Showing results by narrator "Lisa Simeone" in All Categories

From pig to farm worker and back to pig — that’s the path of the perfect swine flu virus. Likewise, chickens, turkeys, geese and birds are hot zones for pandemic flu viruses. In the past, when governments grew concerned about a particular flu, they would quarantine or even kill animals that carry a suspect virus. Now animal health and public health authorities are collaborating on more extensive bio-security.

Tens of thousands of inmates are locked up in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons today. And the number is rapidly growing. Often prisoners spend years — even decades — by themselves in a cell the size of a small bathroom. They don't see anyone. They don't talk to anyone. They don't touch anyone. What does this experience do to a person's mental health? Producer Claire Schoen shows us what solitary confinement looks, sounds and feels like.

Just two hours south of the Grand Canyon, the scenic remote village of Sedona, Arizona, has gone from being an isolated haven for visual artists and retirees to a bustling center of New Age activity. Sedona is now home to an increasing number of young seekers who claim that the land has powerful healing energies. The population has doubled in recent times and longtime residents and local Native tribes, members are concerned about the destruction of the land and the removal of sacred artifacts from the ruins.

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.

When a boat called The Golden Venture ran aground off New York in the early nineties, her human cargo was discovered: illegal Chinese immigrants seeking a new life in the United States. Hanna Dunlop, a corporate lawyer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, answered the call for pro-bono representation of the refugees. She had no background in refugee or asylum law. She takes us through the legal and emotional battlefield of her defense.

In August 2003, Europe suffered the worst heat wave in at least 500 years. Forest fires raged in much of southern Europe, themselves causing deaths. Crops withered and trees died. One of the cities hit hardest was Paris. Although the high heat started in early August, it was nearly mid-month, after hundreds of people had been killed, before the French government recognized that the heat wave had turned deadly in Paris.

Gibsonton, Florida is the retirement and off-season home for hundreds of carnival and circus show people. Called "Gibtown" by many of its residents, the town was at one time considered the oddest place is America. You could walk into any restaurant and find the World's Only Living Half Girl sipping coffee with her 8 foot 4 inch husband, Giant Al. They, along with the Lobster Man, Alligator Skin Man and the Monkey Girl, among others, made their living touring with carnival sideshows.

In hindsight, Apollo 11's trip to the moon seems inevitable. But it was, in fact, an incredibly bumpy ride. This is not a story about mechanical failures or the scientific and engineering challenges — which were enormous. This is the other story of the Apollo program. Producer Richard Paul tells of the seven-year battle to balance politics and priorities inside the Capitol Beltway to land an American on the moon.

FMD (Foot and Mouth Disease) is feared among farmers. It decimates herds and severely impacts beef and milk production. Award winning producer Judith Kampfner looks at FMD control measures around the world. In Britain, she revisits an outbreak in 2001, which led to mass cattle killings. Virologist Jef Hammond, head of the FMD Reference Laboratory at the U.K.’s Institute for Animal Health lays out the risks.

Until satellites came along, weather forecasting was either very local (it's raining) or very general (it's going to be warmer tomorrow). When satellites started sending pictures of the Earth and its atmosphere, a remarkable meteorologist named Harry Wexler, saw the opportunity for long range, global forecasting. In the late 1950's, as head of the U.S. Weather Bureau and chief U.S. scientist for the International Geophysical Year (IGY), Wexler not only had the vision, but the means to carry it out.

During the International Geophysical Year (IGY), in the late 1950's, teams of scientists poured in Antarctica, mining for data: about the weather, the climate and most especially, about the ice. Producer Barbara Bogaev talks to some of the men who were there.

An intimate emotional portrait of three families who have chosen to forego the funeral director and proscribed memorial and instead care for their dead in their own homes. Producer April Dembosky introduces us to people taking matters into their own hands: washing and dressing the bodies of their loved ones, building coffins, digging graves, and keeping their loved ones closer to home.

In the 1960s, in California, African American parents set up an elaborate ruse to get their children a better education. Restricted to poor schools in low income East Palo Alto, outside of San Francisco, parents looked across the freeway and devised a way to send their children to wealthy Palo Alto schools. A young mother, barely educated herself, organized the Sneak Out program. Working with white parents, the program was a modern day Underground Railroad.

How is suffering, either of personal or historical significance, measured? How does one move beyond the desire for vengeance? These questions are complicated by historical record; how did events really unfold? For Israelis and Palestinians, one land has two histories, and which version you accept depends on who you are. Tragedy is still fresh in the memories of both sides, complicating the peace process.

Surrealist Andre Breton called the work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo "a bomb with a ribbon around it." The epic work of muralist Diego Rivera, to whom she was married, often overshadowed its miniature detail. Kahlo said she simply painted her life.

History often celebrates dramatic acts of heroism rather than smaller, more modest acts of leadership and courage. It was an accumulation of small acts throughout Eastern Europe that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As the wall was being taken apart, citizens of a nearby country were also dismantling their own government. In Czechoslovakia, a protest movement led primarily by college students was blossoming.

From the original Flying Doctors in Australia to the treatment of inmates in high security jails, telemedicine has dramatically changed the way many of us interact with our physicians. Producer Judith Kampfner joins an oncologist in Kansas as he crisscrosses the state visiting his scattered patients.

In 1967, a fire on-board Apollo One, the first mission of the U.S. lunar landing program, killed three astronauts before the mission ever got off the ground. The loss and the impact of that fire were as profound as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster almost 20 years later. The Apollo One fire called into question the most fundamental aspects of NASA's management structure. Producer Richard Paul follows the aftermath of the disaster.

Divorce has an immediate impact on family and friends beyond the couple and their children. It is not the quick paper solution of a society which discards and moves on all to easily. Producer Judith Kampfner looks at the ripple effects of divorce — how it has an impact far beyond the immediate family. We hear from women who have managed their experiences with humor and insights. In part, though, Who’s Got the Dog? is a personal reflection about the producer's own divorce.

Arriving in Chicago from England, reporter Judith Kampfner had to learn quickly that in order to have a conversation with a stranger in Chicago, you have to be up to date on the city’s teams. So she visits with local sports talk host Dan Bernstein, iconic Cubs announcer Harry Caray, and gets advice and insight from Cubs, White Sox, Bears and Northwestern fans. It’s an initiation into what it means to be a native Chicagoan.