WAMU-FM went on the air in October, 1961. This program looks back at 50 years, exploring how the station moved from a 7-hour-a-day obscurity to an institution vital to our civic life. We look at the station’s legacy, its prominent personalities and how it has interacted with the Washington, DC community.
Part of the “Grand Challenges” series from the Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Purdue College of Engineering. A fact that stands out over all the noise of the health-care debate is that it costs one-billion-dollars to put a new medicine in your doctor’s hand. And while a number that big is going to pose some questions, drug companies today are turning out some real game changers.
Race and the Space Race
Aired Nationally, February 2010
In the early 1960s, the segregated heart of the old Confederacy was chosen as the base for new agency, NASA. Hear the stories of people whose lives soared from the cotton fields to the launch pad.
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Rocket Girls and Astro-nettes
Broadcast nationally in 2010
Voted 2011’s Outstanding Documentary by American Women in Radio and Television
Stories of women struggling in the ultimate “Man’s World,” NASA in the 60s and 70s. Hear from the first women scientists and engineers, the first women astronauts and from women who, in 1961, were told they would be astronauts.
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“Rocketing Ahead”
Broadcast nationally in 2010
A look at how the Democrats rode Sputnik t
o the White House in a campaign that forever changed science, technology and academia in America.
Part of the “Global Challenges” series, produced for the Purdue University College of Engineering. No question there’s plenty of bad news when it comes to the environment. But in this program we hear about scientists and engineers who are working, right now, on some of the tools we hope will lift us out of our environmental malaise.
The world’s great monotheistic faiths share centuries-old traditions, but they are also locked in dangerous rivalries that permeate contemporary thought. Through the stories of three men raised to their religion’s version of the truth, and distrust of the “other”, this program probes that duality and confirms the power of faith to overcome legacies of hostility, illuminating ways that people work beyond hatred and stereotypes.
Part of the “Global Challenges” series, produced for the Purdue University College of Engineering. When we look at all the things that made America what it is, it’s fair to say that for the last hundred years or so America has been shaped, more than anything, by cheap oil. But as people begin telling us that the cheap oil is almost gone the question becomes: Considering the devastation that “Peak Oil” could cause to our lives and lifestyles, can we act before the crisis?
“Shakespeare is a Black Woman: Shakespeare in American Politics”
Broadcast nationally in 2007
Part of the series “Shakespeare in American Life.” This program explores how Shakespeare’s work has intertwined itself with American electoral politics, geopolitics, and racial, class and academic politics. It also explores how Shakespeare has been used for political purposes throughout American history.
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“The Father of the Man In America: Shakespeare in American Civic Life and Education”
Broadcast nationally in 2007
Part of the series “Shakespeare in American Life.” This program explores the ways in which Shakespeare’s work has saturated American history. After the Revolution, there were serious questions about whether America should adopt British culture and literature or create its own. We look at how Shakespeare finally appears in college lecture halls and high school classes, while making an unexpected appearance in the early annals of American psychiatry. We look at how outdoor Shakespeare became acceptable on the strait-laced Chautauqua Circuit, how Shakespeare influenced Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his role in the experiences of immigrants and in major movements like the push West, the establishment of cities, and the Civil War.