Recent Programs

  • John Lewis’ Mission
    Known as the “conscience of Congress” and a civil rights icon, John Lewis died in July 2020 at age 80. The son of humble Alabama sharecroppers, John Lewis spoke from the stage on live national television at the massive March on Washington by the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 – the day Rev. Martin Luther…
  • Judicial Independence
    Have our courts – intended by America’s founders to be an independent arbiter of justice – turned into another political battlefield? Are today’s judges mere “politicians in robes”? This public radio documentary series looks at crucial flashpoints in recent decades.
  • Tree-Lined Streets
    Charlie Starbuck, an affable tax attorney, single-handedly has increased the "canopy" of San Francisco by planting more than 7,500 trees, as part of the movement known as Friends of the Urban Forest.
  • The Vegetable Chronicles
    The Vegetable Chronicles: Weight of the Evidence The importance of nutrition in our health seems self-evident. But with food industry profiteering and the power of special interests, there’ve been many battles over how to inform the American public about wise food choices. We tell that tale in this two-part documentary. Awareness has grown in recent…
  • Ida B. Wells’ Battle to Uncover the Truth
    Born to enslaved parents on a Mississippi plantation during the Civil War, Ida B. Wells emerged as a powerful investigative journalist. She overcame death threats and published widely in her quest to document the domestic terrorism against African Americans that came to be known as lynching. Ida Wells published the first major study of that…
  • Health Care With Kindness
    Patients often complain about rushed doctor visits and, of course, the cost of medical services. But a number of studies in recent years highlight a different concern: whether as a patient you actually experience kindness when receiving health care.

And being treated with basic courtesy and compassion – especially while undergoing medical distress – was rated in one…

Staff Picks

  • Resilient Nurses
    A no-holds-barred look at the stressful conditions in which many nurses work: the long hours, the emotional toll, the rapid pace, and the way that technology and institutional practices can make it hard to form a caring bond with patients.
  • Simple Relaxation Exercise
    A 15-minute stress reduction session to calm the body and mind.
  • Libraries Reimagined
    In 2019 Americans visited the library more often than they went to a movie or attended a sporting event. But far from institutions of the past, libraries today are rapidly evolving, ensuring free access to knowledge and protecting democracy.

Producer’s Note

  • 75 years after Hiroshima

    This week marks the 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Some 80,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed or injured. Those events of 1945 swiftly ended World War II. But they also ushered in the existential threat of the nuclear age — a nightmare scenario of mass destruction that has imperiled life on Earth ever since. Today’s nuclear arsenal is incomprehensibly more powerful. In our Humankind on Public Radio podcast, we explore the “clash of science and ethics” that led to development of these and other ferocious military weapons.

Supported by listeners like you and…