Dr. John Capitman is executive director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at Fresno State. Before participating in a panel on improving the health of the Central Valley, he revealed in the Zócalo green room that musical comedy is his hidden talent, pecan pie is his big indulgence, and when it comes to tales of human liberation, he can’t get enough.
Q. What could you eat for the rest of your life?
A. Salad. [Laughs.] I’m not very exciting in that regard.
Q. What teacher or professor changed your life?
A. A wonderful professor-Professor Rulon Wells. I was a linguistics and philosophy major, and he had been a student of E.G. Boring, who is the founder of psychology in the U.S., actually. I could go on about him …
Q. What’s your favorite holiday?
A. Passover. It’s the story of liberation.
Q. What don’t outsiders get about the Central Valley?
A. The diversity of life stories here. The public sort of has a general view of a healthy, wealthy rancher/farmer, or an incredibly poor, starving worker. And the variety of life situations that characterizes our region is something that people discount. And one of the things I tell people all the time is that our region has seen enormous historic, classic battles for human liberation. The farmworkers are perhaps the most well-known.
Q. What’s something about you that might surprise your colleagues?
A. I’ve been in musical comedy. Actually though, I have a terrible voice, but I can belt out musical comedy numbers in a way that’s fun.
Q. Space travel or deep-sea exploration?
A. Deep-sea. It seems like we’ll get more out of it sooner. And also I’ve just enjoyed myself tremendously when I’ve had the opportunity to dive and snorkel in beautiful places.
Q. What’s the last movie you saw in a theater?
A. The Hunger Games. It isn’t the particular dystopia that I see us becoming. I think that the interweaving of corporate control and increasingly dramatic and drastic forms of people control is a scary image, and is an image that I think we should be scared of.
Q. What’s your biggest indulgence?
A. It’s not X-rated! Random sweets-pecan pie.
Q. How do you react when you’re embarrassed?
A. I smile a lot. [Smiles.]
Q. Where do you want to travel to next?
A. I really want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. That’s really high on my list of things to do. And I’m intrigued by the Kenyan highlands. I’d love to travel there as well.
*Photo by Dalton Runberg.