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March 2010

March 12

The Lonely Funeral Every year up to twenty people die completely alone in Amsterdam. There are no friends or family to prepare their funeral or mourn over the body. Sometimes these people are illegal migrants, drug mules, or simply people who for one reason or another, cut-off all social contacts. Poet Frank Starik decided that these people also deserved to be eulogized. He contacted the Amsterdam city services and asked if he could take part in these forgotten funerals. Producer Michele Ernsting of Radio Netherlands Worldwide brings us the story of the Lonely Funeral. It airs as part of the international collaboration, Global Perspectives: At The Edge. Death Comes Home An intimate emotional portrait of three families who have chosen to fore-go the funeral director and proscribed memorial, and instead care for their dead in their own homes. This is not a story about hospice or green burial; 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.

March 5

Middle C Tristan Whiston performed for the first time as a solo soprano at the tender age of six. Years of hard work led to an accomplished singing career. But two years ago, Tristan decided to give up the most precious thing a singer has - the voice. As part of our Global Perspective Series At The Edge, CBC producer Carma Jolly brings us Tristan's audio diary of the transition from female to male. Wrapping Dreams in Lavender Gregory was only five when he knew he should have been born a girl. But it took till his mid-50s to harness the courage to become Susan. The gender he knew he was in his brain was different to the sex of his genitals. This is now known to be a medical rather than psychological condition but is still commonly confused with cross-dressing - where people dress as the opposite sex to fulfil a psychological need. For Susan this diagnosis of transsexualism was a godsend. But for Mary, his wife, it was devastating. This program was a finalist in the Australian Human Rights Media Awards for Radio.

February 2010

February 26	Sleeping through the Dream In 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King led the March on Washington and spoke the famous words "I have a dream." Then 18 year-old Producer Askia Muhammad was, as he recalls, 'sleeping through the dream.' Growing up in Los Angeles, Muhammad was far away from the civil rights uproar and any self-proclaimed political consciousness. Now 40 years later, Muhammad revisits his youth with two close friends. Join us for the journey of a young man's political awakening during a time of intense social unrest. Remembering Kent State 1970 When thirteen students were shot by Ohio National Guard Troops during a war demonstration on the Kent State University Campus on the first week of May 1970, four young lives were ended and a nation was stunned. More than 30 years later, the world at war is a different place. However, those thirteen seconds in May, 1970 still remain scorched into an Ohio hillside. Through archival tape and interviews, Remembering Kent State tracks the events that led up to the shootings.
February 19	My World: Officer Candidate School In 1965 and 1966, Producer Askia Muhammad was a star-struck and naive college student who had matriculated from Watts to San Jose State University, while getting college deferments to serve two years active duty in the U.S. Navy Reserve. As Askia began struggles with becoming a Reserve Office Candidate, the country began to struggle with itself with blacks' rights, the hippie movement, the constant protest against the war in Vietnam. In My World: Officer Candidate School, Askia takes us through his path from faithful Naval Officer to conscientious objector. At Home on Cape Cod In AT HOME ON CAPE COD, reporter Alice Furlaud remembers her childhood and adolescence in summers on the Lower Cape. Furlaud has come back, after 26 years in Paris, to live year-round in the 1829 Truro house which her parents bought in l933. She revisits sites full of memories, and talks to friends who remember her early days on the Cape.
February 12	Sam's Story Sam was brought to the United States by his parents as a young child, but his family overstayed their visas. Over the past fourteen years, Sam has grown from a small boy to a young man — taught in American schools and churches, he grew up like any other American kid. But when he was asked to fill in his social security number on a financial aid form, he began to realize the consequences of being undocumented. Long Haul Productions picks up Sam's story as he's graduating from high school in Elkhart, Indiana, and looking to start his first year of college. Citizenship Diary How many stars and how many stripes and what do they mean? You need to know this and many more flag questions to pass the US Naturalization test. Judith Kampfner recorded an audio diary about the process of becoming an American citizen, and about what it was like taking on a second identity. Was it a betrayal of her British roots? Or was it a very logical step to take for someone who thinks of herself as in internationalist? Many more people are becoming dual or multiple citizens today as more countries accept the idea - Mexico, Columbia and the Dominican Republic for instance. Does this dilute the concept of citizenship? Indeed perhaps we are less likely to identify ourselves as citizens today because we are part of a global culture and travel more. Kampfner discovers that going through the paperwork, the test and the ceremony does not help her feel American - that is something she and all the others who are processed have to do for themselves.
February 5	After the Shot On the night of April 14th 1865, in front of a thousand people at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Shouting ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ – ‘thus always to tyrants’, Booth believed that he was striking down a tyrant as surely as Brutus struck down Julius Caesar. Twelve days later Booth himself was shot dead in a barn in Virginia. From the moment Booth shot Lincoln, conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination have flourished – and 140 years later, for both historians and ordinary people, they are still very much alive. Some believe Booth was the ring leader of a small group; others are convinced he was simply a pawn in a grand conspiracy plot. While still others believe it wasn’t really Booth who died in that Virginia barn. Jean Snedegar tries to unravel the truth – and a myriad of legends - about the assassination of a great American president. New Norcia: The Monastery and the Observatory In Western Australia, there's a small and somewhat surreal town called New Norcia. It's Australia's only Monastic town - with a surprising and imposing collection of Spanish style buildings. New Norcia was established in the 1850s as a 'Spanish Benedictine Monastery.' Today, a handful of monks continue the ancient tradition of prayer, work and service in their search for God. Now, New Norcia is also the home to one of the European Space Agency's largest tracking stations. A monastery next to an observatory might seem incongruous, however these neighbors have forged an unlikely understanding. Both groups are exploring the riddle of existence and space, in different ways. This program was produced by Roz Bluett of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is part of our international documentary exchange series, Crossing Boundaries.

January 2010

January 29	From Brooklyn to Banja Luka An interesting cross cultural relationship that spans New York, Banja Luka and Amsterdam. Jonathan is a loud New Yorker, a Brooklyn Jew who has been living in Holland for 13 years. He has joint Dutch US nationality, speaks fluent Dutch, and yet remains essentially his boisterous loud American self. He is married to Dragana, a Serbian from Banja Luka, who came here in the midst of the Bosnian war and remains deeply affected by the war and its after effects in her country. They met at a party in Amsterdam ten years ago and have been together ever since. They now have a young trilingual son. The two have much in common - they're clever, loud, extravagant people from musical backgrounds. But she has a Slavic melancholia that contrasts with his wisecracking Jewish humour. In this program, they discuss their different cultures, how they feel being such big personalities living in a country that doesn't seem at first glance particularly suited to their ethnic backgrounds and character, and also the nature of their tempestuous relationship. This program was produced by Dheera Sujan of Radio Netherlands and airs as part of our special international collaboration, Global Perspectives: Romance Series. The Sobbing Celebrant Australian Broadcasting Corporation producer Natalie Kestecher thought it might be useful to have a few options up her sleeve if she ever decides to stop making radio documentary features. So she decided to become a Marriage Celebrant. Natalie enrolled in the first ever training course which, under new Australian legislation, all intending Celebrants must complete in order to be accredited. Being a Celebrant is not just about saying the necessary words (which must always include 'I do') and ensuring the right forms are correctly filled in; it's also about devising meaningful ceremonies for a secular society. Theme weddings, butterfly releases, and quotes from 'The Prophet' are all popular. So what happens if you don't do themes, you hate 'The Prophet' and you think butterfly releases are yucky? Natalie spent a week coming to terms with the modern wedding. It turned out to be a week of introspection. 'The Sobbing Celebrant' offers an entertaining insight into the process that confers upon regular (or not so regular) citizens the right to officiate at the most significant moments in our lives. This program airs as part of our special international collaboration, Global Perspectives: Romance Series.
January 22	Treasure Isle This year the international documentary series Global Perspective has the theme of Islands, and for BBC World Service Radio Nick Rankin travels to Fair Isle, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the British Isles, to see how newcomers find their place in a small and tight-knit community. Fair Isle is rocky and too windy for trees to grow on, one of the Shetland Islands way north of the Scottish mainland, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea. At times in the last century Fair Isle’s population became so low that there was talk of evacuation, as happened on the island of St Kilda. But Fair Isle is an outward looking island which has always traded things like its famous patterned knitware, and its community has survived because of its capacity to absorb newcomers and make them its own. In Sepember 2005 the Fair Isle community of around 65 people advertised for a family to join them, and after interest from all over the world, Tommy Hyndman, a hat-maker from Saratoga Springs, New York, his wife Lis Musser and their young son Henry were the successful applicants. Nick Rankin talks to them and other incomers of different generations to Fair Isle about creating a life there, as well as to the ‘indigenous’ islanders they have joined. My Life So Far The story told by the young people of Alert Bay, a remote island on the west coast of Canada, is both familiar and unique. Like most people who come of age in a small community, Alert Bay’s youth is torn between staying and venturing into the bigger world. What’s unique about their story is the struggle to keep their culture alive. Alert Bay is the home of the Namgis First Nation. At one time it was Canadian government policy to assimilate its aboriginal people, and suppress their language and culture. St. Michael’s Indian Residential School, now derelict, serves as painful reminder of the past, as do the stories of the community’s elders. My Life So Far was created from tape gathered by five young people from Alert Bay, aged 11 to 17. Two CBC producers loaned them recording equipment, gave them some training, and a simple task. They were asked, tell us about where you live. Tell us about your life.
January 15	IGY: On The Ice “We see only a few miles of ruffled snow, bounded by a vague wavy horizon, but we know that beyond that horizon are hundreds and even thousands of miles which can offer no change to the weary eye… One knows there is neither tree, nor shrub, nor any living thing, nor even inanimate rock – nothing but this terrible limitless expanse of snow. It has been so for countless years, and it will be so for countless more. And we, little human insects, have started to crawl over this awful desert…. Could anything be more terrible than this silent, wind-swept immensity?” That’s a diary entry written by explorer Robert Falcon Scott, on his journey to Antarctica in 1905. It was, in the end, a disastrous journey. Scott wasn’t properly prepared. He had hauled along tractors, ponies, and even hay to feed the ponies, onto the ice. 50 years after Scott’s expedition, another group of explorers, much better prepared, also took a journey to Antarctica -- part of a global scientific effort to investigate the continent, called the IGY -- the International Geophysical Year. Producer Barbara Bogaev takes a look at what it was like for those men to live and work on Scott’s “silent, windswept immensity.” Southern Ocean Voyage ABC Producer Margot Foster takes us on a voyage aboard the Aurora Australis, Australia's research vessel. The 7-week trip into the Southern Ocean around Antarctica lets scientists sample plants, animals, and ocean water quality and composition, in an attempt to uncover how climate change is affecting, and will be affected by, the ecology of the Southern Ocean. Producer Sarah Castor-Perry talks to scientists after the trip, to try to decipher the data they collected.
January 8	The Bucket When you lower a bucket into the ocean, from a pier or off the side of a ship, it may well seem to come up containing nothing but clear water. But scientists now know that every teaspoonful of that water can contain a hundred-million tiny viruses. That sounds sinister, but without them the ocean couldn't function. Every day, marine viruses invade bacteria and other organisms, releasing their nutrients to the underwater food chain. Only since the late 1980's have marine biologists been aware of how many viruses are indigenous to the ocean, and how powerful and varied they are. They differ radically in size, shape, and DNA blueprint -- so much so that totally novel DNA keeps being discovered, with implications for anything from anti-aging creams to anti-cancer drugs and evolutionary science. Far from being a bad thing, these amazing marine viruses are useful, dramatic, novel, and dynamic; imagine that all hiding in your bucket of clear water! Producer Judith Kampfner travels from the coast of Plymouth in England to Santa Monica to meet with some of the intrepid pioneers who are on the trail of these new natural marvels. Surviving Extinction Across the United States, ecologists are battling to save endangered species from extinction. Scientists are now joining in the effort with sophisticated models that can be used to predict, and eventually prevent extinction. In this program, we travel to the Florida Everglades to see how the tiny Cape Sable Sparrow is faring despite an over-flooded environment, and to New England to find out how field mice are adapting after their habitat was destroyed. We discover what role scientific models play in the future of these species.
January 1	Changing Spaces: Hampden, Baltimore Producer Gemma Hooley profiles the neighborhood of Hampden, in Baltimore. 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. Join us as we explore the underlying culture of this blue collar community. The Changing Face of Neighborhood Crime A look at how neighborhoods change as new people move in, and when urban dwellers go to the suburbs. Race and class are issues here, with perceptions that crime rates are rising, fuelled by preconceptions about race. The program profiles the town of Laurel, Maryland, a midway point between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, where Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama was shot and paralyzed during his presidency campaign in 1972. The governor was there appealing to the mostly white constituents. However today Laurel is a town better characterized by its growing minority and ethnic populations, and also by crime. We investigate how the town has changed in the past 30 plus years, and whether crime is actually on the increase, or whether the perception of crime is what is changing. This program airs as part of our special international collaboration, Global Perspectives: The World of Crime.