After Effects of War with Christal Presley
Christal Presley, an English teacher in Virginia who experienced "secondary trauma" in response to the extreme behavior of her father, a Vietnam-era veteran with PTSD, tells how the family began a journey of recovery. [more]
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American Resilience
Historians and others tell how the American journey has often required of citizens the courage to rebound from deep challenges, including stories of the extraordinary hardiness shown by people during the crisis of the Great Depression. Also, an exploration of the capacity for resilience and adaptation that Americans must summon in this time of deep recession and other perils including terrorism, global warming, and pandemic illness. [more]
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Compassionate Friends
Aiming to "transform the pain of grief into the elixir of hope", a group called The Compassionate Friends, with more than 600 U.S. chapters, brings together parents who've suffered the loss of a child, to help them sort through complicated emotions among kindred spirits. [more]
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Darrell Scott
The tragic shootings at Columbine High School prompted the parent of a pupil who was slain there to launch a national crusade aimed at identifying and reaching out to troubled youths. [more]
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JoBeth Walt
A woman who was severely burned in an accident reveals her personal journey of healing and self-acceptance and describes what she's learned from working with young people who are also coping with burns. [more]
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Living Fully With Illness
The power of a patient’s self-reflection as a tool for coping with illness is explored by a nurse scientist who has studied meditation as a health technique, and by a cancer survivor who teaches other patients about the value of therapeutic writing in expressing their inward feelings. [more]
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An Optimist in Spite of All: Helen Keller
Born 125 years ago this week, Helen Keller -- subject of this audio biography -- surmounted both deafness and blindness by learning to communicate with great eloquence, and became an unlikely world superstar. [more]
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Rubin Carter's Hurricane
As dramatized in a Bob Dylan song and 'The Hurricane' starring Denzel Washington, ex-prize fighter Rubin Carter tells how he was wrongly convicted of a triple homicide and ultimately exonerated by a federal judge, and trained his mind in prison to transcend hatred. After a court declared his murder conviction a miscarriage of justice, Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter has been a tireless advocate for other wrongly-convicted inmates who face an uphill battle behind bars, in a nation that imprisons more people than any other. [more]
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Sobriety High
In this episode we visit William J Ostiguy High School. It is a learning facility designed to help kids with a history of substance abuse – who support each other in their quest to remain clean and sober. [more]
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Surviving Auschwitz through Faith
Viktor Frankl in Vienna tells how, as a Jewish psychiatrist, he was imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. [more]
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Unintended Consequences
We consider the plight of tens of millions of Americans in families and relationships with alcoholics. How does the destabilizing influence of active addiction affect family systems? What emotional and life challenges are faced by people raised around alcoholism? [more]
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