StudioTulsa on 89.5-1

(Please note: This program originally aired last year.) On this edition of our show, we speak by phone with the author and writing instructor B. A. Shapiro about her widely praised novel, "The Art Forger." In 1990, more than a dozen works of art (today worth, in sum, $500+ million) were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, but in this equally fascinating and entertaining novel, our heroine --- Claire Roth, a struggling young artist --- learns more about this theft than she ever bargained for.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we speak with Paasha Mahdavi, who is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. As part of the University of Tulsa Collins College of Business Lecture Series, Mahdavi will deliver a free-to-the-public talk on "Oil Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran" on Wednesday the 13th at 7pm in the Tyrrell Hall Auditorium on the TU campus. Mahdavi's ongoing research concerns the study of national oil company governance and the political consequences of oil nationalizations, and he joins us today by phone.

On today's ST, we speak by phone with the journalist, author, and veteran urbanologist Alan Ehrenhalt, whose books include "The United States of Ambition" and "The Lost City." Ehrenhalt's latest book, "The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City," is just out in paperback. This book argues that the roles and characteristics of America's cities and suburbs are basically changing places with one another --- younger adults and affluent retirees are moving into the city, while immigrants and the less affluent are moving out to the 'burbs.

While the debate in Washington, amid these dreaded days of "sequestration," is about whether to increase revenues or cut spending --- or somehow achieve a compromise that does both --- here in Oklahoma, the state legislature is (once again) looking to reduce tax revenues. This comes despite the fact that our state currently has a number of extremely pressing needs vis a vis education, DHS, corrections, and infrastructure --- as well as, of course, the long-term and likewise urgent problem of pension liabilities.

On this installment of ST, we speak by phone with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes, whose previous books include "Force of Nature" and "No Matter How Loud I Shout," and whose latest book, just recently out in paperback, is "Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash." This book presents an unsettling yet fascinating and highly detailed profile of America's biggest export, its most prodigious product, and perhaps its greatest legacy: garbage.

What happens to us when we die? Where does the line between life and death really or finally reside? These questions are as old as human consciousness itself. On this edition of ST, we present a very interesting discussion with Dr. Sam Parnia, the director of the well-known AWARE Study (as in, "AWAreness during REsuscitation") and one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death and near-death experiences. Dr.

Do you know how much was spent on health care in the U.S. in 2012? Would you believe $2.7 trillion? Today, more than ever, politicians, policy makers, pundits, and health care professionals are focused on the contradictory yet equally crucial aims of improving health care delivery and reducing the costs of that delivery. One individual focused in this way is Tom Adelson, the former State Senator for the 33rd District of Oklahoma, who now works in the private sector. Today, Dr. John Henning Schumann, our guest host, welcomes Adelson to the program.

On this installment of our program, we speak by phone with the internationally known contemporary fiber artist, Jon Eric Riis, whose tapestry works can be found in private collections as well as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The New York Museum of Art and Design, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Museum of Art, and elsewhere.

On this edition of ST, we welcome the poet/playwright/actress/musician Lenelle Moise as well as the actress/singer/songwriter Karla Mosley, who comprise the dynamic and diversely talented duo behind "Expatriate," a two-act, two-woman drama-meets-music performance piece that was presented Off-Broadway to glowing reviews in 2008, and that will soon be offered here in Tulsa by the Living Arts Gallery as part of that organization's New Genre XX Festival.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), the great American critic, fiction writer, poet, and satirist --- that famously witty (and frequently scathing) scribe whose many brilliant assertions include "I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true" and "if all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised" --- is now back in business. That is, she's cracking wise all over again, in a manner of speaking, in a new book.