Showing results by narrator "Judith Kampfner" in All Categories

When you lower a bucket into the ocean, you expect to pull-up - water. Perhaps some seaweed or a fish or two. It‘s what you can’t see in that bucket that’s the most intriguing to scientists. Every teaspoonful of that water can contain a hundred-million tiny viruses. Producer Judith Kampfner travels from the coast of Plymouth in England to California to meet with some of the intrepid pioneers who are on the trail of these new natural marvels.

Our culture and conditioning would have us believe that angels don't exist, yet the surge of angel books and ephemera has encouraged people to come out and talk about their experiences. People confess that they have a guardian angel or that an angel has brought a miracle in their life. We travel to the Midwest and Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to talk to people for whom angels are a part of life and work. Winner of the Wilbur Award for excellence in communication of religious faith.

Between the mid-seventies and the early nineteen-nineties, Paul Erasmus was a secret police official in South Africa. His unit was responsible for what he calls dirty tricks, which included arson, sabotage, theft, discrediting people, illegal phone tapping, and firebombing. Then, before apartheid ended, he went in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to confess to 500 offenses and 80 serious crimes and was granted partial amnesty in 2000.

In the high tech world of NASA and the military, the concept of remote medical consultations from the isolation of an orbiting spacecraft or a ship on international patrol has been accepted and well-known for some time. But telemedicine also plays an increasingly important role in the lives of ordinary people.

Anyone sending a space shuttle into orbit, building a skyscraper, or even studying bone density owes a debt of gratitude to Isaac Newton and his theory of gravitation and laws of motion. Yet, the role of gravity in life’s processes, from cell structure to the human cardiovascular system remains unclear.

Talk about taxis as a guilty pleasure! Producer Judith Kampfner gives us a metropolitan comparison: whether it's riding in style on the streets of New York (avoiding the hustle, bustle, and pain of the subway), or zipping across London's spiraling maze of cross-streets (never doubting your intrepid guide's sense of direction). Join us for a tour of taxi drivers -- the rough-edged New York City cabbies, and the traditional, vintage hacks of London. It’s never predictable – who might be the next stranger to inhabit your space?

Around the world there is topless bathing but it is rare in this country. Yet one in four Americans admit to having skinny dipped. Is it hypocritical, a holdover from Puritan beginnings, or something more deep-seated? At the end of summer, before the chill winds blow, Producer Judith Kampfner visits a public nude beach in Miami, Florida and a private naturist camp not far outside New York and yes, complies with the no clothes rule. Baring all may mean feeling vulnerable and stupid.