This is a 38-minute narration-free documentary of the 20th century using (other than my one minute spoken introduction) only archival sound, speeches and other audio artifacts of that talkative 100 years. The montage is of my own making and perspective as the American I happen to be, and hopefully, will take the listener of whatever...
While many Americans are familiar with black slavery in the South, and its role in igniting one of the 19th century’s most brutal wars, less attention has been paid to the black experience in Northern cities like New York where many ex-slaves and “freedmen” lived. A new book, Black Gotham by Carla Peterson, sheds some...
A survey look at what being Irish is all about deep down – from the “fairy faith” to its music, to Celtic myth, to sean nos and storytelling. Collected entirely in the West of Ireland down some very very back roads. See also “Visions and Beliefs in the West Ireland,” which focuses on the spirituality...
Down a couple of old Maryland country roads that barely show up on state maps you’ll find Grandma Cora, an elderly African American lady who is known throughout those parts for her delicious sweet potato pies, which she lovingly backs on her old stove and sells to make ends meet nicely. I spent an afternoon...
This is one of the first long-form documentaries I ever did for NPR’s “Horizons” program. It explores the deep feminine through the eyes of several “witches” and priestesses who honor and worship female power and divinity through the myths, rituals and symbols associated with goddesses past, present and future. Features Starhawk, Z. Budapest, Francesco Dubie....
For years, a pith helmet, nearly comic determination, and astounding know-how have combined to fashion Steve Brill’s persona, as he leads expeditions through Central Park and New York’s other semi-wild places in search of edible plants and flowers. Adventurers get a dose of accomplishment and renewed respect for the bounty of nature, right here in...
The Eye is also in the eye of the beholder. When Saint Jerome’s, a church in the South Bronx, was constructed at the turn of the 20th century, it was built by immigrant artisans, mostly from Ireland and Italy, where the human eyes were often blue. So of course, they imagined the All-Seeing Eye of...
Much silicon has been programmed and ink spilled about the human/machine interface and how to make computers truly interactive. No one has been more busy or more intelligent and playful about this than the folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Here we talk with Justine Cassell (now at Carnegie) about what interactivity...
Allen Ginsberg was one of the greatest poets, and most generous Americans of the 20th century. I interviewed him quite a bit in 1994 in connection with the publication of his collected poems, and for later for the post-mortem tribute I produced after his death in 1996 (also on this blog). I thought my conversation...
Despite our technically secular society, questions of meaning and the spirit are as meaningful as ever. In his long form documentary narrated by Gary Edquist, Adam Phillips spoke to experts and everyday people alike about that hunger, the roots of its urgency, and what some are trying to do to live lives of quiet “non-desperation.”
Perhaps no one has done more to spread the spirit and craft of poetry more than Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian American whose award winning books for both adults and children explore themes of loss and exile, the pace of modern life, family ties and spirituality – often with humor. I spoke with her while...
Tony Kushner is one of America’s foremost dramatists, and not only because of his epic Angels in America. He also probes and continues to probe our culture and its values — about sexuality, money, race — and other things many of us would rather just leave alone. Here is my American Profile of Kushner, which...
The search for life forms (or life-like) forms has intensified in recent years as our technical prowess has increased and our understanding of the forms and chemistry of what life could be has expanded and grown more refined. This piece examines the branch of science that deals with this, and looks at various ways we...
The Bible says that a woman’s hair is a glory to her, and they take that quite literally at several African American beauty salons that are springing up in the Washington DC and other urban areas. Come with me on my visit to a salon where being “born again,” amazing hair-dos and “prayerful” and joyous...
The Kentucky coal region is a tough area with its own culture, its own natural beauty, and its endless seams of coal, many of which lie underneath the ground on mountains, rather than below ground. Many mining companies have taken to shaving off the top of the mountains, but the slag and the unsightliness and...
A Dateline report recorded about two months into 2002 with the work crews tasked with clearing the debris from Ground Zero, sorting through it for human remains, and making it ready to be put on barges to be floated for disposal in Fresh Kill. The stress, sadness and nobility of the men there were quite...
Buddhism, once thought exotic has been mainstreaming at the rate of mind. As with other cultures, Buddhism has moved through our culture without force, but by adapting itself to the strengths and shortfalls with what it finds. This piece, which features Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, the late Rick Fields, David Phillips, Helen Tworkov, Sogyal Rinpoche...
Of all the species of life on earth, none are as grand a symbol of life’s majesty and diversity as the giant redwood trees of Northern California and the coastal ecosystems in which they have grown for tens of millions of years. I visited a small and precious preserve and talked to rangers and an...
To Kill or Not to Kill? This question lies at the heart of an American debate, and calls forth fundamental values and opinions about the sanctity of life and the sanctity of justice. This 1995 doc, which features once condemned men, as well as the late Sister Helen Prejean (who figured prominently in “Dead Man...
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung created the psychological theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious. He advocated the scientific exploration of dreams, mythology, religion and art to understand the mind. Yet, unknown to millions of the people who have followed Jung’s work over the decades, Jung developed most of those ideas during a period of intense...
We in the USA toss off the word “hero” quite easily in the media, and even in everyday speech. However, sometimes, what might really be meant is “celebrity,” which is not the same thing. This long form documentary contrasts celebrity and heroism, and explores what the conflation of these two ideals has to say about...
Often praised as the greatest speech of all tine, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863) still resonates and moves Americans who hear it and memorize it. The famous words were the subject of a teaching unit for sixth graders at the John Eaton School in Washington DC, which culminated in a recital and some interviews...
In New York, one can walk through both solidly Jewish neighborhoods and completely Chinese neighborhoods and hear the same strident, even merry, clickety clack of ma jog tiles. Players in both worlds have developed their own cultures and phrasing. For instance, the Chinese phrase for the sound the tiles make when they are mixed up...
Explorer. Hero. Genocidal Conqueror. Genius. Inventor. Adventurer. Fool. Prophet. All these names have been used to describe the “discoverer” of America. But what do we really know about the man who sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and ninety two? This long form doc, explores the many faces of Columbus as he has come...
Explorer. Hero. Genocidal Conqueror. Genius. Inventor. Adventurer. Fool. Prophet. All these names have been used to describe the “discoverer” of America. But what do we really know about the man who sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and ninety two? This long form doc, explores the many faces of Columbus as he has come...
In the mid-1990s, I was the initiator, designer and lead producer for a very ambitious series about the emerging field of conflict resolution and its applications. It covered everything from war, to marital discord to the role of the media in preventing or stoking discord, to the psychology of violence, peace and forgiveness. This 20...
Valdus Adamkus was part of the anti-Nazi resistance in Lithuania during World War Two, and fled his native land for the US following the war, where he had a nice life, and rose high in the EPA bureaucracy in Chicago. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and Lithuanian independence, there was a question about...
Americans were shocked by the boldness of the graft and other crimes allegedly committed by indicted former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and by the 20-plus politicians and others indicted for corruption in New Jersey recently. But corruption is nothing new in American politics, although the scope and definitions of corruption have changed over time. This...
After articles about the President and “dog bites man,” the obituaries are among the most popular articles the New York Times features. Part news story, part profile, obits attempt to sum up a person’s life and significance, and no more. Indeed, how many “column inches” a person is expected in the paper to get when...
Einstein may have had one of history’s most enviable cerebaums, but its post-mortem wherabouts were a mystery until an intrepid reporter found out about the weirdo pathologist who stole them at the physicist’s autopsy. He offered to drive the doctor and the the brain from New Jersey to the California to return it. This is...
At its peak, the town of Gary was completely alive with the sound of coal mining, lunchtime whistles, and the ethnic music that its immigrant laborers made during their rare off hours. US Steel had built the town, and the workers were proud to be there, albeit under very difficult, even backbreaking and dangerous conditions....
This is a story I did the weekend of October 10-11 2009 connected with a gay rights march on the Capitol, especially as regards gays in the military. Here’s the intro I used for the piece: Demonstrations are expected this weekend in Washington as groups of active and former service members and their supporters urge...
Oysters may seem like humble shellfish, but ecologically, they tower above many other species. They are a tasty food source for a variety of creatures, including humans. But more importantly, oysters help to filter pollutants from coastal estuaries, places where fresh river waters and ocean salt waters co-mingle. Fourteen out of 20 of the world’s...
For many Americans, Veterans Day means merely a long weekend of relaxation or a parade of patriotic display and brouhaha. But for many of the veterans who fought and killed in war, the psychological wounds engendered by the carnage continues long after the guns have gone silent. I asked a group of everyday vets, many...
Tibetan Buddhism has changed and blossomed in the American context. Nowhere has it taken deeper root than in the Karme Choling (Tail of the Tiger) center in Barnet Vermont, in the heart of the Green Mountains. This is not a monastery; men and women live together, cook together, make drama together and walk a path...
In 2008 and 2009, Kay Ryan served as America’s 16th poet laureate, tapped by the Librarian of Congress to be ambassador for American poetry. She has published nine books of poems. and is cherished for her compact, vivid and accessible verse. She is also widely celebrated in the Lesbian community. This profile is based on...
Labor Day: Everyday Americans Reflect Monday (Sept 7) is Labor Day in America, a day most Americans associate with a three day weekend and a farewell to summertime. However, this national holiday is also a time to honor workers and the central place their labor has in our lives. VOA’s Adam Phillips spoke to a...
Labor Day in America is a day most Americans associate with a three day weekend and a farewell to summertime. However, this national holiday is also a time to honor workers and the central place their labor has in our lives. For this report, Adam asked a range of New Yorkers about what “work” means...
Tens of thousands of Hasidic devotees from around the world converged this week at the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as the “Lubavitcher Rebbe,” in Queens, New York. They came to pray, to celebrate, mourn and to ask for blessings from the man many in the Chabad-Lubavitch sect believe to be the...
Legend has it that cod, haddock, perch and other North Atlantic fish were once so plentiful off the coast of New England that fisherman could almost literally scoop them from the water. Today, that bounty is almost gone, due mainly to many decades of severe-over-fishing. Innovative research into the area fish decline is helping scientists...
The Masons have long been the subject of curiosity, derision, persecution and admiration for their tight brotherhood, which claims millions of members worldwide, and which has been a mainstay for most American presidents and untold numbers of movers and shakers. The purported “secrecy” of their rites and symbols, which are sometimes riffs on the belief...
The middle class suburb of Middletown New Jersey lost upwards of 45 people in the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, devastating the town. This piece checks in a year after the event on some of the families who lost loved ones that day, along with town officials, as Middletown continues...
The soldily middle class town of Middletown New Jersey is a peaceful suburb populated largely by people who left the city for a quieter life of green lawns and Little League. Many residents work in Manhattan and take the ferry or the New Jersey Transit train home. On September 11th 2001, upwards of 45 residents...
If California were a nation of its own, it would have the twelth largest economy in the world; agriculture would be a huge percentage of it. Much of the labor that produces is done by migrant farm workers who come to the US, sometimes illegally, and follow the crops, before returning home to Mexico and...
The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in New Hampshire is home to a complex set of delicate interlocking ecosystems that include this barrier beach, salt marsh and wetland, a large marine estuary and a pine and oak forest. The place is especially rich in migratory songbirds. I went there on a blustery New Hampshire day...
There are hundreds of musicians, good and bad, tooting and strumming and bowing and belting in the New York subway system, but Mr. Spoons is sui generis. Not only is he fantastic at playing the spoons, he has an outsize character to match. I spent some serious time with him, and filed this report for...
Mother’s Day in America is a special day set aside for honoring mothers, and celebrating all those qualities and actions that make mother “Mom.” But animals and even plants have also evolved their own dizzyingly diverse maternal styles over the millennia, all of which serve to make sure the next generation thrives. Adam interviewed a...
Nanotechnology, which deals with matter in billionths of a meter, allows for the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale. As such, it may represent humanity’s most profound and far-reaching scientific frontier. This documentary looks at how it works, and what is possible, and what to prepare for, willy-nilly. The story won VOA’s Annual Award...
New York City was full of ritual, ceremony, art and other forms of creative and numinous expression in the months following September 11th. This tells the story of one old ceremony that Native Americans brought to the Museum of the American Indian, near Ground Zero after several months had elapsed. It was a ceremonial moment...
Avant-garde musical artists have always liked to stretch the limits of what traditional musical instruments can do. But some artists have gone even farther and explored the less orthodox music of familiar objects. This story explores the experimental music written especially for toys as performed in a concert in hipster Brooklyn. Features toy piano virtuouso...
People often think of the American Communists of the 1920s and 30s as angry political types alone. There is no denying that the systems that grew out of the Bolshevik and other revolutions failed miserably, largely discrediting Communism in practice. Still there a powerful spiritual vision underlying the embrace of Communism — equality, justice, brotherhood...
This is a look at the Iron John aka the Wild Man, an archetypal figure representing the deep masculine found in the Grimm Brothers tales, and other traditions. This was popularized by the poet Robert Bly as a story with much to tell modern Western man, who may have lost touch with their own wildness,...
Folk all over the world have their own versions of homemade liquor that will blow the top of your head right off., but “White Lightning” from the stills of Appalachia have their own appeal for Americans who have heard about it through family lore and popular culture, or tasted it in a parking lot or...
Art Spiegelman is most famous for his Pulitzer Prize winning work “Maus,” a graphic novel about the Holocaust in which Nazis are portrayed as cats, and Jews are depicted as mice. In this profile, Spiegelman talks about his roots as a Mad Magazine afficionado, underground cartoonist, and his experience growing up in a Queens NY...
This is a profile of the entrepreneurial publisher and First Amendment activist Barney Rosset. During the mid 20th century Rosset tirelessly fought America’s anti-obscenity laws in order to publish now-classic works by D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs and scores of other non-Establishment writers, several of whom went on to win the Nobel Prize....
Meet David Isay, a humane and immensely talented radio documentary maker and oral historian who has probably won every broadcasting award out there. Isay has dedicated his career to celebrating the lives of everyday Americans by recording their stories, and chronicling the experiences of underdogs and colorful characters, many of them living outside the American...
From his “Sick, Sick, Sick” book to the Village Voice, the Phantom Tollbooth, biting political satire and beyond, Jules Feiffer is known for his beautiful simple lines that bring often neurotic characters to life in both funny and heartbreakingly human ways. Here we get a taste of this American treasure in his own words, and...
Professor Maxine Greene of Teachers College, Columbia University, 91, has spent her educating and inspiring educators, artists and children in humanistic “wide-awakedness” and the social imagination. Now 91, Maxine has also been Philosopher-in-Residence at the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education since 1975. She just received a Gold Medal from Barnarnd College. Maxine...
Pamelia Kursten is the 21st century’s greatest theremin virtuosa, who has turned an instrument most associate with creepy sci-fi “woo-woo” music into an art form. Hear what she has to say and how she does it in this sound-rich piece, originally produced for the Voice of America’s “Our World” science program.
Americans with disabilities are, in one sense, just like everybody else: they come from varied backgrounds, and cope with the challenges life presents them in many different ways. But living a full, satisfying life with a physical or mental handicap is no ordinary struggle. Adam spoke with several people living with disabilities in the San...
Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of Cape Cod was once home to one of the thriving Portugese communities anywhere in the world outside Portugal (and the Azore Islands, where most of those “Portagees” come from). Fishing was their livelihood (once mixed with whaling) was their livelihood. But with the near decimation of the North Atlantic...
In our culture, self-denigration and unease with ourselves and others is a common theme. Our internal dialogs can mesmerize us, making us unhappy, and our lives unproductive and robotic. Being at peace in the moment, whatever arises, in a compassionate mode is a Buddhist way. In this piece, I discussed Radical Acceptance with Dharma teacher...
New York’s Saint Thomas Church is one of the only boarding schools in America where talented young boys can go to learn to perform top notch liturgical chorale music and get a good secular education at the same time. Once puberty and the change of voice hit, their sweet sopranos are gone. In the meanwhile...
The scope and the shock of the attacks prompted rage, fear and profound puzzlement. Almost immediately, people started to look for some spiritual response to what had happened that paralleled the pain. Here is a story that features rabbis, ministers, Buddhists and others looking for some wisdom amid the rubble.
From the mid-1930s until the early 1960s, jazz was one of the nation’s most popular styles of music. Rock and roll and other genres ultimately eclipsed jazz’s mainstream appeal. But there is a place in New York City where one can still experience the spirit, the inventiveness and the community that was jazz in its...
Across cultures, the labyrinth is an ancient symbol of the journey through life, as well as archetypal patters seen in everything from the structure of galaxies, the whorls of seashells and the DNA molecule itself. Walking the labyrinth was a popular spiritual custom in medieval Europe; examples can be seen in many of Europe’s great...
Almost all the world’s religions and spiritual paths agree: how you you live is how you die, so you better get ready. This long form doc explores the wisdom of several perspectives on this urgently relevant topic. Listen, laugh, and get going! Includes lots of talk with Ram Das and Steven Levine, Robert Thurman, and...
A direct descendent of the Ken Kesey’s and the Merry Pranksters’ bus “Further,” and the Grey Rabbit buses that criss-crossed America during the late 1960s and 70s, “The Green Tortoise” is now a full fledged tour company that totes mostly young people to America’s greatest well-known and offbeat locales. They live on the bus, which...
The Bedouins are ancient clan-centered nomads of the Middle East who have relied on goatherding and camels for millennia. Abraham, for example, was a Bedouin. In modern times, the nomadic way of life, which depended on free movement and embraced a culture of both hospitality and revenge has been threatened due to land enclosures and...
In 1995, it was my good fortune to be flown down to Atlanta to interview the Dalai Lama. It was in the middle of a very ambitious and (to me) fascinating multi-million dollar project I was producing at the time on conflict resolution, and the psychology of war, violence, reconciliation and peace. This long form...
The American South was a segregated society 50 years ago. In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in restaurants and bus terminals serving interstate travel, but African-Americans who tried to sit in the “whites only” section risked injury or even death at the hands of white mobs. In May of 1961, groups of...
Not everyone who participates in genocide is a through-and-through evil person. Yet there is something in us, which, given the right circumstances and psychological wounds, can erupt into murderousness on a vast social scale. Such was the case in Nazi Germany, for example, and such was certainly the case in Rwanda in 1994, when over...
This is a story about some of the most beautiful short poetry I have ever come across. Edited by the poet Jane Hirshfield (see “Given Sugar, Given Salt” elsewhere in this blog), it is a collection of short erotic haiku-like poems written by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, who were part of the Japanese...
2009 marks the 400th anniversary of English sea captain Henry Hudson’s arrival in what’s now New York harbor. British colonists would play a major role in the development of Manhattan Island. But historian Russell Shorto says it was largely the 17th century Dutch and their pioneering settlement of New Amsterdam that influenced what Manhattan, New...
The Kitchen Sisters are famous in the radio world, and to National Public Radio listeners, for the wonderful way they combine the sounds and sentiments of real people according to themes and make their lives come alive for all of us. In this profile, I talk to them in a cozy San Francisco locale and...
The late Terence McKenna is one of the smartest and most inspiring guys I’ve ever interviewed. Ethnobotanist, psychedelic philosopher of DMT, shamanism and fundamental erotic connection between the “Deep Animal” and the “Deep Vegetative” Kingdoms. This is just a snippet from one of our many interviews. Over several years, I talked to him about space...
For most Americans, the Thanksgiving feast means a traditional turkey feast with family and friends, and a moment’s pause to feel and express gratitude for the gifts life has given them, even during tough times. I took to the streets of New York to talk to people about what they are grateful for, and why.
Every year, upwards of 700 Mormons take over the hill in upstate New York where they believe their founder, Joseph Smith, discovered the golden tablets making up the Book of Mormon. They reenact the history of the world and the history of their people on into the Future in ‘them thar hills,’ and believe me,...
This is a extended, edited excerpt from my interview with (now Dr.) Max Aguilera-Hellweg, who saw and photographed the strange and difficult beauty of the body as it undergoes radical surgery. While this is a long form audio story, I hoped to give a sense of the ways the spirit, the “hotness” of fleshy life...
What if ideas (memes) as self-replicating quasi-life forms that are looking or minds to colonize, the same way way that viruses or germs are looking or space inside cells? It might explain a lot, from fads to fashion to catchy-tunes to forms of government to religion and suicide cults. This piece looks at the intersection...
Due to religion, socialism, the Zionist ideal, the militarization of the society, Western feminism, Arab culture and many other factors, Israeli women have complex competing factors that inform their self-image and their social roles. This is a half hour documentary I did for National Public Radio back in the 1990s that is still relevant today.
Between Zionism, Socialism, Feminism, Judaism, the Holocaust, and all the American, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian cultural influences that compete for primacy as models for women in Israel, their status and self-image is deeply multi-layered and complex. This half hour documentary, which I completed for National Public Radio back in the early 1990s, offers...
It may be hard or many of us to imagine the glitter and the sometimes risque fun associated with the old nightclubs, burlesques and vaudeville houses of the 1920s and 1930s, especially in New York, where such entertainment reached a certain height of glamor. But what was that life like for those on the other...
On one level, this is a long form documentary about eminent (and eminently sparkling and intelligent) Wendy Doniger, the professor of Sanskrit and Hindu Mythology at the University of Chicago. On a deeper level, it is about Hindu myth, and Hindu gods, and the ways that the human and divine Narrator becomes part of the...
Forty years after Woodstock, the iconic music festival still looms large in the public mind as the high point — or, some say, the death knell — of America’s 1960s’ counterculture. What was it like to be there for “veteran” audience members and performers, and what is the legacy of this unique cultural happening? Adam...
Oy! There are so many Yiddish words Americans (and Noo Yawkuz especially) use in everyday talking that it is really gevalt. This is a VOA Wordmaster segment where I explore what some of those words are and what they mean. Originally tailored for broadcast to places where Yiddish has never never been heard.
A collection of music produced by Yo-Yo Ma in connection with the winter holiday season, which exemplifies his wide-ranging and talented musical family – including traditional and modern and world music arrangements from the USA, Brazil, medieval Ireland and closer to home. Yo-Yo Ma is his normal charming, charismatic and virtuosic self.
Every year, hundreds, or even thousands of talented young people come to New York to study, audition and do their damnedest to make it big on the stage whose ultimate Holy Grail is Broadway. In this story, I speak to some of these starry-eyed youth as they prepare for the Big Time in Musical Theater...