid and only Mississippi fares worse on key indicators of child welfare such as high school dropouts, concentrated childhood poverty, teen pregnancy and teen drug abuse. Given this discouraging reality, is it any wonder that our schools have failed to achieve even “average” results. Can anything be done?  This is the big question and one we will put to former New Mexico Education Secretary Dr. Veronica Garcia and Dr. Andrew Hsi, who heads a unique program at UNM Hospital which provides medical, social and psychological support to families with at risk children. Please join host Stephen Spitz as we ask where education reform should place its emphasis? Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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This month’s guest is New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner author Timothy Egan whose latest work is a biography, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. Shadow catcher was the name given to acclaimed photographer Edward Curtis by American Indians as he traveled the country taking their photos and documenting their tradions, language and culture in the early 20^th Century. Curtis, a famed photographer of the high and mighty,  such as President Teddy Roosevelt and JP Morgan, forswore all riches to instead shoot individual portraits and document the everyday life of nearly 80 Indian tribes. He photographed Chief Joseph, Geronimo and 40,000 other Indians engaged in fishing, net-making, cooking and never-before-photographed tribal ceremonies. He traveled to our pueblos in New Mexico and to remote areas of Arizona, Montana, Oklahoma and California. The story of how and why he accomplished this is perfectly encapsulated in the sub-title of this biography: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward S Curtis. So please join host Stephen Spitz, and author Timothy Egan as we explore one of the most amazing accomplishments of the 20th Century. Produced with the assistance of Joe Green.

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April marks the return of New Mexico’s fire season when wildfires burn through 1000’s of acres of our forests and often lead the news.  Fire Season is also the title of Philip Connors’ best selling memoir about his last 10 years as a fire lookout in Gila National Forest in Southern New Mexico. The landscape over which he keeps watch is rugged and roadless—it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines—and it typically gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year. Connors recounts his days and nights in this forbidding land, separated from the comforts of modern life but free to enjoy the pleasures of being alone in his glass-walled perch with only his dog. What, exactly, does Connors do as fire lookout, why does he so relish this job, and how does he manage everyday relationships, such as his marriage?  Please join host Stephen Spitz and guest Philip Connors as we talk about being a fire look-out in the Gila. Produced with the assistance of John Burgund and Joe Green.

Our guest this month, Dr. Rex Jung, is a Professor of Neurosurgery at UNMH, a Research Scientist at Albuquerque’s Mind Research Network, and a practicing clinical neuropsychologist. His research is designed to relate behavioral measures including intelligence, personality, and creativity, to brain function and structure. We will talk about this research, the present state of brain science, the state of research into how our minds work, how brain scans can be used to show the difference between intelligence and creativity, and the mission of Mind Research Network. So, please join host Stephen Spitz as we discuss recent discoveries in the field of brain science. Produced with the assistance of John Burgund and Joe Green.

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This month’s show features Chris Wilson a leading architectural historian and Miguel Gandert one of America’s prominent documentary photographers, whose works have been exhibited widely, including in the Whitney Biennial. These UNM professors joined up on a beautiful and informative “coffee table” book entitled The Plazas of New Mexico. Their book documents the rich heritage of New Mexico’s public plazas, and the everyday life and community celebrations that sustain them. Three distinct design traditions are included—the Native American center place with kiva and terraced residential blocks, the Hispanic plaza with church and courtyard houses, and the Anglo square with courthouse and business blocks.

On the show, we will examine well-known examples of each tradition, including the Santa Fe plaza, the plazas of Taos Pueblo, and the Anglo courthouse square located in Portales, NM. So, please join host Stephen Spitz as we take an in depth look at the Plazas of New Mexico.

Produced with the assistance of John Burgund and Joe Green.

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