Humankind on Public Radio
In times of fast-paced change and challenge, how do we hold onto our humanity? Each week, the Humankind on Public Radio podcast presents stories of doers and dreamers who strive to make our planet a more humane and livable place. From our award-winning public radio series, the podcast features David Freudberg’s moving documentaries and dialogues. Hear new and evergreen episodes.
Audio Player
Humankind on Public Radio
An Informed Republic
00:00
29:11
An Informed Republic
America’s founders recognized that without a king, their fledgling nation would require knowledgeable citizens. But now in the digital age, this essential need is ever-more critical to our democracy.
To see additional resources and our other programs, please visit humanmedia.org . Humankind specials are heard on NPR and PRX member-stations, in association with GBH Boston.
Episode play icon
America’s founders recognized that without a king, their fledgling nation would require knowledgeable citizens. But now in the digital age, this essential need is ever-more [...]
July 2, 2025
Episode play icon
In these special Humankind documentaries, ‘Beyond War’ takes a look back at the last time the U.S. military had major involvement in the Middle East. [...]
June 30, 2025
Episode play icon
Emboldened by a U.S. Justice Dept. estimate that ten percent of prisoners serving time are actually innocent, journalist Rob Warden describes his Chicago-based efforts to [...]
June 26, 2025
Episode play icon
In these special Humankind documentaries, ‘Beyond War’ takes a look back at the last time the U.S. military had major involvement in the Middle East. [...]
June 24, 2025
Episode play icon
An elderly physician and Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Bernard Lown, pleads for a revolution in health care that would place greater emphasis on personal interaction between [...]
June 19, 2025
Episode play icon
Today over two million people partake of the storytelling, the good humor, the words of wisdom and the gallons and gallons of free coffee made [...]
June 12, 2025
Episode play icon
90 years ago this month Alcoholics Anonymous was born when a troubled drunkard realized that connecting with fellow-sufferers creates a safe zone where they can [...]
June 9, 2025
Episode play icon
A conversation with the long-time director of the UN Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who also directs the Yale [...]
June 5, 2025
Episode play icon
In this documentary, we explore what it’s like to experience “moral injury”— when soldiers witness or participate in war-time acts that violate their conscience. The [...]
June 3, 2025
Episode play icon
Some people give no charity at all. But of Americans who do, the average family donation is 2-3% per year. This program examines how people [...]
May 29, 2025
Episode play icon
After war, our veterans face a new battle: emotional and spiritual conflict that is normal to human beings who’ve experienced intense brutality.In the Civil War [...]
May 22, 2025
Episode play icon
Chicago dramatist Meade Palidofsky uses theater as a therapeutic tool in her work with juvenile offenders who write and perform plays while incarcerated — and [...]
May 15, 2025
Episode play icon
A veteran negotiator in world hot-spots including the Middle East, Louise Diamond practices a citizens-based diplomacy that sometimes finds cooperation at the grass roots level, [...]
May 1, 2025
Episode play icon
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 [...]
April 24, 2025
Episode play icon
How does the widespread low level of literacy among American adults affect the functioning of our democracy? Are voters in this group vulnerable to political [...]
April 21, 2025
Episode play icon
About half of American adults read at or below a 6th-grade level. What challenges do they face – at work, in health care, when helping [...]
April 17, 2025
Episode play icon
This episode explores the very human level at which some nurses interact with patients at their most vulnerable moments. What spiritual questions about life and [...]
April 10, 2025
Episode play icon
In a health care setting, where serious illness may be on the line, what does it mean for a provider to listen attentively? We examine [...]
April 3, 2025
Episode play icon
It’s been said that we’ve learned how to speak but not necessarily how to communicate. Rarely are we taught the art of deep listening or [...]
July 25, 2024
Episode play icon
In this documentary we explore how federal courts enforced fugitive slave laws. Historians, actors and legal scholars re-create the famous case of a young escaped [...]
February 21, 2024
Episode play icon
In the second half of our documentary on the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, we examine the AA recovery principles that have promoted sobriety for millions [...]
December 7, 2023
Episode play icon
Herbal remedies: Do they work? Are they safe? In The Medicine Garden, a special series drawn from our archives, you’ll take a fascinating tour of this [...]
January 2, 2023
Episode play icon
In this episode, we hear from physician Ralph Snyderman, MD, a proponent of preventive medicine, who believes that our health care system should place greater [...]
December 8, 2022
Episode play icon
Have we entered an age of unrelenting chaos? As we grope for a “new normal”, has humanity reached a kind of turning point? In this [...]
July 21, 2022
Episode play icon
Take a trip to a pristine spot in Maine for an afternoon spent with Palestinian and Israeli youth as they come together to play, connect, [...]
July 21, 2022
Episode play icon
As we grope for a “new normal”, has humanity reached a kind of turning point? It feels that way — in the wake of the [...]
June 23, 2022
Episode play icon
After war, our veterans face a new battle: emotional and spiritual conflict that is normal to human beings who’ve experienced intense brutality. In this documentary, [...]
June 23, 2022
Episode play icon
The Prisoners Literature Project, an all-volunteer service based in Berkeley, California, packages and ships books to people who are incarcerated, as a humanitarian gesture and [...]
June 9, 2022
Episode play icon
In the wake of shocking violence at abortion clinics, two apparent enemies — women representing pro-choice and pro-life factions in the Boston area, where shootings [...]
May 30, 2022
Episode play icon
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, [...]
December 16, 2021
Episode play icon
Today over two million people partake of the storytelling, the good humor, the words of wisdom and the gallons and gallons of free coffee made [...]
November 25, 2021
Episode play icon
Alcoholics Anonymous marks its beginning when one hopelessly addicted drunk realized that connecting with a fellow-sufferer would create a safe zone in which both could [...]
November 18, 2021
Episode play icon
“At the end of the day,” says Jonathan Star about his English translation of Tao te Ching from the original Chinese, “it’s not about attaining [...]
November 11, 2021
Episode play icon
Jonathan Star took twelve years to master the nuances of ancient Chinese in his quest to produce a remarkably lucid and evocative English translation of [...]
November 4, 2021
Episode play icon
When we nurse grudges, the person clinging to a resentment often pays a high price in anxiety, hostility, perhaps depression. What follows from that for [...]
October 28, 2021
Episode play icon
Within a decade, America will be looking different. In addition to other demographic changes, 70 million Baby Boomers are now entering their retirement years. For [...]
October 28, 2021
Episode play icon
Author and prison therapist Robin Casarjian reframes the act of forgiveness not to condone hurtful behavior, but as a shift in perception that allows us [...]
October 21, 2021
Episode play icon
Within a decade, America will be looking different. In addition to other demographic changes, 70 million Baby Boomers are now entering their retirement years. For [...]
October 21, 2021
Episode play icon
The Constitution specifies that once federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they can hold their office “during good behavior,” [...]
February 4, 2021
Episode play icon
The Republican party has not won the majority of votes in six of the last seven presidential elections. And yet vacancies on the Supreme Court [...]
January 28, 2021
Episode play icon
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 [...]
August 20, 2020
Episode play icon
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 [...]
August 13, 2020
Episode play icon
Bay Area physician and Univ. of California medical professor Martin Rossman, author of “The Worry Solution”, describes ways to distinguish between what we can change [...]
March 12, 2020
Episode play icon
This episode of ‘Humankind on Public Radio’ is part of a special series, ‘The Spiritual Care Podcast’. For more episodes exploring the role of spiritual [...]
June 19, 2018
Episode play icon
This episode of ‘Humankind on Public Radio’ is part of a special series, ‘The Spiritual Care Podcast’. For more episodes exploring the role of spiritual [...]
June 12, 2018
Episode play icon
This episode of ‘Humankind on Public Radio’ is part of a special series, ‘The Spiritual Care Podcast’. For more episodes exploring the role of spiritual [...]
June 5, 2018
Episode play icon
This episode of ‘Humankind on Public Radio’ is part of a special series, ‘The Spiritual Care Podcast’. For more episodes exploring the role of spiritual [...]
May 29, 2018
Episode play icon
David Freudberg, host of Humankind public radio, announces a new podcast on the fascinating practice of “spiritual care”: stories of caregivers (chaplains, nurses, social workers, [...]
January 26, 2018
Episode play icon
A 15-minute stress reduction session to calm the body and mind. [...]
December 20, 2016
Episode play icon
Gas taxes you pay at the pump go into a huge pool of federal transportation funds. How should the money be divided up? Plus high-speed [...]
December 13, 2016
Episode play icon
What is the global warming footprint of cars vs. public transit? Story of a family seeking a low-carbon lifestyle. Also, hear the views of transportation [...]
December 6, 2016
Episode play icon
Business people and environmentalists come together: improved public transportation helps to grow the economy, for lots of reasons. Bankers and the Sierra Club on the [...]
November 29, 2016
Episode play icon
The story of a Virginia man who accepted his county’s “challenge” to go car-free for a month; plus voices of motorists filling up at the [...]
November 22, 2016
Episode play icon
Professors of medicine and nursing describe ways to treat the whole patient. And a look at medical use of acupuncture and meditation, for which evidence [...]
November 15, 2016
Episode play icon
With diet a factor in ailments from diabetes to obesity, medical students at the country’s third largest campus attend cooking classes to learn how to [...]
November 8, 2016
Episode play icon
The problem of rushed medical visits, now standard nationwide, can strain both doctors and patients. The story of a Calif. woman who was misdiagnosed with [...]
November 1, 2016
Episode play icon
This look at the emergence of “integrative medicine” begins with a visit to America’s busiest trauma center, in Baltimore, where patients receive both emergency care [...]
October 25, 2016
Episode play icon
A lively profile of “Granny D,” (Mrs. Doris Haddock of Dublin, New Hampshire) famous for her 14-month walk across the United States to promote campaign [...]
October 18, 2016
Episode play icon
A lively profile of “Granny D,” (Mrs. Doris Haddock of Dublin, New Hampshire) famous for her 14-month walk across the United States to promote campaign [...]
October 11, 2016
Episode play icon
Hear a diversity of voices and views on today’s debates over whether voters should be required to show ID at the polls. Some Americans believe [...]
September 30, 2016
Episode play icon
A fascinating history of the much-contested right to vote in America: from slaves freed after the Civil War, to women’s suffrage, to the civil rights [...]
September 30, 2016
Episode play icon
We hear from veterans who wrestle with healing from “moral injury” which occurs after a violation of conscience, based on events they witnessed or participated [...]
September 22, 2016
Episode play icon
We hear profiles of American soldiers who, after military duty, returned home to face another battle—the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). [...]
September 21, 2016
Episode play icon
When we’re in a disagreement, it’s sometimes hard simply to listen to the other person. But skillful listening is a core practice of conflict resolution [...]
September 20, 2016
Episode play icon
A return visit to the Seeds of Peace summer camp, when teenagers from opposing sides of conflict regions, including the Middle East, arrive for amazing [...]
September 13, 2016
Episode play icon
How can we avoid reacting furiously when someone provokes us? Hear a fascinating array of answers from theologian Frank Rogers, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rev. Betty [...]
February 4, 2016
Episode play icon
In a world given to so much brutality, it would be easy to underestimate the impact of basic human compassion in actually resolving strife, yet [...]
January 28, 2016
Episode play icon
We hear stories of peacemakers who draw from their diverse lives and religious traditions as a basis for breaking down barriers and promoting conflict resolution. [...]
January 21, 2016
Episode play icon
We look back on the stunning display of forgiveness and nonviolence by the grieving families and congregants of Mother Emanuel church, where a gunman murdered [...]
January 14, 2016
Episode play icon
In this episode of Humankind, hear nuclear experts pro and con, an emergency room physician, and a variety of voices telling the story of a [...]
April 9, 2015
Episode play icon
This episode explores the very human level at which some nurses interact with patients at their most vulnerable moments. What spiritual questions about life and [...]
March 14, 2015
Episode play icon
How do nurses, who are exposed to continual suffering by patients, manage to keep their hearts open and maintain compassion? Nurses describe the centrality of [...]
March 13, 2015
Episode play icon
Inspiring stories of how active nurses use self-care techniques that help them manage, and transcend, the stresses of their essential work life, both on the [...]
March 12, 2015
Episode play icon
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 [...]
March 5, 2015
Search Results placeholder