Showing results by author "Gemma Hooley" in All Categories

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.

South Africa’s approach to HIV/AIDS has dramatically changed in recent years. For more than two decades, a combination of government inaction and controversial public health policies led to the situation that South Africa finds itself in today: home to the largest number of people living with HIV. Now the country is trying to make up for lost time, both in prevention and in treatment.

At the start of the 2008-2009 hockey season, two Canadian players packed up their gear and headed east to Washington, D.C., home of the NHL Washington Capitals. Nineteen-year-old British Columbia rookie Karl Alzner was hoping to win a coveted spot on the team. Saskatchewan veteran Brooks Laich had just signed a new 3-year contract and was anxious to get started. Both players carried audio diaries that they would use to document their season.

Step back in time to the eve of the American Revolution, following a woman whose job it is to play an 18th slave character in Colonial Williamsburg; a woman who must learn, in modern day, to interpret and recreate 1770 slave culture for a tourist audience. The story is told through this character's own narration and reflection, her interaction with other historical characters and with the tourist public in Williamsburg, and through documentation of her daily tasks.

Code Green explores the impact that hurricanes have on urban greencover, from integrating trees and wetlands into a city's infrastructure and disaster plan, to post-hurricane damage assessment of city trees and coastal marshes, to recovery and rebuilding. Hear from scientists, city planners and urban foresters about their work to establish, protect and restore the green infrastructure in the wake of catastrophic hurricanes, in coastal cities from Charleston to New Orleans.

A spirited exploration of the culture of extreme motivation in America, from team- and vision-building in the corporate world to the multi-million dollar industry of self-improvement books and videos. Along the way, producer Gemma Hooley meets Seattle's famous corporate-training fishmongers; hears from someone trying to figure out Who Moved Her Cheese; and is introduced to despair.com's lucrative mockery of the whole motivation business.

Producer Gemma Hooley explores the collective narrative created by people whose lives intersect in different ways with traffic islands and streetscapes. From a scientist trying to rationalize urban wildlife patterns, to a man who makes a living on the street corner, to people who use the streetscape to memorialize loved ones: what they have in common is that they map out private parts of their lives on the public traffic grid.

June 16, 1976 - Hector Petersen, a 13-year-old South African student is shot and killed during a massive demonstration to protest apartheid laws in South Africa. The photograph of the fatally wounded Petersen being carried from the scene appeared throughout the world and he became a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement. A generation later, June 16 is still a day of remembrance, particularly in Soweto, where Petersen was killed.

Americans will do anything for their pets, from cemeteries to beauty salons to day camp. There are cable and radio shows aimed at pets, cooking shows for pet food, and pet therapists. Producer Gemma Hooley explores the psychology behind this singularly American phenomenon. Join us for visits to a canine sperm bank, an agent for pets in the movies and a pet psychic as we explore the phenomenon that is pets in America.

Children who don't learn to read by the fourth grade are likely to be plagued by reading problems their entire life. Producer Gemma Hooley explores the research which has shown that learning to read is complex, involving neurological and sociological processes. She speaks with Dr. G. Reid Lyon, chief of the child development and behavior branch of the NICHD, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, at the National Institutes of Health.

Robben Island served as South Africa’s most notorious prison camp for thousands of opponents of apartheid. South African President Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison on Robben Island. Now the prison is closed and the island has become a museum, a fast growing tourist attraction in the new South Africa. Former political prisoners work alongside their former jailers as the new keepers of the island's history.