June (through July 3) 2011

For 5 weeks, join us for Radio Lab:  Each hour we take a big idea, so big that it lives everywhere, hiding in a thousand places under different names, and we chase that idea, going wherever whim takes us. Along the way, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (pictured at left) interview, argue, imagine, and discover the hidden connections that make this idea so surprisingly powerful. And the sounds you hear are as new and startling as the ideas we explore. It's Technicolor radio. Radiolab is produced by WNYC, New York and distributed by National Public Radio.

07.03  Desperately Seeking Symmetry:  Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence - from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror. Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece, head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.

06.26  The Soul Patch: Stories of unlikely (and surprisingly simple) answers to seemingly unsolvable problems. We get to know a man who struggles, and mostly fails, to contain his violent outbursts...until he meets a bird who can keep him in check. Then, Oliver Sacks and Chuck Close, who are both face-blind, share workarounds that help them figure out who they're talking to. And a senior center stumbles upon an unexpected way to help Alzheimer's patients - by building a bus stop.

06.19  Help!  What do you do when your own worst enemy is...you? This hour, Radiolab looks for ways to gain the upper hand over those forces inside us - from unhealthy urges, to creative insights - that seem to have minds of their own. We meet a Cold War negotiator who, in order to quit smoking, backs himself into a tactical corner, and we visit a clinic in Russia where patients turn to a radical treatment to help fight their demons. Plus, Elizabeth Gilbert on doing battle with your muses.

06.12 Lost and Found:  In this episode, Radiolab steers its way through a series of stories about getting lost, and asks how our brains, and our hearts, help us get home. We meet a woman who has spent her entire life getting lost, and go to a military base in New Jersey to learn about some amazing feats of navigational wizardry. Finally, we turn to a very different kind of lost and found: a love story about running into a terrifying, and unexpected, fork in the road.

06.05  The Good Show: In this episode, a question that haunted Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, why would one creature stick its neck out to help another? Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?

May 2011

For the month of May:  The Promised Land, a series of programs about leaders and visionaries who are transforming lives and communities.  Majora Carter (at right) hosts.  Listen to a State of Things interview with Majora Carter from May 5.

05.29  Before Katrina, Sharon Hanshaw owned a beauty salon and lived in a house on a tree-lined street. All that all changed when the hurricane hit Biloxi, Mississippi. The storm brought her not just destruction, but also transformation. As executive director of Coastal Women for Change, she has turned her losses into strength, by becoming an advocate and role model for others. Hanshaw's work empowers women to be political voices in the long-range planning and rebuilding of their community.

05.22 Reimagining a Way of Life:  New Orleans East is home to the most-dense ethnically Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. In the Gulf region, about 80 percent of Vietnamese Americans were connected to the fishing industry, and the BP oil spill hit the community hard. Vietnamese fisherfolk are trying to rebuild their lives - opening sustainable farms, gas stations, nail salons, and aquaponic projects - while also dealing with the mental anguish that surfaces when a lifetime on the water suddenly disappears.

05.15  Chemist Wilma Subra has spent her career defending local communities against Louisiana's powerful oil and gas industry. Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, her phone hasn't stopped ringing. At first, the calls were from people who knew men on the rig; later, from coastal residents complaining of nausea and breathing problems. Majora Carter spends a day with Subra as she takes water and sediment samples and meets with community members whose concerns are now the focus of her investigation.

05.08  For Nat Turner, garden rakes and shovels are tools for transformation. He's transformed an old store in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward into an urban Eden. Blair Grocery is now both a nontraditional school and an urban farm run by youth who've dropped out of mainstream education. Majora spends two days observing the teaching and training that makes the Blair Grocery Project a true innovation.

05.01  Dr. Kyshun Webster is a man who gets things done. And before that, he was a kid who got things done. Now the founder and executive director of Operation Reach, an extensive family of programs for kids throughout the Gulf South, Kyshun has been working to improve his community since he was a kid himself. Majora joins Kyshun as he returns to his childhood roots to explain the inspiration for his 20 years of inspiring youth to greatness.

April 2011

Tthe 150th Anniversary of the start of the American Civil War arrived in April.  3 programs from BackStory with the American History Guys supply some background information.

04.24  The Civil War at 150: Questions Remain
Tens of thousands of books have been written on the subject, but what makes the Civil War relevant to us today, in 2011? Has America’s involvement in recent wars been shaped by lessons from the Civil War? Should it be? How have Americans understood the Civil War in previous generations, and how have historians’ interpretations of it changed over time?

04.10  The Civil War at 150: Why They Fought
Focusing on the lived experience of the Civil War on both the battlefield and home front, this episode will explore the forces and motivations behind Americans’ willingness to take up arms against one another.

04.03  The Civil War at 150: The Road to Civil War
In hindsight, it’s easy to see the Civil War as a conflict just waiting to happen. But to Americans in the spring of 1861, disunion was anything but inevitable. In this episode, the History Guys focus on the dramatic six months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of war.

March 2011

March brings a series of American RadioWorks documentaries.

03.27 Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal
Why do Americans contribute more heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere than Europeans with similar standards of living? One reason is our dependence on cars, but another, less-talked-about reason is coal. Americans rely on coal for nearly half our electricity. Electrical generation pumps out more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector -- cars, trucks, planes, and ships -- combined. A new American RadioWorks documentary goes back to the roots of our addiction to coal, and shows how our fuel choices changed American culture and history.

03.20 Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality
American RadioWorks presents a new documentary about the fight for equal rights on America's roads and transit lines. Many African American communities were bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for highways. Today, bus service to poor neighborhoods is cut in favor of more expensive rail. This collaborative reporting project from Transportation Nation and WNYC visits communities across America where people of color still struggle for equal treatment in public transportation. 

03.13 State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and Civil Rights
Mississippi occupies a distinct and dramatic place in the history of America's civil rights movement. No state in the South was more resistant to the struggle for black equality. No place was more violent. While the history of civil rights activists has been well documented in radio and television, the stories and strategies of their white opponents are more hidden. State of Siege brings to light the extraordinary tactics whites in Mississippi used to battle integration and the lasting impact of that battle in American politics today.

03.06 Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity
Say It Loud traces the last 50 years of black history through stirring, historically important speeches by African Americans from across the political spectrum. The documentary illuminates tidal changes in African American political power and questions of black identity through the speeches of deeply influential black Americans. With recordings unearthed from libraries and sound archives, and made widely available here for the first time, Say It Loud includes landmark speeches by Malcolm X, Lorraine Hansberry (pictured at left), Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Louis Gates, and many others.

February 2011

 For the month of February: Studio 360's American Icons Series highlights milestones in American culture -- works that define and redefine what it means to be American.  This Peabody Award-winning series is hosted by Kurt Andersen (pictured at left), and produced by PRI and WNYC with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

02.27 The Autobiography of Malcolm X  When Malcolm X was assassinated at 39, his book nearly died with him. Today The Autobiography of Malcolm X - a favorite of President Obama and Justice Clarence Thomas alike - stands as a milestone in America’s struggle with race. The Autobiography is also a Horatio Alger tale, following a man’s journey from poverty to crime to militancy to wisdom. Muslims look to Malcolm as a figure of tolerance; a tea party activist claims him for the Right; Public Enemy’s Chuck D tells us, “This book is like food. It ain’t McDonalds - it’s sit down at the table and say grace.” 

02.13 I Love Lucy set the model for the hit family sitcom. Lucy was a bad girl trapped in the life of a 1950s housewife; her slapstick quest for fame and fortune ended in abject failure weekly. Both the antics and the humiliation entered the DNA of TV comedy, from Desperate Housewives to 30 Rock - writers can't live without Lucy.

02.06 Thomas Jefferson's Monticello   It's home renovation run amok as Studio 360's American Icons tells the story behind Monticello. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson's own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello.

January 2011

For January: in The Promised Land, Majora Carter (pictured at left), introduces us to today's visionaries...the passionate men, women, and young adults who see potential in unlikely places.
In each one-hour program, she talks with these leaders about their ideas and inspirations, their obstacles and challenges. She goes on location to see their communities and workplaces firsthand. As she creates her vivid portraits, bringing the diversity of sound and place to life, she engages listeners to join her in the adventure.

01.30  Winona LaDuke has spent decades working on issues of renewable energy, health, and environmental justice on northern Minnesota's White Earth Reservation and beyond. Outspoken, engaging, and unflaggingly dedicated, LaDuke introduces host Majora Carter to the pine forests, lakes, and windswept plains of her land. She talks about harnessing wind power, improving nutrition, preserving heritage crops, and a mandate to protect the land inherited from her ancestors.

01.23  John Francis spent two decades walking across North and South America, spreading a silent message of respect for the earth. He takes host Majora Carter on a day-long walk across his hometown, Cape May, New Jersey. We get to know this man who has raised awareness and changed minds globally, a man who, no surprise here, chooses his words carefully - a man who has dedicated his life to saving the planet one step at a time.

01.16  Brenda Palms Barber is driven by a certainty that "people deserve second chances and you can choose to turn your life around." Brenda started a transitional jobs program for ex-convicts that teaches life skills through beekeeping. She takes host Majora Carter through the streets of Chicago, past churches and crack houses, to check out the beehives and chat with ex-offenders who are now the core workforce of this nonprofit enterprise.

01.09  Frank and Audrey Peterman 
If Frank and Audrey Peterman have their way, many more of their fellow black Americans will visit our national parks. They take host Majora Carter to Yosemite, where she crawls through a hundred-foot cave and meets Yosemite's only black park ranger.

01.02 Nalini Nadkarni
Pioneering researcher and "queen of the forest canopy" Nalini Nadkarni shows host Majora Carter the wonders of the Olympic rain forest - from the treetops! And the two visit a correctional facility where Nadkarni's innovative Moss Project employs a team of prisoners turned botanists.

December 2010

For November & December: State of the Re:Union has set out to explore how a particular American city or town creates community, the ways people transcend challenging circumstances and the vital cultural narratives that give an area its uniqueness. It's hosted by its Al Letson.

"Remember, things fall apart.  Our job is to bring them back together."  --Al Letson

12.26 State of the Re:Union - Appalachia Rising
SOTRU explores the misguided portrayal of the rural Appalachian region as a place of victims - a people at the mercy of the region's poverty or bigotry. We travel to southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky to examine how residents are balancing deep ties to their history while facing the future in a new way.

12.12 State of the Re:Union - Austin - Growing Pains
Austin is a town wrestling with its identity, not as a result of a natural disaster or economic meltdown, but rather its success. The population has spiked and so have its economic advantages, but many residents worry that the development and growth might jeopardize the city's unique countercultural feel. SOTRU explores the balance of culture and success in the Texas capital.

12.05 State of the Re:Union - Los Angeles - Home Sweet Home
Los Angeles, Lala land, often thought of as the city of movies and money and fame. But that characterization doesn't get at the heart and soul of this City of Angels. SOTRU will spend the episode telling stories of habitat and how several groups of people are making a home in this beautiful and sprawling metropolis

11.28 State of the Re:Union - Twin Cities - World within Two Cities
It isn't exactly Lake Wobegon anymore...Once known as the home of Midwestern Lutherans and Scandinavian farmers, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are now wildly diverse. They have become cities of immigrants, from Tibetans to Somalis, Iraqis to the Khmer people of Cambodia. In this episode, SOTRU explores the worlds within the Twin Cities, from Ethiopian Lutherans to Hmong rappers to a Somali community struggling with a devastating mystery.

11.21 State of the Re:Union - Española - The Land Remembers
Española, New Mexico is known as the first Capitol City in America. Settled by Spanish conquistadors in 1598, the area's rich cultural past is still evident today in it's music, art, and way of life. But changing demographics, along with a shift in the local economy has left many residents without land, water, and a sense of identity. State of the Re:Union travels to the Española Valley of Northern New Mexico to explore the area's history of dispossession, and to discover what the rest of the country can learn from this still vital region of the American Southwest.

11.14 State of the Re:Union - Veteran's Day
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are sending our veterans home with wounds and obstacles not always clearly visible to the rest of the country. These two current wars also illuminate how veterans of previous eras are still trying to come home years after returning from war. In this episode, State of the Re:Union explores how veterans are serving each other after they come back home from serving the country.

November 2010 Elections

 Pop and Politics with Farai Chideya is a three-part series about the 2010 midterm elections, looking beyond the horserace to get to the real issues, fears, and beliefs that motivate voters.

Chideya looks at hot-button issues such as race, immigration and economics. She presses politicians in battleground states for answers and turns to real people, on their turf, to ask if they think America is headed in the right direction.

Also examined is the undercurrent of vitriol present in American political discourse, and Chideya will explore how America can move forward, post-election, towards reconciliation.

11.07 The New Map: America, Redrawn and Reconceived 
Immediately following the midterm elections, Chideya and guests analyze the resulting new political map. They look for connections and trends, drawing on everything from the 2010 Census to themes in pop culture. Chideya and her team also discuss what may lie ahead for politicians and private citizens alike.

10.31 New Voters, New Challenges
We look at immigration and jobs, and check in with first time voters from 2008 to see if they're still engaged. With the passage of the state's controversial immigration bill earlier this year, Arizona is at center of the immigration debate. From Phoenix to the Tohono O'odham Nation to Yuma, we talk to real people about their hopes, fears and anxiety.

10.24  Race, Rage and Reconciliation: American Politics Viewed from the Road
We go to Florida to talk to real people about the ways the American Dream is colliding with reality, and what it means in the voting booth.

You'll hear from Colonel Allen West, a black Tea Party candidate, residents of a historic black community where the land has been contaminated by industrial toxins, who say business and politicians have abandoned them, Muslim-Americans in Gainesville where a cancelled Koran burning reminds them of everyday biases, and in Miami from victors and victims of the foreclosure crisis.