Each week, public radio's award-winning Humankind podcast presents stories of hope and humanity.
01/16/2025
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Bob Massie's Survival Story
Some people are so devastated by illness that they become withdrawn and even bitter. But for others, like Bob Massie, the challenge of physical ailments produces a ripening of compassion, a deep, first-hand awareness of suffering and of the need to be of service to others who suffer. Massie was born with hemophilia, a very painful disease that impairs the body’s ability to stop bleeding. A succession of blood transfusions also exposed him to HIV and hepatitis. Yet he managed to succeed academically (attending Yale Divinity School, becoming an Episcopal priest, and later earning a doctorate from Harvard Business School). In this episode, Massie tells the story of how his long battle with various illnesses sensitized him to human distress and deepened his commitment to helping people and protecting the environment we all depend upon. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
12/26/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Jolie Goschalk
Take a journey with David Freudberg as he follows Julie Goschalk’s path from the child of Holocaust survivors who endured the Auschwitz concentration camp to facilitator of conversations between Jewish children of survivors and the children of N**i perpetrators. A controversial and moving tribute to the human need for reconciliation, understanding, and peace, this episode of Humankind will stir your mind and challenge your preconceptions. Many assume that some boundaries can never be crossed. But in these dialogues it became clear that people on both sides were innocent bystanders. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
12/19/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Hospitality
Intensely strained by ominous prognoses or debilitating conditions, family members of the sick still must face finding affordable lodging while they maintain a bedside vigil at hospitals around the country. The Hospitality Program in Boston, MA, aims to alleviate the prohibitive costs of hotels and the impersonal glare of waiting rooms by opening up the homes of volunteers. A true example of generosity and neighborliness, this half-hour of Humankind talks to the families that have offered shelter to the struggling and a hand to those often holding on by thin threads. This episode will give you hope and optimism for the rich goodness of the stranger. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
12/12/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Most people go through life internally reciting words and thoughts, frequently over and over. The vast majority of these thoughts are negative, according to studies, and this can set us up for anxiety and an unrealistic perspective. The surprising power of visualizing affirmative outcomes in life is explored by New York Times best-selling author David Allen, who finds that when people vividly picture the solutions to problems, they can reset their nervous system and remove self-imposed blockages. This program examines how concentrating on positive outcomes can dramatically alter our landscape of possibilities. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
12/05/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Protecting the Public, Pt. 1
In the wake of the George Floyd murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, some law enforcement agencies are making efforts to improve their responsiveness to the local community. This is the intriguing story of how, in some venues, public safety is being expanded to include not just police and fire services but also social workers and other professionals. In this episode, we’ll ride along with unarmed “crisis responders”, a new form of public safety professional. We’ll listen to a physician who is also a part-time police officer. We’ll also meet a couple at the center of this trend in a major city — Eric Barden, the deputy police chief of Seattle and his wife Amy Barden, who leads the city’s new CARE department, which works in tandem with police. You’ll also learn how law enforcement professionals are affected by their own high-stress jobs. And we tour a 9-1-1 call center, where the staff fields nearly 900,000 emergency calls per year. What’s it like to be continuously on the receiving end of calls from people in crisis? Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
11/28/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Oral Lee Brown
How does one woman pay for 23 children to go to college on a $45,000-a-year salary? What prompted her to do so? Is her extraordinary pledge to those children enough to motivate them to succeed? She calls them “my babies”—public school students she informally adopts in the roughest section of Oakland, CA. They call her “Ma,”—Mrs. Oral Lee Brown, a most remarkable community activist who, starting in 1987, promised twenty-three children (an entire first-grade class): if they study hard and graduate high school, she'll somehow scrape together the money to put them all through college. And she’s been true to her word. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
09/19/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Health Care with Kindness Part 1
We visit a remarkable community health center, Northern Nevada Hopes, which takes care of 12,000 patients in Reno, many who are low-income. The CEO, Sharon Chamberlain, tells her unusual story of being formerly homeless and learning first-hand the pain that comes with being “invisible”. We include moving accounts of patients who’ve come to view the clinic as a supportive sanctuary as their lives are on the mend. You’ll also hear from health care professionals about how they prioritize kindness in interactions both with patients and with colleagues. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
09/12/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: The Present Moment with Jon Kabat Zinn
Medical researcher, meditation teacher and best-selling author Jon Kabat-Zinn discusses a powerful, yet simple meditative technique known as “mindfulness.” The essence of this practice is to calm down and focus only on the present moment—lifting from us the enormous burden of worrying about the past or future. As emeritus professor of medicine and founder of the renowned Stress Reduction Clinic at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical School, Dr. Kabat-Zinn has taught tens of thousands of patients Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), with an emphasis on paying attention to the simple act of breathing—in the present moment. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
09/05/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Barely Getting By
In a country as wealthy as the United States, “working poor” should be a contradiction in terms. But tens of millions of Americans fall into that category — affecting a growing population of children. Despite their toil, many of the working poor are broke. Frequently they lack health insurance. If a child gets sick, if they lose their job, if a spouse leaves, it can swiftly spell a financial emergency. They sometimes choose between food and rent or between medicine and heat. What’s it like for people in low-paying full-time jobs, with no savings, falling behind on their bills, sometimes lining up at food pantries, even shelters? And how does this affect the rest of society? In this two-part audio documentary from the public radio series Humankind, we listen to a former police officer, a hospital worker, a nursing home assistant, and others barely getting by. We also hear the insights of David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Working Poor, Dr. Nancy Cauthen of Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty, Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work, policy researcher Gordon Berlin of MDRC, Northeastern University labor analyst Barry Bluestone, and others. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
08/29/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Relaxed Focus with David Allen Part 2
In his system known as GTD (named for his best-selling book, "Getting Things Done"), David Allen says we need a trusted system, not just of lists to keep organized. He urges people to ask key questions on any task, large or small, that becomes a responsibility: what exactly is the project, what's the desired outcome and what's the next action toward attaining that outcome. And to review the status of this on a regular basis. Becoming clear on this simply process can free up the mind of unnecessary clutter and worries. And David reveals a painful chapter of his own life that brought into his awareness what ultimately evolved into GTD. This is part two of an episode of the public radio series Humankind. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
08/22/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Relaxed Focus with David Allen Part 1
How can we deal with the modern sense of feeling overloaded? It is emerging as a broad social problem that takes its toll on both work and home life—and can impinge on our ability to function with personal clarity. Called “the feeling of overwhelm” by best-selling author David Allen, this is about more than just a bursting backlog of unanswered emails, or yet another cell phone interruption. It is about new ways we all can learn to focus—in an age of ever-multiplying inputs of information. And it raises the question of what we are focusing on, from routine daily tasks to the big picture of life’s meaning. In this provocative two-part profile of David Allen, we hear the sounds of communications technology coming at us, and later we stroll through the peaceful garden in Ojai, California where for him “time disappears.” We also hear how he brilliantly defines the widespread problem of “overwhelm” along with very practical solutions that can increase relaxation for everyone. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
08/15/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: After Effects of War with Christal Presley
At one time they called it “shell-shocked” or “soldier’s heart.” But today, medical science recognizes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a syndrome afflicting many people who’ve experienced the anguish, fear, and pain of military violence. Millions of soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and Vietnam before that. Some came home emotionally damaged by war. This is the story of Christal Presley, a Georgia woman whose father was drafted to Vietnam at age 18 and returned in 1970 with 100% emotional disability. Inevitably, this affected family dynamics of the home she grew up in, leading to a long estrangement from her father. Christal, in turn, experienced “secondary trauma.” But in a gesture of healing, father and daughter reconnected for a month’s worth of daily conversations, as movingly recounted in this episode. Listen now at humankindpodcast.org
08/08/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Humor and Health
Because laughter is surely good medicine, we visit with professional comedians who are also cancer survivors, as well as a top surgeon at New York’s renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, to understand the role of humor and a positive attitude in surviving the disease. Listen to comics who have personally faced the gloom of cancer and yet who have found ways to laugh at it. We also journey to Los Angeles to hear the very human and humorous observations of playwrights who have had cancer and now present their personal journeys in the form of stage performances that are both deeply honest and filled with laughter. With Robert Schimmel, Dr. Patrick Borgen, Marion Grodin, Dr. Lee Berk, Loretta LaRoche, Jonna Tamases, Hal Ackerman and Dr. Jeffrey Gurian.
08/01/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Doctors’ Movement to Avert Nuclear War
This special recounts how American and Soviet physicians joined together on a mission to educate their governments and their peoples about the medical effects of nuclear war. The effort began in the early 1960s among American physicians who for the first time calculated the medical consequences of a nuclear war. This eventually led to the founding of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the first global medical movement dedicated to disseminating factual information on the consequences of that nightmare scenario. Through its Soviet-American dialogue, the group is credited with helping to initiate the Soviet Union’s unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing in the mid-1980s. At one point, the movement attracted about two-hundred-thousand members representing fifty-five countries. In late 1985, the two founders, Bernard Lown and Eugene Chazov, journeyed to Oslo, Norway where they received the Nobel Peace Prize.
07/25/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Nonviolent Communication
It’s been said that we’ve learned how to speak but not necessarily how to communicate. Rarely are we taught the art of deep listening or how to respond to someone without accusation or blame or the ability to articulate our own needs without putting others on the defensive. These are some skills taught in a system known as Nonviolent Communication, a simple way of communicating that can help us to heal conflict and foster greater compassion. Its aim is to promote more understanding and foster compassion in a world riddled with conflict. Finding ways to do that has long been a quest of author Marshall Rosenberg and educator Betty Burkes. Listen to this episode now at humankindpodcast.org!
07/18/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Harlem Renaissance
A truly spell-binding speaker, Geoffrey Canada was described by Newsday as “Harlem’s Father Figure.” His efforts to save inner city youth became the subject of a cover story of The New York Times magazine. In 1997, he drew a line on a map around a twenty-four block area in central Harlem where he believed children were woefully underserved. He dubbed it “Harlem Children’s Zone” and has proceeded to deploy more than a dozen programs serving over 8,000 kids (and 5,000 adults). His nineteen million dollar project, supported by foundations, corporations and government funding, brings together a patchwork of agencies serving children. A third-degree black belt, Canada is a dynamo of energy and inspiration with a grand vision to reclaim young people one at a time. His wonderful stories of turning troubled youth around humanize the plight of kids hungry for affirmation and inspiration.
07/11/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: Tracy Gary
Tracy Gary, Pillsbury heiress and noted philanthropist, calls charity the “new American dream” because it is uniquely able to create change in our world. A founder of over a dozen charities herself, Gary has given nearly all of her inheritance away. Starting in her twenties, she committed herself to the call of philanthropy, not only as a funder, but as an organizer and coalition builder, she has spearheaded efforts to save the environment, protect women, and enhance the opportunities for numerous disenfranchised groups across America. Her candor, spirit, and thoughts on why the present moment offers a golden chance for betterment will convince you how hope, more than anything, can fund a cynical world. Listen now wherever podcasts are available!
07/08/2024
🎙️ New Podcast Episode: The Meaning of America Part 2
Beyond the symbolism of flag-waving and patriotic cliches lies the heart of American Democracy: our system of personal rights and human dignity. Conceived in rebellion against the absolute right of monarchs, the American revolution asserted that the people are sovereign, that they must be free to speak, to choose their leaders, to pray — or not to pray — as they wish. Messy, highly imperfect and in need of constant maintenance, it is a system that confers on us the priceless gift of human freedom. On this special two-part episode of Humankind, we explore the basic American right of citizens to follow the dictates of their conscience in their own personal pursuit of happiness. Hear PBS Filmmaker Ken Burns, philosopher/historian Jacob Needleman, and the words of America’s founders, as we try to uncover the true meaning of America. Listen now wherever podcasts are available!
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The quest for more stuff during the holidays.
Excerpt from "Reclaiming the Holidays" out now wherever you get podcasts.
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A wholesome and free alternative to expensive consumer products, give the gift of time to your loved ones this holiday season.
"Reclaiming the Holidays" out now wherever you get podcasts.
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Consumerism during the holidays. Excerpt from "Reclaiming the Holidays" out now on the Humankind on Public Radio podcast.
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Self-work in prison. Hear the stories of ex-prisoners who’ve begun to heal, through the inspired work of Robin Casarjian on "Helping Prisoners to Heal", out now on the Humankind on Public Radio podcast.
Listen now wherever you get podcasts.
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Human Media views the exciting, evolving apparatus of mass communications as an unprecedented opportunity for public service that can help to build a more cohesive sense of community. Our vision of community is based on personal ideals and values, such as compassion, service, generosity, equality and civility. We aim to serve the large and growing audience of people who seek a positive alternative to media negativity and exploitation. Human Media attempts to address — and call forth — the highest part of people. We strive to shed light on solutions, not just problems. And we celebrate the human voice, in all its wonderfully diverse forms — a birthright unique to each person.
There are now many forces bent on thwarting efforts to enlighten and to reveal our essential human inter-connectedness. Those forces will eventually fail, if we stay true to this vision; for in the end, the forces of good always outweigh the others.
Below are a couple of quotes I find inspiring about about mass media. The first is a translation from Latin of an inscription in the foyer of the British Broadcasting House in London:
“This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Barth being Director General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness.”
Then, there is this comment by visionary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in a speech, delivered in 1958, about the promise of television:
“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.”
The same is true of public radio, and now of podcasting and other emerging media. For all the dazzling capacity and reach of technology, its ultimate effect will be determined by the human beings who use these media for good or ill.
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The Humankind series and our other public radio and podcast projects are produced by Human Media of Belmont, Massachusetts (outside Boston). David Freudberg, Executive Producer.
Special thanks to: David Cruz, Ken Rogers, Miles Blackwood Robinson, Associate Producers; Brian K. Johnson, Webmaster; Cathy Graham and Tony Buck, editorial support; Antonio Oliart, Doug Shugarts, Noel Flatt and Steve Colby, recording engineers.
Human Media (Far Reaching Communications Inc.) is a small, independent production house which performs public broadcasting production and distribution activities in association with WGBH/Boston, NPR, the BTS Center, and Connie Goldman Productions.
Our nonprofit affiliate, Documentary Educational Resources, is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization based in Watertown, Massachusetts. Founded in 1968, DER has a distinguished history of film production and distribution, and has recently expanded to encompass public radio and podcasting.
