APM Reports Documentaries
APM Reports
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The documentary unit of APM Reports (formerly American RadioWorks) has produced more than 140 programs on topics such as health, history, education and justice.
Available episodes
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Oct 20, 2022
Introducing: Sold a Story
Emily Hanford introduces the first episode of her new podcast, Sold a Story.
There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Subscribe: soldastory.org
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Aug 9, 2022
No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School
Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called "no excuses." Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed its own policies — calling them "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black." In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.
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Aug 2, 2022
Standing in Two Worlds: Native American College Diaries
Native American students are just a tiny fraction of all the college students in the United States. They come with different histories, confronting an education system once used to erase their languages and cultures. In this project, three Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people.
Photos: See portraits of the students in this documentary
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Sep 3, 2021
In Deep: One City's Year of Climate Chaos
Most scientists believe climate change is increasing the severity of the storms we experience, and how quickly they intensify. After suffering two hurricanes, a winter storm, and devastating flooding in less than a year, Lake Charles, Louisiana, offers a troubling view of the wrenching, disturbingly inequitable effects of climate change.
In Deep: One City’s Year of Climate Chaos offers a rich journalistic portrait of a working-class city and its residents at a perilous moment in our planet’s existence.
Read the story.
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Aug 19, 2021
Under Pressure: The College Mental Health Crisis
Even before the pandemic, campus counselling services were reporting a marked uptick in the number of students with anxiety, clinical depression and other serious psychiatric problems. What is a college’s responsibility for helping students navigate mental health challenges, and how well are colleges rising to the task?
Read more: Inside the college mental health crisis
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Aug 11, 2021
Who Wants to Be a Teacher?
Many schools around the country are struggling to find enough teachers. Large numbers of teachers quit after a short time on the job, so schools are constantly struggling to replace them. The problem is particularly acute at rural schools and urban schools. The most common level of experience of teachers in the United States now is one year on the job.
At the same time, enrollment in teacher training programs at colleges and universities is plummeting, and schools are looking to other sources to fill classrooms.
In Nevada, a desperate need for teachers this year led to allowing people with just a high school diploma to fill in as substitutes. Oklahoma recently changed its law to allow people with a bachelor’s degree — in anything — to teach indefinitely on emergency teaching certificates. Schools in Texas are increasingly turning to for-profit teacher training programs.
Data we obtained shows that nearly one in four of the teachers hired in Texas last year came through a single for-profit online program — one that’s now making its way into other states. We’ll look at the implications of these changes, both for children and for the teaching force.
Read more: Texas company fuels rise of for-profit teacher training programs
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Aug 3, 2021
Fading Beacon: Why America is Losing International Students
Colleges and universities in the United States attract more than a million international students a year. Higher education is one of America’s top service exports, generating $42 billion in revenue. But the money spigot is closing. The pandemic, visa restrictions, rising tuition and a perception of poor safety in America have driven new international student enrollment down by a jaw-dropping 72 percent.
Read more: The U.S. may never regain its dominance as a destination for international students. Here's why that matters.
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Apr 17, 2021
The Jail Tapes in the Dumpster
Sixteen-year-old Myon Burrell was sent to prison for life after a stray bullet killed an 11-year-old girl in Minneapolis in 2002. Amy Klobuchar, who was Minneapolis’ top prosecutor, brought first-degree murder charges as part of a national crackdown on gang violence — a crackdown that engulfed young men of color.
Burrell maintained his innocence for 18 years in prison. AP reporter Robin McDowell spent a year looking into Burrell’s case and found that multiple people had lied about Burrell’s involvement in the shooting, and police didn’t talk to his alibi witnesses. In December 2020, the state commuted Burrell’s sentence, allowing him to walk free.
This end to a prison sentence is rare: Burrell’s case was the first time in at least 28 years that Minnesota commuted a sentence for a violent crime case. But the factors that put Burrell in prison are not rare at all. According to The Sentencing Project, there are 10,000 people serving life sentences in the U.S. for crimes committed when they were juveniles. Half of them are Black. Burrell’s longshot reveals just how difficult it is to right a wrong in our criminal justice system. How many other Myons are there?
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Nov 22, 2020
The Bad Place
More than 40 states have sent their most vulnerable kids to facilities run by a for-profit company named Sequel. Many of those kids were abused there. Read more.
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Aug 14, 2020
Black at Mizzou: Confronting race on campus
Lauren Brown says college was "culture shock." Most of the students at her high school were Black, but most of the students at the University of Missouri were white. And she got to the university in the fall of 2015, when Black students led protests in response to a string of racist incidents. The protests put Mizzou in the national news.
But the news stories didn't match what Lauren saw. They made it seem like racism on campus was an aberration. And they made it seem like Black student organizing was new at Mizzou. What Lauren saw was "Black Mizzou," a thriving campus-within-a-campus that Black students have built over decades to make the university a more welcoming place.
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Aug 6, 2020
What the Words Say
Everyone agrees that the goal of reading instruction is for children to understand what they read. The question is: how does a little kid get there? Emily Hanford explores what reading scientists have figured out about how reading comprehension works and why poverty and race can affect a child’s reading development. Read the full story.
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Jul 29, 2020
Covid on Campus
The coronavirus pandemic represents the greatest challenge to American higher education in decades. Some small regional colleges that were already struggling won’t survive. Other schools, large and small, are rethinking how to offer an education while keeping people safe.
This program explores how institutions are handling the crisis, and how students are trying to navigate a major disruption in their college years.
Colleges on the brink
The long tradition of students attending small, residential liberal arts colleges around the country was already shaky before the pandemic. Students are choosing less expensive options and more practical degrees. Experts warn that 10 percent of American colleges — about 200 or more institutions — are on the verge of going under. The pandemic is accelerating that trend. A digital divide
The pandemic is making getting through college harder for students on the wrong side of the digital divide. In rural Arizona, when campuses closed, some stu…
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Nov 7, 2019
Soldiers for Peace
During the Vietnam War, roughly one in five GIs actively opposed the conflict. Many servicemen and women came to believe they were not liberating the country from communism but acting as agents of tyranny. In the combat zone, they rebelled against their commanders' orders. At home, they staged massive protests. Soldiers for Peace offers a first-person look at how GIs were transformed by Vietnam, and the strategies veterans and active-duty personnel used to bring the war to an end.
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Nov 1, 2019
Uprooted: The 1950s plan to erase Indian Country
In the 1950s, the United States came up with a plan to solve what it called the "Indian Problem." It would assimilate Native Americans by moving them to cities and eliminating reservations. The 20-year campaign failed to erase Native Americans, but its effects on Indian Country are still felt today.
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Oct 15, 2019
Fading Minds: Why There's Still No Cure for Alzheimer's
In the 1970s, the founder of the National Institute on Aging convinced a nation that senility was really Alzheimer's and could be cured. Research money flowed to one theory, leaving alternatives unexamined — today it's come up short.
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Aug 22, 2019
At a Loss for Words: What's wrong with how schools teach reading
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.
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Aug 14, 2019
Students on the Move: Keeping uprooted kids in school
A growing body of research finds that repeatedly uprooted children are more likely to struggle in school and more likely to drop out. But there are ways to help them succeed.
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Aug 6, 2019
Under a Watchful Eye: How colleges are tracking students to boost graduation
At Georgia State in Atlanta, more students are graduating, and the school credits its use of predictive analytics. But critics worry that the algorithms may be invading students' privacy and reinforcing racial inequities.
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May 9, 2019
When Tasers Fail
Tasers have become an essential tool for police, but how effective are they? An APM Reports investigation finds that officers in some big cities rated Tasers as unreliable up to 40 percent of the time, and in three large departments, newer models were less effective than older ones. In 258 cases over three years, a Taser failed to subdue someone who was then shot and killed by police.
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Sep 10, 2018
Hard Words: Why Aren't Our Kids Being Taught to Read?
Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don't know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.
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Sep 3, 2018
Old Idea, New Economy: Rediscovering Apprenticeships
You might think apprenticeships are a relic from an earlier era, but a growing number of Americans are using them as a way into the middle class.
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Aug 27, 2018
Still Rising: First-Generation College Students a Decade Later
They bet that college would help them move up. Did it pay off?
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Aug 20, 2018
Changing Class: Are Colleges Helping Americans Move Up?
Colleges have long offered a pathway to success for just about anyone. But new research shows that with the country growing ever more economically divided, colleges are not doing enough to help students from poor families achieve the American Dream.
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Jul 11, 2018
Order 9066, Part 3: Leaving Camp
At the end of 1944, the U.S. government lifted the order barring people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Many people freed from camp faced racism and poverty as they tried to rebuild their lives.
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Jul 11, 2018
Order 9066, Part 2: Fighting for Freedom
At the beginning of World War Two, Japanese Americans not already in the military were declared ineligible for service. The government said it doubted their loyalty. But as the war dragged on, the need for manpower grew urgent.
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Jul 11, 2018
Order 9066, Part 1: The Roundup
Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hours later, the FBI began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.
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Mar 19, 2018
Ethics Be Damned, Part 3
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a major investor in Neurocore, a company based in Michigan that claims to help kids with various attention deficit disorders. Since taking office, she's kept her stake in the company and invested even more money in it. In the third and final installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to parse DeVos' potential conflicts of interest. Plus, what happens if watchdog groups use ethics as a political weapon? To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.
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Mar 19, 2018
Ethics Be Damned, Part 2
It all started with a fur coat and an expensive rug. It ended with the resignation of President Eisenhower's chief of staff. That incident led to the government ethics system of today. In the second installment of our series, APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss the history of U.S. ethics rules, and the complicated financial holdings of current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.
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Mar 19, 2018
Ethics Be Damned, Part 1
More than half of Trump's 20-person Cabinet has engaged in questionable or unethical conduct since taking office. The nation's top ethics official says "these are perilous times." In the first installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss whether the federal ethics system is broken. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.
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Sep 11, 2017
Shadow Class: College Dreamers in Trump's America
President Trump is ending DACA, which allowed some 800,000 undocumented young people to stay and work in the United States. For some, that may mean the end of a dream of going to college. This program profiles DACA students and their opponents and examines a key court case and political forces that led to this moment.
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Sep 11, 2017
Hard to Read: How American schools fail kids with dyslexia
Public schools are denying children with dyslexia proper treatment and often failing to identify them in the first place.
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Sep 4, 2017
Shackled Legacy: Universities and the Slave Trade
Profits from slavery and related industries helped build some of the most prestigious schools in New England. This documentary focuses on three universities -- Harvard, Georgetown and the University of Virginia -- as they grapple with a deeply troubling chapter in their vaunted histories.
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Aug 28, 2017
Keeping Teachers
There may be nothing more important in the educational life of a child than having effective teachers. But the United States is struggling to attract and keep teachers.
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Feb 17, 2017
Historically Black, Part 3
The Question of Black Identity, Black Love Stories
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Feb 10, 2017
Historically Black, Part 2
Tracking Down a Slave's Bill of Sale, The Path to Founding an HBCU, The Fiddler who Charmed Missouri
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Feb 3, 2017
Historically Black, Part 1
NASA's Human Computers, Harlem Through James Van Der Zee's Lens, The Spirit of the Million Man March
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Sep 8, 2016
Rewriting the Sentence: College Behind Bars
After an abrupt reversal 20 years ago, some prisons and colleges try to maintain college education for prisoners.
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Sep 1, 2016
What It Takes: Chasing Graduation at High-Poverty High Schools
The nation's high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, but high-poverty schools face a stubborn challenge. Schools in Miami and Pasadena are trying to do things differently.
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Aug 25, 2016
Spare the Rod: Reforming School Discipline
A get-tough attitude prevailed among educators in the 1980s and 1990s, but research shows that zero-tolerance policies don't make schools safer and lead to disproportionate discipline for students of color.
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Aug 18, 2016
Stuck at Square One: The Remedial Education Trap
A system meant to give college students a better shot at succeeding is actually getting in the way of many, costing them time and money and taking a particular toll on students of color.
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May 12, 2016
Thirsty Planet
Scientists say most people on Earth will first experience climate change in terms of water — either too much or too little.
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May 12, 2016
Bought and Sold: The New Fight Against Teen Sex Trafficking
Advocates for kids are pushing for a new approach to combating underage prostitution: treating young people caught up in sex trafficking as victims, not delinquents.
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Sep 10, 2015
Beyond the Blackboard: Building Character in Public Schools
This documentary explores the "Expeditionary Learning" approach, traces the history of ideas that led to its inception, and investigates what American schools could learn from its success.
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Sep 3, 2015
From Boots to Books: Student Veterans and the New GI Bill
The longest war in American history is drawing to a close. Now, the men and women who served are coming home, and many hope to use higher education to build new, better lives.
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Aug 27, 2015
Teaching Teachers
Research shows good teaching makes a big difference in how much kids learn. But the United States lacks an effective system for training new teachers or helping them get better once they're on the job.
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Aug 20, 2015
The Living Legacy: Black Colleges in the 21st Century
Before the civil rights movement, African Americans were largely barred from white-dominated institutions of higher education. And so black Americans, and their white supporters, founded their own schools, which came to be known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
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Nov 13, 2014
The First Family of Radio: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt both used the new medium of radio to reach into American homes like never before.
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Sep 11, 2014
Ready to Work: Reviving Vocational Ed
Vocational education was once a staple of American schooling, preparing some kids for blue-collar futures while others were put on a path to college. Many experts say it's time to bring back career and technical education.
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Sep 4, 2014
The New Face of College
Just 20 percent of college-goers fit the stereotype of being young, single, full-time students who finish a degree in four years. College students today are more likely to be older, part-time, working, and low-income than they were three decades ago.
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Aug 28, 2014
Greater Expectations: The Challenge of the Common Core
The United States is in the midst of a huge education reform. The Common Core State Standards are a new set of expectations for what students should learn each year in school.
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Aug 21, 2014
The Science of Smart
Researchers have long been searching for better ways to learn. In recent decades, experts working in cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience have opened new windows into how the brain works, and how we can learn to learn better.
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Sep 1, 2013
Second-Chance Diploma: Examining the GED
Most test-takers hope the GED will lead to a better job or more education. But critics say the GED encourages some students to drop out of school. And research shows the credential is of little value to most people who get one.
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Aug 1, 2013
One Child at a Time: Custom Learning in the Digital Age
Learning with a personal tutor is one of the oldest and best ways to learn. Hiring a tutor for every student was never a realistic option. Now, new computer programs can customize education for each child.
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Sep 13, 2012
Keyboard College: How Technology is Revolutionizing Higher Education
Digital technologies and the Internet are changing how many Americans go to college. From online learning to simulation programs to smart-machine mentors, the 21st-century student will be taught in fundamentally new ways.
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Sep 6, 2012
The Rise of Phoenix: For-Profit Universities Shake Up the Academy
For-profit colleges have deep roots in American history, but until recently they were a tiny part of the higher education landscape. Now they are big players.
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Aug 30, 2012
Grit, Luck and Money: Preparing Kids for College and Getting Them Through
More people are going to college than ever before, but a lot of them aren't finishing. Low-income students, in particular, struggle to get to graduation.
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Sep 3, 2011
Don't Lecture Me: Rethinking the Way College Students Learn
College students spend a lot of time listening to lectures. But research shows there are better ways to learn. And experts say students need to learn better because the 21st century economy demands more well-educated workers.
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Sep 1, 2011
Who Needs an English Major?
The most popular college major in America these days is business. Some students think it doesn't pay to study philosophy or history. But advocates of liberal arts programs say their graduates are still among the most likely to become leaders, and that a healthy democracy depends on citizens with a broad and deep education.
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Aug 12, 2011
Some College, No Degree: Getting Adults Back to School
In an economy that increasingly demands workers with knowledge and skills, many college dropouts are being left behind.
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Feb 12, 2011
Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal
The production of electricity in America pumps out more greenhouse gases than all of our cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined, and half of our electricity comes from burning coal.
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Jan 12, 2011
Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality
Equal access to transportation was once a central issue of the Civil Rights Movement. But today, disparities still persist.
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Jan 8, 2011
State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement
Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.
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Jan 1, 2011
Say It Loud: A Century of Great African-American Speeches
Titled after the classic 1969 James Brown anthem, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," this anthology illuminates the ideas and debates pulsing through the black freedom struggle from the 1960s to the present. These arguments are suffused with basic questions about what it means to be black in America.
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Jan 1, 2011
Say It Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches
Spanning the 20th century, this collection is a vivid account of how African Americans sounded the charge against racial injustice, exhorting the country to live up to its democratic principles.
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Aug 12, 2010
Testing Teachers
Teachers matter. A lot. Studies show that students with the best teachers learn three times as much as students with the worst teachers. Researchers say the achievement gap between poor children and their higher-income peers could disappear if poor kids got better teachers.
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Jun 12, 2010
War on Poverty
When Lyndon B. Johnson became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he put the power of his presidency behind a remarkable series of reform initiatives. The legislation was geared toward boosting economic opportunity, a theme captured by his administration's catchphrase, the Great Society.
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Jun 1, 2010
The Great Textbook War
What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia. Schools were hit by dynamite, buses were riddled with bullets, and coal mines were shut down. The fight was over a new set of textbooks.
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Nov 12, 2009
Workplace U
A new movement turns conventional wisdom on its head, and makes a job the ticket to an education. The idea is to turn workplaces into classrooms and marginal students into productive workers.
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Nov 1, 2009
Rising By Degrees
The United States is facing a dramatic demographic challenge: Young Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the population, and they are the least likely to graduate from college.
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Oct 12, 2009
Early Lessons
The Perry Preschool Project is one of the most famous education experiments of the last 50 years. The study asked a question: Can preschool boost the IQ scores of poor African-American children and prevent them from failing in school?
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Jun 26, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Hard Times in Middletown Debrief
Producer Laurie Stern talks with Stephen Smith about wrapping up their documentary Hard Times in Middletown.
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Jun 19, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Bridge to Somewhere Debrief
Producer Catherine Winter talks with Stephen Smith about wrapping up the documentary Bridge to Somewhere.
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Jun 12, 2009
Behind the Scenes: A Better Life Debrief
Producers Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler talk with Stephen Smith about wrapping up their documentary A Better Life: Creating the […]
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Jun 5, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City Debrief
Producer Krissy Clark talks with Stephen Smith about life after the her documentary.
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May 12, 2009
Bridge to Somewhere
President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure. So did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.
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May 1, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Editing
ARW editor Peter Clowney talks with Stephen Smith about the processing of editing radio documentaries.
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May 1, 2009
A Better Life: Creating the American Dream
The "American dream" has powered the hopes and aspirations of Americans for generations. But what exactly is the American dream? How did we come to define it? And is it changing?
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Apr 24, 2009
Behind the Scenes: A Better Life, Part 2
ARW producers Ellen Guettler and Kate Ellis discuss the “American dream.” It began as a plain but revolutionary notion: each […]
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Apr 17, 2009
Behind the Scenes: The Great Depression
ARW Executive Editor Stephen Smith hosts a panel discussion on the political, financial, and cultural sides of America during the […]
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Apr 12, 2009
Hard Times in Middletown
For almost a century, Muncie, Indiana has been known as "Middletown," the quintessential American community. But now, as the rust-belt city grapples with deepening recession, many residents are losing their hold on the middle class.
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Apr 10, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City, Part 2
Producer Krissy Clark is moving on to the editing phase for her documentary on the devastating foreclosure crisis happening in […]
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Apr 3, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Education and the Economy, Part 2
Last week, ARW producer Emily Hanford stopped by to talk about a trio of stories she’s been working on about […]
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Apr 1, 2009
Foreclosure City
Until recently, Las Vegas was one of the few places where the American Dream still seemed widely possible. Each month, thousands of people flocked there, lured by the promise of good jobs and a chance to own a home. It was the fastest growing city in the country. But now, Las Vegas has a new distinction: the nation's highest foreclosure rate.
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Mar 27, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Education and the Economy
The effects of the economic downturn are far and wide. While slowdowns used to be a good time to return […]
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Mar 20, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Bridge to Somewhere
With the country’s economy in a tailspin, many Americans are calling for a new New Deal: an infusion of federal […]
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Mar 13, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Stock Crazy
To understand the American fascination with the stock market, you have to look at the American Dream and how it’s […]
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Mar 6, 2009
Behind the Scenes: A Better Life
Millions of Americans are slipping from the middle class, and it’s no longer certain that savvy, hard-working parents can pave […]
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Feb 27, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Hard Times in Middletown
Muncie, Indiana, often thought of as the “typical American city,” has become a rust-belt city grappling with de-industrialization and deepening […]
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Feb 20, 2009
Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City
Producer Krissy Clark has been finding scenes, meeting characters, and gathering tape in Las Vegas for her upcoming documentary on […]
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Oct 12, 2008
Campaign '68
The 1968 presidential election was a watershed in American politics. After dominating the political landscape for more than a generation, the Democratic Party crumbled. Richard M. Nixon was elected president and a new era of Republican conservatism was born.
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Oct 1, 2008
What Killed Sergeant Gray
Sergeant Adam Gray made it home from Iraq only to die in his barracks. Investigating his death, American RadioWorks pieces together a story of soldiers suffering psychological scars - because they abused Iraqi prisoners.
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Oct 1, 2008
After the Projects
Michael Whitehead lived in Chicago's Ida B. Wells housing project for nearly 50 years. In 2008, the Chicago Housing Authority closed down Wells, as part of its "Plan for Transformation," a city-wide public housing rehabilitation effort.
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Sep 12, 2008
Pueblo, USA
The nation's foreign-born population will soon surpass the 14.7 percent share reached in 1910, when the Statue of Liberty beckoned to Europe's "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Most of the new immigrants are from Latin America.
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Apr 12, 2008
Business of the Bomb
In January 2000, a German engineer living in South Africa met with a friend and business partner to hatch a deal. Gerald Wisser, a 61-year-old broker, visited his friend's pipe factory outside Johannesburg to see if his friend wanted to make a bid on a manufacturing project.
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Apr 1, 2008
Gangster Confidential
Rene Enriquez was a leader in one of America's most violent gangs, the Mexican Mafia. He's serving 20 years to life in California for murders he committed for the gang.
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Mar 12, 2008
King's Last March
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Four decades later, King remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life.
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Nov 12, 2007
Design of Desire
New research is lending insight into why we want stuff that we don't need. It also explains why some people are what are called tightwads, while other people are spendthrifts. This site is about buying and selling. About why we buy, how designers and marketers influence what we buy, and how individuals are using market ideas, tricks, and tools to market themselves.
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Nov 1, 2007
Wanted: Parents
Advocates for kids are trying to persuade more families to adopt teenagers. If teenagers in foster care don't find permanent families, they face a grim future. They "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn 18 years old, and many wind up on the streets. Every year, more than 24,000 American young people age out of foster care.
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Sep 12, 2007
Battles of Belief
America seemed united in fighting "The Good War" but not everyone fought in the same way.
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Sep 12, 2007
An Imperfect Revolution
In the 1970s, for the first time, large numbers of white children and black children began attending school together. It was an experience that shaped them for life.
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Sep 1, 2007
Put to the Test
The effects of high-stakes testing on students, teachers, and schools.
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Aug 2, 2007
Routes to Recovery
To mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, American RadioWorks teams up with Nick Spitzer of American Routes to find out how culture might save New Orleans.
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Aug 1, 2007
Green Rush
From carbon offsets to biofuels, companies and investors are seeking riches in the fight against global warming. What happens when good deeds grapple with the realities of the free market?
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May 12, 2007
A Burden to Be Well
The effects of mental illness are well documented. But until recently, there has been little said about the siblings of the mentally ill. Now researchers are starting to look at the "well-sibling" syndrome.
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Jan 12, 2007
Imperial Washington
Explore the trappings of life in Congress, the pressure to raise campaign dollars and Washington's powerful world of lobbying.
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Dec 12, 2006
Hearing America
A century ago, the first radio broadcasts sent music out into the air. Since then, music has dominated America's airwaves and it's been a cultural battleground.
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Dec 12, 2006
Urban Shakespeare
A few "at risk" teens in Los Angeles are getting their first jobs, as working artists: studying Shakespeare and writing their own poetry and music, all while earning minimum wage.
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Nov 12, 2006
Reports from a Warming Planet
The early signs of climate change are showing up across vastly differing landscapes: from melting outposts near the Arctic Circle to disappearing glaciers high in the Andes; from the rising water in the deltas of Bangladesh to the "sinking" atolls of the Pacific. Reports from a Warming Planet takes you to parts of the planet where global warming is already making changes to life and landscape, and demonstrates how climate change is no longer restricted to scientific modeling about the future. It's happening now.
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Oct 12, 2006
Japan's Pop Power
To many people, global youth culture means rock and roll and other Western fashions. But for more and more young people across to world, the capital of pop culture is Tokyo. Over the past decade, Japanese video games, animation and comic books have caught fire in much of the world, including the United States.
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Sep 12, 2006
Rewiring the Brain
A unique study of Romania's orphans reveals the profound effects of social deprivation on brain development.
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Sep 12, 2006
The Sonic Memorial Project
Peabody-award winning documentary that chronicles the sounds and voices of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood.
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Aug 12, 2006
Rebuilding Biloxi
Hurricane Katrina devastated the lives of thousands of Mississippi Gulf Coast residents. Rebuilding Biloxi tells the stories of several families in the coastal community of Biloxi, Miss., and their struggle to survive and then recover from the storm.
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Jun 12, 2006
Vietnam and the Presidency
Four American presidents tried to end the conflict in Vietnam. The lessons they learned echo sharply today.
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Jun 12, 2006
Power Trips: Congressional Staffers Share the Road
Public documents show that from 2000 through mid-2005, Capitol Hill staffers accepted nearly 17,000 free trips worth almost $30 million. Many of these trips clearly violate ethics rules designed to limit the abuse of power.
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May 12, 2006
After Welfare
In August 1996, landmark legislation fulfilled the promise to "end welfare as we know it." Congress gave the states money to run their own programs and required them to move many welfare recipients into the workforce. Supporters declared it a new day, the beginning of self-sufficiency for poor families. Others warned the action would push women and children into the streets, perhaps by the millions.
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Apr 12, 2006
Bankrupt
Americans are going broke in record numbers. In 2005 Congress overhauled the bankruptcy system to stem the tide of filings. What's behind the boom in going bust?
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Mar 12, 2006
Logging On and Losing Out
Internet poker has taken America by storm. Three-quarters of high school and college kids are gambling on a regular basis. But adolescents are far more vulnerable to getting addicted to gambling than adults. And with Internet companies making millions from online gamblers, there's little incentive or legal controls to restrict youth gambling.
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Feb 12, 2006
Unmasking Stalin
On February 25, 1956, former Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev revealed and denounced, for the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, the crimes of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, dramatically shifting Soviet Russia's course, stirring a human rights movement, and opening the door to the eventual collapse of the USSR.
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Jan 12, 2006
Intelligent Designs on Evolution
How a rival concept about the origins of life is defying the cornerstone of biology.
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Nov 13, 2005
Las Vegas
Trace Las Vegas' evolution from a remote railroad town to a mobster metropolis, to its current incarnation as an adult-themed resort town that nearly two million people call home.
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Oct 13, 2005
Power Trips: Pombo in the Gray
Tax law prohibits members of Congress from taking international trips paid for by private foundations, but Republican Richard Pombo may have done just that.
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Oct 13, 2005
Finding Home
More than 20,000 foreign children are adopted by Americans every year. Most come from poor and troubled parts of the world, and a life in America offers new hope. But it also means separation from their birth culture. Finding Home: Fifty Years of International Adoption explores the pull of adoption across lives and borders.
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Sep 13, 2005
No Place for a Woman
In the 1970s, women began breaking into male-dominated professions as never before. Women took jobs as police officers, lawyers and steelworkers. Across the country, the first women in male bastions faced a hostile reception. In the iron mines of northern Minnesota, women were harassed, threatened and assaulted. Their fight to keep their jobs broke new legal ground and helped change the workplace forever.
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Jul 13, 2005
Married to the Military
The United States is making huge demands on its military people, the toughest since the Vietnam War. But most soldiers during Vietnam were young, single men. Today, in the all-volunteer military, about half of all service people are married with children, so the burdens of fighting these wars are shared back home.
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Jul 13, 2005
Power Trips: Chilled Travel
How has all the recent news about congressional travel changed the travel habits of those in Congress?
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Jun 13, 2005
Power Trips: The Lobbyists' Loophole
Over the past few years, private groups have payed for more than 4,800 trips by members of Congress at a cost of $14 million.
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May 13, 2005
The Cost of Corruption
Corruption skims billions from the global economy, locking millions of people in poverty. But a worldwide movement is fighting back.
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May 13, 2005
Global 3.0
For many, globalization has meant rich countries getting richer at the expense of the poor. Today, it's not that simple.
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Apr 13, 2005
A Mind of Their Own
Most children can be volatile at some point in their development, with no particular cause for worry. But at what point do irritability, mood swings, and tantrums constitute a mental illness? Up to half a million children are believed to have bipolar illness. This is the story of three of those children, their families, and the professionals who work with them.
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Mar 13, 2005
Locked Down
The supermax prison was designed to incapacitate dangerous criminals by locking them down in stark isolation. But do they live up to their promise?
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Jan 13, 2005
No Place To Hide
President Bush has admitted ordering intelligence agencies to electronically spy on American citizens without court oversight since 9/11. Such monitoring of suspected terrorists affects thousands of people. But unknown to most people, the government has also turned to the nation's burgeoning data industry to track millions of people in the name of homeland security. So for most Americans, there is no place to hide.
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Jan 11, 2005
The Surprising Legacy of Y2K
Five years after the hoopla and warnings about Y2K, many still dismiss it as a hoax, scam, or non-event. But in reality, Y2K was not only a real threat narrowly averted, it also led to changes in how we look at technology and economic shifts that are still being felt today. For the fifth anniversary of Y2K, we look at the history and the legacy of the millennium bug.
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Jan 2, 2005
Justice for Sale?
Thirty-eight states have elections for state courts around the country. These days, those races are getting more expensive, and can even run into the millions of dollars. Much of that money comes from special interests trying to elect candidates to the courts. That raises alarms bells about the independence of the judiciary, and calls for reform.
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Dec 13, 2004
Carving Up the Vote
One hugely influential issue in the last election got little attention: gerrymandering. Politicians have been tinkering with the boundaries of their electoral districts for decades, but in the last five years, the practice has exploded, and it led to the least competitive race for the U.S. House of Representatives in memory.
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Nov 13, 2004
Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
They were the kings of corporate America, but over the past 25 years, American manufacturers have lost that position of power. Today, America's largest private sector employer is Wal-Mart, a retailer so large, it virtually dictates many decisions manufacturers make, and is pushing American production overseas.
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Nov 2, 2004
The Choice 2004, Part 2
Two candidates for President, offering two directions for America. They are men of the same generation, Yale graduates from privileged New England families. But they took starkly different paths as they formed their values and politics. In this report, a dual biography of George W. Bush and John Kerry, and how their distinctive histories and personalities would shape their approach to the presidency.
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Nov 1, 2004
The Choice 2004, Part 1
Two candidates for President, offering two directions for America. They are men of the same generation, Yale graduates from privileged New England families. But they took starkly different paths as they formed their values and politics. In this report, a dual biography of George W. Bush and John Kerry, and how their distinctive histories and personalities would shape their approach to the presidency.
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Sep 13, 2004
Red Runs the Vistula
Five years after the start of World War II, the people of Warsaw rose up against the German occupation of their city. The uprising was meant to last just 48 hours. Instead, it went on for two months. A quarter of a million people were killed and the Polish capital was razed to the ground. It was one of the great tragedies of World War II, and yet it is rarely talked about outside Poland.
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Sep 13, 2004
Witnesses to Terror
During an 18-month investigation, the 9/11 Commission heard extraordinary testimony about the terrorist attacks on America. Witnesses told stories of lucky breaks and deadly errors. The commission pieced together new evidence and new details to tell the most complete story to date of the al Qaeda plot.
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Aug 13, 2004
Suffering For Two
More women than ever are taking antidepressant medication, including more pregnant women. For those trying to weigh the danger of fetal exposure to medication against the risk of a mother's relapse into depression, scientists offer mixed or even conflicting advice.
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Aug 13, 2004
Climate of Uncertainty
Scientists have discovered that the Earth's climate is capable of changing abruptly. Could global warming bring the Earth to another such rapid change?
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Jul 13, 2004
Mandela: An Audio History
A decade ago, Nelson Mandela became president in South Africa's first multi-racial democratic election. Mandela's journey, from freedom fighter to president, capped a dramatic half-century long struggle against white rule and the institution of apartheid.
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Jun 13, 2004
The Hospice Experiment
The '60s were a time of social movements and big changes, but a quieter revolution was underway too -- one led by a few middle-aged women who wanted to change our way of death. They were the founders of the hospice movement.
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May 13, 2004
Thurgood Marshall Before the Court
In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Marshall had already earned a place in history, as the leader of an extraordinary legal campaign against racial segregation in America.
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Apr 13, 2004
The Few Who Stayed
In April 1994, the central African nation of Rwanda exploded into 100 days of violence, killing 800,000 people. Most turned their backs to the bloodshed. Here is the story of those who stayed.
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Apr 1, 2004
The Whole Thing Changed
The end of major combat in Iraq did not bring an end to the fighting. American troops trying to rebuild the country found themselves surrounded by unknown dangers and escalating hostility from Iraqis whom they once viewed with sympathy. American RadioWorks asked medics with the Army's 101st airborne division stationed in Mosul, Iraq to record their impressions of the situation unfolding around them. The recording was made in December 2003 shortly before they returned to their base in Fort Cambell, Kentucky. Their story, along with a follow-up interview, aired on The World in April 2004.
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Feb 13, 2004
My Name Is Iran
In 1927, Iran developed a legal code doing away with gruesome Islamic punishments such as stoning and lashing. That all changed during the Islamic revolution of 1979. NPR Producer Davar Ardalan and co-producer Rasool Nafisi look at Iran's long search for a lawful society.
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Nov 13, 2003
The President Calling
Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon left hundreds of hours of secretly taped telephone conversations. What can these tapes tell us about the presidency and the individuals that hold the office?
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Nov 13, 2003
Whose Vote Counts?
The newest voting machine technology may do little to lessen voter disenfranchisement or fraud, and it will do nothing for those that have lost the right to vote.
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Sep 13, 2003
Iraq: The War After the War
Even after the fall of Baghdad, the U.S. is still fighting.
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Jul 13, 2003
Korea: The Unfinished War
Examine the often-overlooked war that helped define global politics and American life for the second half of the 20th century.
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Jun 13, 2003
Investigating Sierra Leone
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor faces international war crimes charges arising from one of Africa's most brutal civil wars. American RadioWorks followed investigators as they built their case against Taylor.
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Mar 13, 2003
Hard Time
What impact has America's 30-year War on Crime had on communities and families?
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Oct 13, 2002
Gunrunners
Small arms pass from war zone to war zone through a global network of arms traffickers. This is a story about just one part of the illegal arms pipeline.
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Sep 13, 2002
Days of Infamy
Days of Infamy compares recordings of ordinary Americans reacting to Pearl Harbor and September 11.
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Sep 13, 2002
Nature's Revenge
Every year, a chunk of land almost the size of Manhattan turns into open water in Louisiana, threatening the state's economy as well as vital American industries like seafood, oil and gas.
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Aug 13, 2002
New York Works
Jobs that are slowly disappearing in New York City and the people that keep them alive.
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Aug 13, 2002
Deadly Decisions
How do jurors decide who should live and who should die?
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Jul 13, 2002
Justice on Trial
From the trials of Nazis at Nuremberg to the prosecution of war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, to people's courts in Rwanda -- how effective is the machinery of international justice?
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Jun 13, 2002
Fast Food and Animal Rights
An unlikely corporation -- McDonald's -- has taken the lead in the campaign for animal welfare.
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Jun 13, 2002
Kay Fulton's Diary
The intimate diary of a woman who loses her brother to terrorism.
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Apr 13, 2002
Corrections, Inc.
How corporations, prison guard unions, and police agencies help to shape who gets locked up and for how long.
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Mar 13, 2002
Who Bought the Farm?
Is there still a place in America for a competitive and independent family farm? And is the use of popular antibiotics on livestock leading us toward a public health crisis?
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Feb 13, 2002
The Promise of Justice
Examining the machinery and insidious legacy of war crimes, and the struggle for justice in societies convulsed by mass violence.
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Dec 13, 2001
Roots of Resentment
The United States inspires deep and conflicting emotions in other parts of the world. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, America has been forced to pay closer attention.
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Nov 13, 2001
With This Ring
Follow the international diamond trail from the buckets of child miners in war-torn Western Africa to America's jewelry counters.
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Nov 13, 2001
Remembering Jim Crow
For much of the 20th century, African Americans endured a legal system in the American South that was calculated to segregate and humiliate them.
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Oct 1, 2001
Burning the Evidence
During the war in Kosovo in 1999, war-crimes investigators suspected that Serbian forces were hiding evidence of atrocities by removing bodies of murdered Albanians from graves and execution sites. But until now, no one could say precisely what happened to many of these bodies.
This is the story of a secret and grisly operation by Serbian security forces to destroy evidence of possible war crimes in an industrial furnace in northern Kosovo.
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Aug 13, 2001
A Russian Journey
Follow Russian writer Aleksandr Radishchev's 200-year-old footsteps from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and discover the soul of a people and the character of a nation.
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Jun 13, 2001
The Global Politics of Food
The global economy is changing the way we think about food, from the kinds of things we eat, to the way food is grown and harvested.
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May 13, 2001
America's Drug War
After 30 years America's War on drugs costs U.S. taxpayers $40 billion a year with no victory in sight. Combatants from both sides of the drug war shed light on the U.S. government's fight against one of the world's most profitable industries.
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Feb 13, 2001
Oh Freedom Over Me
In the summer of 1964, about a thousand young Americans, black and white, came together in Mississippi for a peaceful assault on racism. It came to be known as Freedom Summer, one of the most remarkable chapters in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Feb 13, 2001
Radio Fights Jim Crow
During the World-War-II years a series of groundbreaking radio programs tried to mend the deep racial and ethnic divisions that threatened America.
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Aug 13, 2000
Nicaragua 'Free Zone'
Global companies fight unions on former Sandinista turf.
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Jul 13, 2000
Jailing the Mentally Ill
Why are so many mentally ill Americans behind bars?
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Apr 13, 2000
Vietnam: A Nation, Not A War
To most Americans, Vietnam is a nation frozen in time and memory. It seems a distant place where 58,000 Americans lost their lives.
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Apr 13, 2000
25 Years from Vietnam
Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, the legacy of the war affects lives on both sides of the Pacific. In this series of reports, American RadioWorks reveals how events fading into memory still influence our environments, institutions, and cultures.
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Mar 13, 2000
Shadow over Lockerbie
Two hundred seventy people died when Pan Am 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. It was the worst-ever act of airline terrorism against the United States. It was also called the world's biggest unsolved murder.
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Feb 13, 2000
Massacre at Cuska
In 1999 Serb death squads attacked the ethnic Albanian village of Cuska and left 41 unarmed civilians dead.
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Oct 13, 1999
Walking Out of History: The True Story of Shackleton's Endurance Expedition
The true story of 28 men lost in Antarctica for almost two years, fighting ice and the ocean. It's the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Endurance, and the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914.
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Sep 13, 1999
Evading the Virus
A small but growing number of scientists and doctors are helping couples with HIV get pregnant using experimental medical techniques that promise to reduce the risk of passing on HIV.
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Sep 13, 1999
The Fertility Race
A series about the social implications of infertility and the advanced reproductive techniques designed to correct the condition.
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May 13, 1999
The Forgotten 14 Million
One in five American children is growing up poor. Critics of welfare and other social programs say government spending hasn't solved poverty. But neither has economic growth.
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Jan 13, 1999
The Positive Life
Teens with HIV face the challenge of preparing for an adulthood they may never reach.
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Sep 13, 1998
Make Change, Not Money
Nonprofits are being asked to step in to address some of America's most pressing social ills as government steps back.
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Mar 13, 1998
The World Turned Upside Down
An extraordinary moment: America in a rare period of price stability.
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Feb 13, 1997
Frances Densmore, Song Catcher
Frances Densmore spent her life gathering cultural artifacts of old Indian ways.
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Sep 13, 1996
Face of Mercy, Face of Hate
Predrag Bundalo was waiting for a cup of coffee when a bullet, fired at point-blank range, killed him. He was sitting on the enemy's couch.
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