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Podcast files
ARW Behind the Scenes episodes:
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June 26, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 15, 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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June 19, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 14, Bridge to Somewhere Debrief
Producer Catherine Winter talks with Stephen Smith about wrapping up the documentary Bridge to Somewhere.
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June 12, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 13, A Better Life Debrief
Producers Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler talk with Stephen Smith about wrapping up their documentary A Better Life: Creating the American Dream.
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June 5, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 12, Foreclosure City Debrief
Producer Krissy Clark talks with Stephen Smith about the life after the her documentary.
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Spring 2009 documentaries:
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May 29, 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. Think of them as the brittle class, just one fragile rung above poverty on the economic ladder.
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May 22, 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 15, 2009
A Better Life: Creating the American Dream
The "American dream" has powered the hopes and aspirations of Americans for generations. It began as a plain but revolutionary notion: each person has the right to pursue happiness, and the freedom to strive for a better life through hard work and fair ambition. But over time, this dream has come to represent a set of expectations about owning things and making money. So what exactly is the American dream? How did we come to define it? And is it changing?
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May 8, 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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ARW Behind the Scenes episodes:
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May 1, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 11, Editing
ARW editor Peter Clowney talks with Stephen Smith about the processing of editing radio documentaries.
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April 24, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 10, 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 person has the right to pursue happiness, and the freedom to strive for a better life through hard work and fair ambition. But over time, this dream has come to represent a set of expectations about owning things and making money.
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April 17, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 9, The Great Depression
ARW Executive Editor Stephen Smith hosts a panel discussion on the political, financial, and cultural sides of America during the Great Depression.
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April 10, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 8, Foreclosure City, Part 2
Producer Krissy Clark is moving on to the editing phase for her documentary on the devastating foreclosure crisis happening in Las Vegas.
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April 3, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 7, 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 the economy and how it's affecting the choices people are making on getting a college education. This week, we'll listen to the finished versions and follow up with Emily.
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March 27, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 6, Education and the Economy
The effects of the economic downturn are far and wide. While slowdowns used to be a good time to return to education, people are having a tough time finding financial aid, and taking on student-loan debt is scarier than ever.
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March 20, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 5, Bridge to Somewhere
To understand the American fascination with the stock market, you have to look at the American Dream and how it's changed from the time of the great depression to our current recession. Senior Economics Correspondent Chris Farrell helps us look into the previous decade and why investors first got themselves into the stock market.
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March 13, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 4, Stock Crazy
To understand the American fascination with the stock market, you have to look at the American Dream and how it's changed from the time of the great depression to our current recession. Senior Economics Correspondent Chris Farrell helps us look into the previous decade and why investors first got themselves into the stock market.
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March 6, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 3, A Better Life: Creating the American Dream
Millions of Americans are slipping from the middle class, and it's no longer certain that savvy, hard-working parents can pave the way for their children's success. Producers Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler share the process of chronicling the evolution of the American Dream from the Great Depression to the present day.
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February 27, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 2, 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 recession. As they watch the plants close, many middle-class, middle-aged, Middle-American residents are left without choices. Producer Laurie Stern talks about finding characters in Muncie that illuminate the economic crisis, and how the crisis is affecting the the American middle class.
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February 20, 2009
ARW Behind the Scenes: Episode 1, Foreclosure City
Producer Krissy Clark has been finding scenes, meeting characters, and gathering tape in Las Vegas for her upcoming documentary on home foreclosures.
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Full documentaries:
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October 24, 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. On the eve of another historic election, we look back 40 years to the dramatic story of Campaign '68.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 18, 2008
After the Projects
Chicago is demolishing the public housing projects and moving residents to mixed-income neighborhoods. But there won't be room for everyone, and a new home may not mean an escape from poverty.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 10, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 3, 2008
Pueblo, USA
Latino immigrants are changing the culture and economy of America, and not just in big coastal cities. We follow a small Southern town as it adjusts to its deepest cultural change since the Civil Rights movement, and in a Midwestern city, a neighborhood is reborn when immigrants move in. But the rebirth comes at a price.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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May 7, 2008
Business of the Bomb: The Modern Nuclear Marketplace
How the global expansion of nuclear know-how is challenging efforts to contain the spread of atomic weapons.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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April 23, 2008
Gangster Confidential
For 20 years, Rene Enriquez fought his way to the top of one of America's most ruthless gangs. He killed and ordered the deaths of gang rivals on Southern California streets and behind bars. Then he had a change of heart. Gangster Confidential follows Enriquez's quest for redemption and freedom inside America's most brutal prison system.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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April 22, 2008
Remembering King
To mark the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, American RadioWorks hosted a special evening of discussion at the Riverside Church in New York City. The event was moderated by Clayborne Carson, a leading King historian and director of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. King's close colleagues, Dorothy Cotton and Vincent Harding, discussed King's radical stance on poverty and the Vietnam War, and talked about King's legacy in the context of the 2008 election.
Download the special presentation.
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April 9, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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November 19, 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. Why do we buy? How are designers and marketers influencing what we buy? And how are individuals using market ideas, tricks, and tools to market themselves?
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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November 5, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 22, 2007
An Imperfect Revolution: Voices from the Desegregation Era
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 8, 2007
Battles of Belief
America seemed united in fighting "The Good War" but not everyone fought in the same way.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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September 24, 2007
Put to the Test
No Child Left Behind has had a dramatic effect on American schools. Producers spent two years in one high school documenting how high-stakes testing has reshaped teaching and learning.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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September 10, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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August 27, 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?
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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August 13, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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July 30, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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July 16, 2007
Massacre at Cuska
In 1999 Serb death squads attacked the ethnic Albanian village of Cuska and left 41 unarmed civilians dead.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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July 2, 2007
Las Vegas: An Unconventional History
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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June 18, 2007
A Burden to be Well: Sisters and Brothers of the Mentally Ill
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.
Download the documentary or visit the Web site.
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June 4, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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May 21, 2007
Korea: The Unfinished War
To fully grasp the ongoing tensions between the United States and North Korea, it is important to understand the war that ended in 1954. John Biewen and Stephen Smith of American RadioWorks examine the often-overlooked war that helped define global politics and American life for the second half of the 20th century.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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May 7, 2007
The Few Who Stayed - Defying Genocide in Rwanda
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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April 23, 2007
Corrections, Inc.
How corporations, prison guard unions, and police agencies help to shape who gets locked up and for how long.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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April 9, 2007
Unmasking Stalin: A Speech That Changed the World
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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March 26, 2007
New York Works
New York Works is an audio portrait of a vanishing city. From a knife sharpener who still makes house calls to one of Brooklyn's last commercial fisherman, New York Works tells the stories of those who keep the city's past alive.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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March 12, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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February 26, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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February 12, 2007
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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January 29, 2007
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 the legal campaign against racial segregation, which culminated in the landmark Brown v. Board decision.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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January 15, 2007
Imperial Washington
Members of Congress face many temptations, such as special interests who want to take them on free trips golfing or fishing, to Bermuda or Wimbledon. But voters are demanding reform. In this podcast, we look at how the perks lawmakers enjoy make it tough to clean up government. And what happens when newcomers try to play the lobbying game.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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January 1, 2007
The President Calling
Three of America's most compelling presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - bugged their White House offices and tapped their telephones. They left behind thousands of secretly recorded conversations, from momentous to mundane. In this documentary project, American RadioWorks eavesdrops on presidential telephone calls to hear how each man used one-on-one politics to shape history.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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December 25, 2006
Urban Shakespeare
Los Angeles is perhaps the nation's capital of "wannabe" artists, filled with aspiring actors, directors and screenwriters who are waiting tables, parking cars and brewing coffee. All have hopes of someday escaping the drudgery of these day jobs for the golden opportunity when their art might become their full-time work. But a few teens in Los Angeles have been earning their first pay as working artists: studying Shakespeare and writing their own poetry and music, all while earning minimum wage.
Download the story or visit the Web site.
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December 18, 2006
Hearing America: A Century of Music on the Radio
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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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December 4, 2006
Vietnam and the Presidency
For historians of war and the American presidency, the Vietnam War is a special case. With troves of audio recordings, declassified documents and other materials, historians know more about how and why the White House waged war in Vietnam than in any other conflict. At a time when the United States debates what to do in Iraq, the lessons of Vietnam are more relevant than ever.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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November 20, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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November 6, 2006
No Place for a Woman
In 1970, nearly half the women in the United States had paying jobs, but most women worked for low pay. Women were waitresses, clerks, and cleaning ladies. Less than five percent of lawyers were women. About three percent of police officers were women. In the iron mines of northern Minnesota, zero percent of the steelworkers were women. But in the mid-70s, women there began taking jobs running shovels, driving trucks, and operating enormous machines in the ore processing plants. Some of the men tried to force the women miners out. Women were harassed, threatened, and even assaulted. But they needed the jobs. They wanted their rights. And they wanted to change the world for their daughters and granddaughters. So the women miners of northern Minnesota fought back, and made legal history.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 30, 2006
Rewiring the Brain: Early Deprivation and Child Development
After the fall of communism in Romania, the world was shocked to discover a vast system of orphanages where unwanted children languished in cribs with little attention from caregivers. Sixteen years later, much has changed in Romania; the old orphanages are emptying, although progress is much more evident in Bucharest than in the poorer provinces. As this grim chapter comes to a close, scientists are measuring how children recover from early neglect and discovering what early damage might be irreversible.
Download the segment or visit the Web site.
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October 23, 2006
Say It Plain: A Century of African American Oratory
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most famous black orator in history. But he was hardly alone. For generations, African Americans have been demanding justice and equality, reminding America to make good on its founding principles of democracy. These orators, and the very act of speaking out, played a crucial role in the long struggle for equal rights. Hear some of those seminal speeches at Say It Plain.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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October 9, 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.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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September 25, 2006
The Sonic Memorial Project
To mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we bring you a special rebroadcast of a Peabody-award winning documentary that chronicles the sounds and voices of the World Trade Center and its surrounding neighborhood. The program was produced for NPR on the first anniversary by The Kitchen Sisters and a nationwide collaboration. We offer it to you again, a sonic memorial that is just as moving and relevant five years later.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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September 11, 2006
Rebuilding Biloxi: One Year After Katrina
Biloxi, Mississippi is poised to recover faster than any other place on the Gulf Coast hit by Hurricane Katrina. Casinos are fueling a building boom, but some residents are still mired in misfortune. American RadioWorks presents an intimate portrait of several families struggling to rebuild their lives in Biloxi, and a city trying to reclaim itself.
Download the hour-long documentary or visit the Web site.
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August 14, 2006
Vietnam and the Presidency
For historians of war and the American presidency, the Vietnam War is a special case. With troves of audio recordings, declassified documents and other materials, historians know more about how and why the White House waged war in Vietnam than in any other conflict. At a time when the United States debates what to do in Iraq, the lessons of Vietnam are more relevant than ever.
Download a segment, listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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July 31, 2006
Life After Prison
Studies indicate that two thirds of the women in prison and half of the men have children under the age of 18. That means some 1.5 million children have a parent behind bars. When prisoners are released, one of the many challenges they face is rebuilding family life. Marsha was released from a North Carolina prison after serving a 7-year sentence as an accessory to two drug-related murders. She has two children, Michael and Khire. In 2003, correspondent John Biewen followed Marsha as she and her sons worked to put their family back together.
Download a segment, listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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July 17, 2006
Ending Welfare in Wyoming
In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the landmark Welfare Reform Bill, killing the 60-year-old welfare program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC. The new law gave grants to states to run their own anti-poverty programs and required them to move many welfare recipients into the workforce. Wyoming, more than any other state, ended welfare after 1996 by cutting its cash assistance roles by more than 90 percent. But Wyoming's leaders are now having a different debate: how to better support poor people who've gone to work.
Download a segment, listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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July 3, 2006
Power Trips: Congressional Staffers Share the Road
Public documents show that from 2000 through mid-2005, members of Congress and their staff took nearly 23,000 privately sponsored trips, at a cost of almost $50 million. A majority of those trips were taken by staff. Many of these staffer trips clearly violate ethics rules designed to limit the abuse of power.
Download a segment or listen to the series.
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June 19, 2006
An Adoptee in Exile
Since 1955, more than 100,000 Korean children have been adopted abroad. A trickle of them have moved back to South Korea, including 33-year-old writer Jane Jeong Trenka. Trenka was adopted by a family in rural Minnesota when she was six months old in 1972, along with her four-year-old sister. When Trenka was a young adult, she traveled back to Korea, and was reunited with her Korean mother and older siblings. In 2005, Trenka returned to Korea, this time permanently. She agreed to keep an audio diary about building her new life in her birth country.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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June 5, 2006
Logging On and Losing Out
Americans spent an estimated $6 billion on Internet gambling in 2005. The poker craze is sweeping across the nation. Thanks to its glitzy presentation on TV, and the millions in prize money, it's the pastime of choice for high school and college kids. But adolescents are twice as likely as adults to become addicted to gambling. The BBC's James Silver reveals the heavy social cost that comes with America's poker obsession.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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May 22, 2006
After Welfare
The landmark 1996 welfare reform law had an explicit social goal: to help save the nuclear family. Many Americans believed the old welfare system, AFDC, damaged marriages by giving mothers an incentive to stay single. The 1996 law was aimed at removing that incentive, and the law encouraged states to promote marriage in order to lift single-parent families out of poverty. More than any other state, Oklahoma took up the challenge. It's not clear that the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative can make a difference, but some liberals as well as social conservatives are now saying it's worth a try to keep more low-income mothers and fathers together.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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May 08, 2006
Bankrupt: Maxed Out in America
A record two million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy last year. The reason? Bankruptcies have soared over the past two decades, so Congress passed a tough new law designed to crack down on filings. The new law went into effect last October, and many raced to beat the deadline. Filings plunged after October, but in recent months the number of bankruptcies has crept back up. Many Congressional legislators assumed that eroding morality, a decline in traditional stigma, made it easy for Americans to walk away from their debts. In the following report, correspondent Chris Farrell explores how much stigma has really declined.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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April 24, 2006
Gang Members Break Free - Part 2
Some of this nation's most dangerous convicts are housed in what are called "supermax" prisons. At Pelican Bay Prison in California, the men in the supermax are isolated in windowless cells for 23 hours a day with almost no direct contact with other inmates or staff. Officials allege most of the inmates here are members of prison gangs. Despite the isolation, gangs remain active at Pelican Bay and once a prisoner is in a gang it can be tough - even deadly - to try to get out.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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April 10, 2006
Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax - Part 1
The "supermax" prison is designed to incapacitate dangerous convicts by locking them down in stark isolation, sometimes for years on end. But some supermaxes have become headquarters to America's biggest and most violent prison gangs. American RadioWorks correspondent Michael Montgomery spent six months following inmates and staff at one of the nation's biggest supermaxes, California's Pelican Bay State Prison. Experts say some gang leaders inside Pelican Bay control crime far outside prison walls.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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April 3, 2006
Prosecuting Charles Taylor for War Crimes
Charles Taylor is only the second head of state indicted for international war crimes while in office. Prosecutors allege that as president of Liberia, Taylor was a central figure in a criminal network that controlled rebels fighting a decade-long civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. The rebels are accused of murder, enslavement, rape and forcing children into combat.
In 2003, American RadioWorks correspondent Michael Montgomery and producer Deborah George were given unique access to war crimes investigators as they built their case against Charles Taylor. Our story begins in a war-scarred neighborhood in Sierra Leone.
Download the segment or listen online.
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March 20, 2006
Rebuilding in Biloxi
Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, families in Biloxi, Mississippi have struggled to rebuild their homes, businesses and their lives. In this podcast, we meet Ethel Curry, who survived Katrina's flood waters by floating in her refrigerator, and Vin Tai, a Vietnamese shrimp boat owner. The storm left his livelihood in ruins. But first, as casino jobs and federal assistance trickle back to the Gulf Coast, one question remains: how long will it be before Biloxi residents can finally rebuild?
Download the episode.
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March 6, 2006
Preying On Parents
In the past decade, the number of foreign children adopted by Americans has nearly tripled. Americans adopted nearly 23,000 children from abroad last year. The U.S. State department reports most international adoptions happen without major complications, but it warns the growing demand for adoptable children is leading to some dangerous outcomes; both for children and parents. Some cases of abuse are linked to adoption groups operating in the United States and overseas without a license.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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February 20, 2006
Sparking the Brain Out of Depression
For many people with depression, there are modern medications that have made the illness manageable. But at least ten percent of those who take anti-depressants don't get better. Psychiatrists say that for them, electro-shock therapy remains the most effective treatment. Electro-convulsive therapy, as it's now called, is more than 70 years old and is more widely used than ever. Researchers are experimenting with other ways to use electricity to spark the brain out of depression.
Download a segment or listen to other health-related stories from American RadioWorks
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February 6, 2006
Ghosts of the Orphanage
Last year, more than 7,000 Chinese children were adopted by families in the United States. China is a popular country for adoptive parents because of the availability of infants, almost always baby girls. But some children are adopted when they are a little older, and time spent in an orphanage can delay a child's development. As the years go by in an adoptive family, the child and the parents discover what early experiences can be undone, relearned or accepted.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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January 23, 2006
Whites Remember Jim Crow
American race relations are deeply marked by an era called Jim Crow, a system of legal segregation in the South that lasted from 1890 well into the 1960s. Named after a minstrel character, Jim Crow meant blacks attended separate schools, sat in colored-only train cars and were intimidated out of voting. But Jim Crow is remembered quite differently by whites who lived through the period. Anthropologist Kate Ellis spent a year interviewing whites in southwestern Louisiana about segregation.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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January 9, 2006
Blacks Remember Jim Crow
For much of the 20th century, blacks in the South were barred from the voting booths, sent to the back of the bus and denied many of the rights enjoyed by other American citizens. It was called Jim Crow, named for a minstrel character that became shorthand for a system of segregation. In this segment, producer Stephen Smith used oral histories and interviews with scholars to show what life was like for blacks behind the veil of segregation.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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December 26, 2005
Finding Home in Two Worlds
Twenty thousand children are adopted from abroad into U.S. families each year. It's a number that has tripled in the past decade. These children come from places like China, Russia and Guatemala, and research shows that they do better when they have a connection to their birth culture. Many adoptive families go to culture camp and ethnic restaurants, but Laurie Stern and her husband Dan Luke feel their son Diego needs more.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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December 12, 2005
The Army Wife
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.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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November 28, 2005
Outsourcing Compassion
In recent decades, violent and traumatic events in the United States have given rise to a new industry: trauma counseling. In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, thousands of workplaces brought in these counseling teams in to help employees talk about their experiences. It turns out many of these "debriefing" sessions were based on limited science.
Download a segment or listen to related stories.
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November 14, 2005
The Last Days of Kitty Shenay
Each year, about 2.5 million people die in the United States. Three in ten get hospice care in their last days. Hospice is specialized care for terminally ill patients with less than six months to live. This report follows one hospice patient through her last two months of life.
Download a segment or listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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October 31, 2005
Pombo in the Gray
Tax law prohibits members of Congress from taking international trips paid for by private foundations. But American RadioWorks and Marketplace reporter Steve Henn and Bob Williams from the Center for Public Integrity have learned California Republican Richard Pombo may have done just that.
Download a segment or visit the Web site.
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October 17, 2005
Trauma and the Brain
In the wake of hurricane Katrina, the Red Cross reported more than half a million survivors have used its mental health services. After the attacks on the World Trade Towers, mental health and neuroscience researchers in New York quickly organized efforts to help, and study the city's trauma victims. They are learning how trauma affects the brain and what can be done to heal it.
Download a segment or listen to related stories.
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October 3, 2005
No Place for a Woman
In the 1970s, women untied their aprons and joined the work force as never before. They took jobs as truck drivers, lawyers, and steelworkers. Some women found the workplace was hostile territory. In the iron mines of Minnesota, women were groped, threatened, and assaulted. A handful of women fought back. They filed the first class-action sexual harassment suit in the country, paving the way for big judgments against companies across the country.
Download a segment, listen to the hour-long documentary online or download the hour from Audible.com.
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About Podcasts
Podcasting is a way to automatically download audio files on portable devices such as Apple iPods, other MP3 players, or on your computer for later playback.
To subscribe to a podcast, you need software that will detect when there's new audio content and download tha audio content onto your MP3 player or computer.
How do I get podcasts?
To subscribe to a podcast, you first need software to detect and download the audio, such as iTunes or iPodder (a list of podcast software is provided below). Each podcast provides a URL (e.g. http://www.americanradioworks.org/podcast.xml) to tell the software where to get the new audio content. All podcast software includes a field where you paste the URL of the podcast and a Subscribe button or other way to indicate you want to automatically download new content.
Podcasting Software
Apple iTunes: Their updated software application (version 4.9) allows for easy access to and management of your podcast selections.
Cross Platform
Windows, Mac, Linux - iPodder - http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/
Perl - renko - http://rasterweb.net/raster/code/renko.html
Windows
Nimiq - http://www.nimiq.nl/
iPodder.NET - http://ipoddernet.sourceforge.net/
Doppler - http://www.dopplerradio.net/
jPodder - http://kualasoft.com/jpodder/
Now Playing - A windows iTunes Plugin - http://brandon.fuller.name/archives/hacks/nowplaying/
Macintosh
iPodderX - http://ipodderx.com/
Unix
bashpodder - http://linc.homeunix.org:8080/scripts/bashpodder/
How can I get help?
Because there is a variety of podcast software options and ways to subscribe, we regret that we can't provide assistance to individual users. Many of the podcast software providers above offer information and support. If you think the problem might be with our feed itself, contact American RadioWorks at mail@americanradioworks.org.
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