Showing results by narrator "Barbara Bogaev" in All Categories

Long cherished as a vital American folk art, quilting is fast becoming a contemporary form of documentation. For instance, "The Names Project," the mile-long quilt designed to memorialize victims of AIDS, often includes bits of photographs, handwriting, personal mementos and even artifacts like hair and teeth. Quilts were also used to send messages on the Underground Railroad. We look at the tapestry of quilting stories as we make a patchwork of audio stories celebrating the joys and history of quilts.

Join Producer Lisa Busch as she explores the Alaska caves they pre-date the Ice Age, it's only been relatively recently since geologists identified a vast cave system tunneling through south east Alaska. Scientists have determined that the caves serve as a drainage system for the timber lands around them, providing an outlet for an enormous amount of rain, up to 150 inches a year. Archeologists who study early migration think humans used the caves to move up and down the coastline in small boats.

They are among the largest mammals on earth, but also among the most invisible: humpback whales are an enigma to scientists who can't observe much of their underwater activities. To unlock the secrets of humpback behavior, researchers have turned to sound to hear what they cannot see. Join us on an underwater visit to the whales on their feeding grounds near Sitka, Alaska. The remarkable sounds discovered there are causing scientists to forge new theories about whales and why they sing.

The Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, is a common virus that touches billions of human beings in one way or another — from a tiny wart on the hand to invasive cancer. HPV can be found worldwide, yet most people who are infected never show any symptoms. The virus can "hide" for years from a person's immune system, with no apparent ill effects, and then awaken and trigger deadly disease.

Gamma rays are the most intense form of radiation. As the Cold War focused on the spread of nuclear war, a U.S. spy satellite searching for clandestine nuclear weapons tests detected frequent, but brief, bursts of powerful gamma-rays, a possible signal of a hydrogen bomb explosion. Interviewing some of the original researchers of this phenomenon, Producer David Barrett Wilson takes us from that starting point through the beginning of scientific research into these bizarre surges of energy.

The apple may have originated not in Mesopotamia, but in Alma Ata, Kazakstan. The majority of apples around the world share a genetic heritage with apples grown in the area. There, Frank Browning discovers that one of the world's oldest apple breeding programs is still on-going. He tells us about efforts to hybridize better apples, and the place the program has in the global picture.

Whether it's a one room schoolhouse, a bilingual high school, or a magnet school, technology plays a significant role in the 21st century classroom. And therein lies a story about an unequal playing field and a process that isn't as simple as it seems. Districts not only grapple with obtaining the technology but they have to figure out what to do with it once it enters the classroom. Access, support, training and vision now become pieces of the classroom technology puzzle.

Evolution is usually thought of a slow, undetected process, happening over hundreds, even millions of years. But when humans enter the picture, whether they apply new insecticides, over-fish or dump pollutants, evolution accelerates changes in nature ... to the point where humans now must devise ways to stop or reverse the process. Producer Barbara Bogaev presents three cases where just by making one move, we’ve inadvertently produced a counter effect.

A swirling soundscape of music, storytelling, and tall tales, created by producer Tom Skelly, testifies to the role art plays as a tool for survival in prison. As the multi-art director of the California Institute for Men in Chino, Skelly was able to collect sounds that capture the real importance of art in the lives of the incarcerated.

If you are a baseball junkie, this program is for you. Producers Moira Rankin and Dan Collison explore the baseball fan's addiction to the game as they follow two die-hard enthusiasts to see how they endure the off-season. Along the way, they find solace in winter trade news, visit a psychologist, drop in on a support group, and reach nirvana and spring training.

The global economy: your view of it depends on where you are. For more than a century, trees in the Pacific Northwest have meant jobs. In rural Japan, trees have meant jobs as well. New log processing technology and the trade in raw logs is reshaping the way the timber industry in both countries does business. It's forcing a change in corporate culture, in consumer habits, and a way of life for many of those who work in timber.

Mbanna Kantako's pirate radio station, broadcast from a corner of his living room, is heard in a two mile radius of the John Hay Homes housing project in Springfield, Illinois. Zoom Black Magic Radio has attracted a relatively large audience with its mix of rap and reggae music, listener call-ins and political commentary. It has also attracted the attention of the FCC, the local legal system and the Springfield Police, all of whom have attempted to shut the station down.

Producer Gemma Hooley profiles the neighborhood of Hampden in Baltimore, Maryland. It's a pop culture landscape of pink plastic flamingoes, beehive hairdos, vintage clothing, leopard-skin purses, and cat-eye sunglasses. Then there are the annual festivals like the HonFest competition, and Christmas lights that you'll swear are shining through your radio. It’s not all charming nostalgia though. Join us as we explore the underlying culture of this blue collar community.

Twelve-year-old Emily lives with her mother in a small town in the mountains of West Virginia. Emily has cerebral palsy, and is one of three-quarters of a million children in the United States with developmental disabilities. She has impaired hearing, very limited speech and didn't learn to walk until she went to school. Because of Emily's inability to communicate in conventional ways, educators and other professionals initially had little idea of what her mental capabilities were.

Numerous times in American history, reformers have sought to help the poor by putting them amidst nature, in the belief being that physical beauty can make beautiful people. It seems like an odd idea. But Thomas Jefferson believed it fervently. And it's also the reason Central Park exists in New York City and the town of Greenbelt exists in Maryland. This program, from seasoned producer Richard Paul, looks at a time in our past when nature was used to uplift the poor.

In 1939, California farm girl Mary Kimoto Tomita traveled to Japan to learn Japanese and connect with the culture of her ancestors. She boarded a ship two years later to come back home to America. Two days into the voyage, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The ship turned around and Mary was trapped in the middle of a bloody war between the country of her birth and the country of her heritage.

On January 4, 1988, 63-year-old Emma Gresham became the first black mayor of Keysville, Georgia. She won the election over her opponent by 10 votes. In the town courthouse, on a trailer mounted on cinderblocks, a banner reads: Justice Knows No Boundaries. It's a constant reminder of both the town's troubled history and the dreams the mayor has for the town.

In conversations about the use of technology in schools, what you'll often hear is: Once we have a cadre of young teachers and administrators who've grown up with technology, computer use in schools will take off. This program examines that premise by following a young teacher, Brian Mason (7th grade American History) as he begins his second year in the classroom.

As more and more information is available on-line, as software allows anyone to find any passage in any book, an important question becomes: Who needs libraries anymore? Why does anyone need four walls filled with paper between covers? Surprisingly, they still do and in this program award-winning producer Richard Paul explores how research libraries, university libraries, school libraries and public libraries have adapted to the new information world.

During the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 in the United States, 184 people died at the Pentagon while hundreds more crawled through choking smoke and over burning wreckage to safety. But because the Pentagon attack was dwarfed by the tragedy at the World Trade Center, many have yet to hear the stories of the valiance and tenaciousness of the Pentagon employees; about the physical and psychic toll the attack took on them and their families -- and about how they have overcome and are moving on.