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  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan made five trips to North Dakota this past fall and winter to document the standoff between opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the pipeline’s supporters in government and business. As he reported on …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Los Angeles is a rapidly aging city in a rapidly aging county. In fact, over the next 15 years, LA County’s senior population will double, to nearly one-fifth of the total population. Housing, health care, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    One of Los Angeles’ NPR affiliates, KCRW, has launched Bear and Rux’s year-long multi-platform project about aging in the city’s working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. “Going Gray in LA: Stories of Aging along Broadway” is part …

  • Power to the People

    Power to the People

    As politicians argue about what to do about climate change, communities around the United States are taking matters into their own hands – pledging to reduce their carbon emissions, then hustling to make good on their promises. From Ithaca, NY, an hour-long special for State of the Re:Union.

  • Alt Meat Lunch

    Alt Meat Lunch

    As global demand for animal protein surges, so do the environmental costs of producing it. Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring alternatives, from lab-grown burgers to edible insects to faux meat made from plants. But will people eat them?

  • Foraged Lunch

    Foraged Lunch

    In Seattle and other U.S. cities, a movement is growing to bring foraging from the margins to the mainstream as a hedge against climate change and food insecurity.

  • Intensive Lunch

    Intensive Lunch

    Farmers in India say a novel way of growing rice and other crops has quadrupled yields while using less seed, water, and fertilizer. But some scientists doubt the gains are real.

  • Recycled Lunch

    Recycled Lunch

    In India, some farmers are replacing chemical fertilizers with the contents of their latrines. It’s cheaper and produces less greenhouse gas. Is it safe?

  • Low-Water Lunch

    Low-Water Lunch

    Growing more food with less water will be one of the biggest challenges in the coming era of surging populations and increasing climate disruption. In China, scientists say they’ve developed a new irrigation method that’s twice as efficient as today’s best technology.

  • Carbon-Neutral Lunch

    Carbon-Neutral Lunch

    Since announcing that it would become the world’s first carbon-neutral country, Costa Rica has been a laboratory for reducing the climate impact of agriculture.

  • Aquaponic Lunch

    Aquaponic Lunch

    Aquaponics is a recirculating system for raising fish and vegetables that uses less land, water, and chemicals than traditional methods. For years it has attracted hobbyists but few others. A Ugandan entrepreneur thinks its time has finally come.

  • Vegan Lunch

    Vegan Lunch

    Meat consumption in China is soaring, and so are the greenhouse gas emissions that meat production causes. But there is a nascent counter-trend – a small but growing vegan movement in the country’s big cities.

  • Alt Staple Lunch

    Alt Staple Lunch

    Amaranth virtually disappeared from Mexican diets after the Spanish banned it because of its use in human sacrifice rituals. Now there are efforts to bring it back for its superior nutritional qualities and its hardiness in the face of climate change.

  • Desert Lunch

    Desert Lunch

    In the desert of Qatar, scientists and engineers are working to transform “what we have enough of” – sand, sunlight, sea water, and CO2 – into “what we need more of” – energy, fresh water, and food. Does their idea hold promise for the world’s driest places?

  • Transgenic Lunch

    Transgenic Lunch

    Scientists in the U.S. and Uganda have developed genetically engineered cassava plants that resist two devastating viral diseases. Is it a boon for small farmers or a Trojan horse?

  • No-Waste Lunch

    No-Waste Lunch

    Agriculture is the third-largest emitter of global greenhouse gas pollution. Yet roughly one-third of what we produce is never eaten. Cutting down on waste is a major challenge in China, where a grassroots “Clean Your Plate” campaign is taking aim at deeply ingrained attitudes toward leftovers.

  • Cafeteria Lunch

    Cafeteria Lunch

    Some of the biggest players in the sustainable food movement are food service companies with the buying power to change the way millions of people eat every day.

  • Taking the Climate Fight to the Table

    Taking the Climate Fight to the Table

    Low-emissions cooking aims to slow global warming, one plate at a time. A celebrated Baltimore chef and an expert in climate-friendly cuisine join forces on a holiday meal.

  • Greece’s Diet Crisis

    Greece’s Diet Crisis

    The traditional diet on the island of Crete is one of the healthiest in the world. Trouble is, almost nobody follows it any more. And obesity rates are soaring, especially among kids.

  • Spilled and Spoiled in Senegal

    Spilled and Spoiled in Senegal

    How we limit food waste and losses depends on where we live. Jori Lewis visits small-scale milk producers in Senegal.

  • Vietnam Fish Farms Look for Future-Friendly Formula

    Vietnam Fish Farms Look for Future-Friendly Formula

    More than half the seafood eaten in the world today is farmed, not wild. As demand for protein soars, scientists and fish producers look to lessen the impact of factory farming.

  • Soil is Ground Zero in African Farming Debate

    Soil is Ground Zero in African Farming Debate

    In Africa, a debate is raging over the best ways to make small farms more productive. Most people agree that soil is the key. But how to boost fertility? Farmers in Ghana face tough choices.

  • Water Man

    Water Man

    Fast-growing India is pumping its aquifers dry. Rajendra Singh says solutions will come from the ground up.

  • Brazil Delivers on Hunger Promise

    Brazil Delivers on Hunger Promise

    In 2003, the Brazilian government declared that food was a basic human right. Then it found that ending hunger takes a lot more than a declaration.

  • Bangladesh Farmers Confront New Climate Reality

    Bangladesh Farmers Confront New Climate Reality

    Bangladesh has made dramatic progress in feeding its people. Can it stop a changing climate from erasing the gains?

  • Philippines: Too Many Mouths?

    Philippines: Too Many Mouths?

    Once a leading rice producer, the Philippines can no longer feed itself. That leaves two options: increase supply or try to do something about demand.

  • Egypt’s Growing Pains

    Egypt’s Growing Pains

    More than one million Egyptian farmers have quit the land in the last 20 years, reshaping the country’s physical and political landscape.

  • Food for 9 Billion: The Scientific Challenge

    Food for 9 Billion: The Scientific Challenge

    Nearly every prescription for feeding the world says we need to invest more money in science. What’s that money going to get us?

  • The Square Deal

    The Square Deal

    An inside look at the legacy of George F. Johnson, an industrialist who offered his mainly immigrant workers decent working conditions and generous benefits in exchange for labor peace. Until it all fell apart under the pressure of competition.

  • Runner

    Runner

    Salina Kosgei always loved to run. At 16, she decided to make a career of it. Sixteen years and two kids later she found herself elbow to elbow with the defending champ in the most prestigious marathon in the world, with the finish line in sight.

  • Shipbreaking Worker

    Shipbreaking Worker

    Ismael “Babu” Hussein works as an assistant in one of Bangladesh’s shipbreaking yards, where armies of laborers dismantle old vessels the way ants devour a carcass. The work is perilous, the bosses abusive, the hours exhausting. Heavy stuff for a 13-year old kid.

  • Banker

    Banker

    Risk, says Brandon Davies, is how we learn and grow as people. We should embrace it, not avoid it. At least that’s what he said in the summer of 2008. Then the global financial system collapsed.

  • Electronics Recycler

    Electronics Recycler

    Vicki Ponce was in her 50s, selling tamales in the street, when she and some middle-aged women friends decided to start a company dismantling old TV sets. Business is good. It would be even better if the jealous mayor would turn on the electricity.

  • Human Smuggler

    Human Smuggler

    For 30 years, Alidad has been smuggling Afghans on a secret nighttime passage through the mountains of western Pakistan into Iran. “I have a lot of sad memories,” he says.

  • Marriage Broker

    Marriage Broker

    If you’re a Korean man who wants to marry a Vietnamese woman, Hang Nga is your go-to gal. Vietnam’s government frowns on the match-making business, but Nga says it’s worth the risk. The money means a brighter future for her two young children.

  • Circus Performer

    Circus Performer

    Svitlana Svystun spends ten months a year traveling around the United Kingdom. Her coworkers include a human cannonball, a crossbow artist, and a crew of Hungarian roustabouts. It’s a dangerous, nomadic life. But it’s surprisingly domestic, too.

  • Labor Inspector

    Labor Inspector

    Leandro Carvalho had a comfortable job as an insurance agent on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach when he decided to join Brazil’s anti-slavery task force. He says he won’t quit until the last slave is freed.

  • Miner

    Miner

    Fidele Musafiri spends his days, and often his nights, banging away at a wall of stone in a crude tunnel under a Congolese mountain. He’s a small man with a hammer, a spike, and a dream of striking it rich. But danger is never far away.

  • Pirate

    Pirate

    Agus Laodi could barely feed his family with his earnings as a cocoa farmer. So he left his Indonesian village to seek his fortune on an island in the Strait of Malacca. Now he slips out at night to rob cargo ships with a machete.

  • Industrial Designer

    Industrial Designer

    Industrial designers are the anonymous people who decide how the things around us look and feel. For Raffaella Mangiarotti, design isn’t about colors or shapes. It’s about solving problems.

  • Sex Worker

    Sex Worker

    Samanta plies her trade in Baku, an oil boom town. In a corrupt and violent society, it can be a very dangerous life – especially for a woman who was born a man.

  • Iceberg Wrangler

    Iceberg Wrangler

    With the Newfoundland fishing industry in the tank, Whyman Richards says he’ll give anything a try. So he steers his homemade boat toward the dreaded mountains of ice that break off the Greenland ice sheet every summer.

  • Tannery Worker

    Tannery Worker

    Mohmen left his village at 13 and quickly found work stacking animal skins in one of Karachi’s many tanneries. Now 17, he’s still doing the same job. The longer he works, the deeper his debt. “I don’t want to smile,” Mohmen says, “but it’s all I can do.”

  • Movie Director

    Movie Director

    Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry may be the third largest in the world, but with little government support, daily power failures, no real studios, and rudimentary equipment, Nigerian filmmakers must be masters of making do. That describes Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen to a tee.

  • Trader

    Trader

    Hussein Ralib Esfandiari crosses back and forth between Dubai and his native Iran laden with whatever bargains he can find at market. The Gulf is one of the most politically volatile regions on earth. But politics is the least of Hussein’s worries.

  • Cargo Agent

    Cargo Agent

    Foreign workers have the same rights in Saudi Arabia, as long as they’re alive. But when non-Muslims die there, as thousands do each year, they have to go home for burial. And somebody’s got to get them there. Meet Wahid Khan Habibula.

  • Chocolate Taster

    Chocolate Taster

    Chloé Doutre-Roussel is in great demand around the world – not just because of her extraordinary palate and her memory for scents and flavors but because of her brutal honesty. “Diplomacy is not one of my known traits,” she laughs. Nor is self-satisfaction.

  • Cabinet Minister

    Cabinet Minister

    Gordana Jankuloska’s assignment is clear: to clean up decades of police corruption and violence in a former East Bloc country desperate to catch up with the rest of Europe. It’s a lot to ask of a young woman with a taste for nature shows and stuffed animals. She says bring it on.

  • Textile Worker

    Textile Worker

    Marco Moreno’s parents were tailors, with a tiny shop in a working-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru. He and his brothers decided they could do better. But nobody said it would be easy.

  • Basketball Scout

    Basketball Scout

    Nigerian Sam Ahmedu is a foot soldier in the NBA’s army of international recruiters. A few of his finds have made it to the pros, but that’s not what motivates him.

  • Lobster Diver

    Lobster Diver

    Romulo Greham, a Miskito Indian on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, almost lost his life while diving for lobsters for the U.S. market. Now he’s trying to keep other divers from the repeating his mistakes.

  • Oil Worker

    Oil Worker

    Blair Ghent left a good job in Toronto to return home to rural Newfoundland. But work is hard to come by on the island, and soon he found himself joining thousands of unemployed Newfoundlanders commuting 3,000 miles to the oil sands fields of Alberta.

  • Express Mail Driver

    Express Mail Driver

    Mr. Wang has traveled through Beijing picking up perhaps a quarter of a million packages destined for dozens of countries. Does he ever wonder what’s inside? “No,” he says, “I just want to make some money!”

  • Pop Singer

    Pop Singer

    Diana Dimova says she’s never so moved as when she sings the ancient mountain music of her native Bulgaria. But it’s no way for an ambitious, attractive young woman to make a living.

  • Fixer

    Fixer

    Tarek Haidar Eskandar can deliver an interview with a rebel commander or an interview with a victim of the latest catastrophe. Or at least that’s the promise. It’s a seat-of-the-pants business, and Tarek’s a seat-of-the-pants type of guy.

  • Metal Worker

    Metal Worker

    Pedro Córdoba’s says his job in a giant Peruvian smelter has made him seriously ill. And he’s not going to take it lying down.

  • Mine Clearer

    Mine Clearer

    Valdet Dule is a Kosovar and father of two young children whose job is to find and detonate explosives left over from the wars of the 1990s. Until the land is safe, he says, his people won’t be able to realize their dream of independence.

  • The Street of the Cauldron Makers

    The Street of the Cauldron Makers

    Modern Turkey emerged in the 1920s as a secular, westernized nation where the rule was always to look forward, never back. But novelist Elif Shafak says buried memories have a way of rising to the surface. She takes us on a tour of an Istanbul street, where battles over identity, modernity, ethnicity, and minority rights have played out in miniature.

  • Fighting the Water

    Fighting the Water

    On the tangled braids of earth and marsh that form the Mississippi Delta, the Houma Indians have lived for centuries, isolated by water. But now the land is dissolving beneath their feet, and many Houma fear that their unique culture will dissolve along with it.

  • Relearning the Peace

    Relearning the Peace

    Burundi’s Hutus and Tutsis practice the same religion and speak the same language. Intermarriage is common. But decades of violence have made even the most imaginary differences tragically real. In 2005, voters in Burundi approved a constitution that requires the two groups to share power. For the country’s new leaders, that means unlearning bad habits. Marianne McCune attends a retreat for the newly integrated national police.

  • Seeking the Middle Way

    Seeking the Middle Way

    For decades, the goal of the tiny Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan has been neither to keep pace with the rest of the world nor to hide from it, but rather to increase what the king calls “Gross National Happiness.”

  • Café Rebeldía

    Café Rebeldía

    The Mutvitz cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico, sells a portion of its coffee on the growing global “solidarity market.” The farmers, who are part of the Zapatista rebel movement, see the coffee business as a way not just to move forward economically, but to strengthen their Mayan heritage.

  • A Map of the Sea

    A Map of the Sea

    For centuries, the Newfoundland fishery was hailed as the greatest in the world. Then, in 1992, the cod disappeared. Now the islanders must find a way to keep that culture from going the way of the cod. An award-winning meditation on memory, fishing, music, and dance.

  • Saints and Indians

    Saints and Indians

    Between 1954 and 2000, tens of thousands of Native American children went to live with Mormon families during the school year. For some, it was a chance to overcome the stresses of reservation life. For others, it was a repudiation of their identity. For everyone, it was a life-changing experience.

  • Cotopaxi Pilgrimage

    Cotopaxi Pilgrimage

    For the Tigua Indians of Ecuador, the spectacular 19,000-foot Cotopaxi volcano is both a sheltering spirit and a source of artistic inspiration. But the Tigua stopped visiting their sacred mountain when the government declared it a national park and began charging admission. Recently two Tigua painters led an improvised pilgrimage to the volcano’s glacier.

  • Kinvara: A Spirit of Place

    Kinvara: A Spirit of Place

    For much of the 20th century, the town of Kinvara, on Ireland’s west coast, was rich in charm but poor in just about everything else. Then the Celtic Tiger awoke. Today, Kinvara is crawling with developers and speculators. The boom has forced the townsfolk to ask tough questions about where they want their community to go.

  • The Reindeer People

    The Reindeer People

    About 40 percent of all Mongolians are nomads, but officials there say they want most of them to settle down. With their reindeer herds dwindling and government support disappearing, the Tsachin people have to decide whether to abandon their ancient way of life.

  • The Face of the Shaman

    The Face of the Shaman

    For thousands of years, the Mongolian shaman has been the intermediary between the human and spirit worlds. Shamanism was suppressed for 70 years under communism. Now it’s back in the open, competing for customers in a market that’s crowded with alternatives.

  • The Zapotec Bible

    The Zapotec Bible

    In the indigenous Mexican village of Yaganiza, Rebecca Long is slowly translating the New Testament into the local language. But her presence, like the group she works with, has not been without controversy. A complex story about language, religion, tradition, and trust.

  • Competing for Souls

    Competing for Souls

    Korea’s transformation into an industrial powerhouse has been accompanied by an equally dramatic spiritual shift. With Christians now dominant in political and economic life, Buddhists wonder whether they have a role to play in the country’s future.

  • Occitan Rock

    Occitan Rock

    Since Napoleon declared it the official language of the republic, French has been at the core of national identity. Now some southerners are challenging that notion, using a blend of reggae, Brazilian rhythms, and the musical forms of the medieval troubadors.

  • The Free Monks

    The Free Monks

    In Greece, the Orthodox Church has always presented itself as the guardian of national identity. But some think it’s not doing enough to protect the country from western domination. We meet a rock band made up of black-robed monks whose music rails against globalization and the “New World Order.”

  • Roma Love Story

    Roma Love Story

    In May 2004, eight Eastern European countries joined the European Union, whose laws forbid child marriage. Some Roma see this as a death sentence for their culture. But not Gyula and Marika Vámosi of Pecs, Hungary.

  • Return of the Hellenes

    Return of the Hellenes

    More than 95% of all Greeks are Orthodox. But recently there’s been a revival of interest in the pre-Christian past. For some, that means taking another look at ancient Greek ideals like reason and democratic debate. For others, it means worshiping the Olympian gods. All say their eyes are on the future.

  • Resurrecting the Zápara

    Resurrecting the Zápara

    The Zápara once ranged far across the western Amazon. By the 1970s, anthropologists concluded that their culture was extinct. But a handful of native speakers survived. Now they’re trying to resuscitate their language and culture. But a new danger looms.

  • Tell Me Wai

    Tell Me Wai

    Musicians Mina Ripia and Maaka McGregor learned to speak Maori in college, after the New Zealand government made it an official national language. Now they’re part of a new generation of Maoris who have decided to move their culture forward rather than leave it behind.

  • Connecting the Hebrides, Part 2

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 2

    Scotland’s Outer Hebrides are home to some of the purest Gaelic culture on earth – but they’re a tough place to make a living. That may be changing. In the second part of a two-part series, Vera Frankl looks at how the Internet is transforming the economy and helping keep the culture alive.

  • Connecting the Hebrides, Part 1

    Connecting the Hebrides, Part 1

    In the first part of a two-part series about change in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Vera Frankl visits “crofters” (small-scale farmers) who are finally taking control of their land after centuries of working for absentee landlords.

  • Ladino Transformation

    Ladino Transformation

    Bulgaria’s Jews are survivors, but the language they have spoken for centuries is in trouble. Sandy Tolan visits with some of Bulgaria’s last Ladino speakers as they try to keep the tongue from going silent.

  • Basque Family Ties

    Basque Family Ties

    American filmmaker Victoria Mauleón has always avoided political topics on her yearly visits to her father’s family near Pamplona. This time she packed a microphone.

  • Maasai Schools

    Maasai Schools

    The Maasai people of Kenya have long considered public education as a trick designed to rob them of their culture. Now many see the schools as a key to survival – and as a way to change some aspects of their culture that need changing.

  • The Imaginary Village

    The Imaginary Village

    In 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes to make way for the new state of Israel. More than 50 years later, the villages of Palestine remain intact in the imaginations of refugees and their descendants.

  • Mezcal Dreams

    Mezcal Dreams

    Mexican migrants to the U.S. send back billions of dollars to their families every year, but their absence comes at a price. Marianne McCune reports on one tiny pueblo that is brewing up plans to keep its people from leaving.

  • Borderland Jaguars

    Borderland Jaguars

    On the trail of an elusive cat that used to prowl the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.

  • North End Neighborhood

    North End Neighborhood

    Boston’s North End is bursting with Old World charm. But a proposed commercial development has newcomers and old-timers at odds over the type of neighborhood they want to live in. Their positions aren’t what you might expect.

  • Singapore Renewal

    Singapore Renewal

    Singapore’s Chinatown used to be a crowded and chaotic place. Then the government renewed the life right out of it. Authorities are working to restore the neighborhood’s authenticity, but with little success. Little India, meanwhile, has retained its character. Is there a lesson here?

  • Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 2

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 2

    Exploring the rapidly changing worlds of France’s Muslims and Jews. In the second part of a two-part series, we meet the Chefegs, a Muslim family from the suburbs of Paris.

  • Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 1

    Rethinking France’s Republican Deal, Part 1

    Exploring the rapidly changing worlds of France’s Muslims and Jews. In the first part of a two-part series, we meet the Alters, a Jewish family from Toulouse.

  • Higher Ground: Borneo Resettlement

    Higher Ground: Borneo Resettlement

    In the late 1990s, the government of Malaysia uprooted 15,000 indigenous people to make way for the giant Bakun dam. Most were resettled in “model” towns, where unemployment, drugs and crime took root. About 400 members of the Kenyah tribe decided to build their own resettlement center instead.

  • Bringing Home the Bones

    Bringing Home the Bones

    Members of the Haida nation retrieve ancestral remains from a museum in Chicago and carry them home for proper burial in the Queen Charlotte Islands, off Canada’s Pacific coast. It’s a journey full of pain and healing – and part of a worldwide movement among native groups to reclaim what is theirs.

  • Andean Harvest

    Andean Harvest

    Peasant farmers in Peru’s central highlands grow hundreds of varieties of potatoes. Now they’re being encouraged to sell them to high-end consumers. But potatoes are more than just food in the Andes – they’re part of a complex spiritual, biological, and cultural universe. Will the market change that?

  • Welsh Renaissance

    Welsh Renaissance

    Languages around the world are disappearing at an unprecedented rate. But Welsh is making a comeback, and children are leading the way. Now the challenge is to move Welsh from the classroom to the living room. Meet the Steel family of Clydach.

  • Agua en Juárez (Spanish)

    Agua en Juárez (Spanish)

    The explosive growth in Ciudad Juárez has put unprecedented pressure on the region’s water resources. Residents and officials search for solutions as the aquifer drains. In Spanish.

  • Luis and Negra

    Luis and Negra

    Mexican-American writer Luis Alberto Urrea returns to the slums of Tijuana, where he worked as a young man, to see a woman he knew as a girl. His story, for This American Life, explores the sometimes uneasy relationship between “first world” writers and their “third world” subjects.

  • Colonia Panorama, Tejas (Spanish)

    Colonia Panorama, Tejas (Spanish)

    A Mexican immigrant organizes the residents of his slum on the Texas side of the Mexican border. In Spanish.

  • Chiloe: A Bridge Too Far?

    Chiloe: A Bridge Too Far?

    The island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile, is known for its misty beauty, quaint architecture, and distinctive cuisine. Now Chile’s government is proposing to build the longest bridge in Latin America to connect Chiloé to the mainland. Islanders aren’t sure they want to be connected.

  • Tijuana Opera

    Tijuana Opera

    Tijuana has been known for bullfights and beer, but the Mexican border city also has a growing opera community. Recitals and lectures are frequent, Tijuana natives are studying and performing in opera’s European citadels, and the city now has its first opera.

  • Border Stories

    Documentaries and features in English and Spanish exploring social, economic, legal, and environmental issues along the U.S.-Mexico border.

  • Camisea: A Light in the Jungle

    Camisea: A Light in the Jungle

    For the native peoples of the Amazon, petroleum development has often been an environmental and cultural nightmare. But in Camisea, a huge natural gas deposit in eastern Peru, the oil companies say they’re committed to getting it right. The Machiguenga people aren’t yet convinced.

  • To Perpetuate Life as it was Meant to Be

    To Perpetuate Life as it was Meant to Be

    By almost every measure, native Hawaiians are the worst off of Hawaii’s many ethnic groups. One of the biggest problems is drug abuse. Ho’omau Ke Ola is a community treatment program that looks to island traditions for a way forward.

  • Sarvodaya: An Alternate Path

    Sarvodaya: An Alternate Path

    Can development based on spiritual values, local activism, and volunteer labor compete with a global system built on western market economics? From Sri Lanka, Sandy Tolan reports on a movement that seeks to improve the lot of millions of poor people with self-help programs steeped in Buddhist principles.

  • An Exodus Of Women

    An Exodus Of Women

    Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan women work abroad as housemaids, mainly in the Middle East. Their remittances are a cornerstone of their country’s economy, and a desperately needed source of income for their families. But their absence is keenly felt.

  • Panorama, Texas

    Panorama, Texas

    A Mexican immigrant organizes the residents of his slum on the Texas side of the Mexican border.

  • Border Soldiers

    Border Soldiers

    A story from 2003 about how the then-new U.S. war in Iraq was affecting the Juárez, Mexico, families of American soldiers fighting overseas.

  • The Cross of Juárez

    The Cross of Juárez

    A wave of assassinations of women factory workers in Ciudad Juárez shows no sign of abating, and trust between the twin cities of El Paso and Juárez has given way to a climate of fear.

  • La Cruz de Juárez (Spanish)

    La Cruz de Juárez (Spanish)

    A wave of assassinations of women factory workers in Ciudad Juárez shows no sign of abating, and trust between the twin cities of El Paso and Juárez has given way to a climate of fear. Spanish version.

  • LA Ecovillage

    LA Ecovillage

    Bringing ecological living to an urban slum neighborhood and a Mexican-American barrio, complete with electric low-riders and solar-powered rap recording studios.

  • Runaway

    Runaway

    Debra Gwartney loved her two oldest daughters and they loved her in return. But then Debra divorced and moved the family, and relations with her daughters got worse and worse. Finally, at the ages of 13 and 14, they ran away. In this story for This American Life, mother and daughters try to retrace what went wrong.

  • Roots of Resentment, Part II

    Roots of Resentment, Part II

    Produced for NPR in the wake of the September 11 attacks, this documentary explores the historical roots of anger in the Arab world toward the west in general, and the U.S. in particular. Part 2 of a two-part series.

  • Roots of Resentment, Part I

    Roots of Resentment, Part I

    Produced for NPR in the wake of the September 11 attacks, this story explores the historical roots of anger in the Arab world toward the west in general, and the U.S. in particular. Part 1 of a two-part series.

  • Newfoundland Shipwreck Survivor

    Newfoundland Shipwreck Survivor

    Lanier Philips, an African-American sailor, was on a US Navy ship wrecked during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland during World War II. More than 200 of his shipmates died, but he was rescued. The treatment he received forever altered his life, opening his eyes to the possibility of a world without racism.

  • Eco Pilot

    Eco Pilot

    American flyer Sandy Lanham helps Mexican environmentalists track endangered wildlife. Winner of the 2002 Gracie Allen Award.

  • High and Dry in Juárez

    High and Dry in Juárez

    The explosive growth in Ciudad Juárez has put unprecedented pressure on the region’s water resources. Residents and officials race to find solutions as the aquifer drains.

  • Casas de Paja Sonorense (Spanish)

    Casas de Paja Sonorense (Spanish)

    A story of the birth of a sustainable housing movement in Sonora, in northern Mexico. In Spanish.

  • A Bean of a Different Color

    A Bean of a Different Color

    How a humble bean spurred an international trade dispute and served as a metaphor for mounting intellectual property battles in the new global economy.

  • Mapping a Lost Territory

    Mapping a Lost Territory

    In the highland jungle of Peru, two men rush to preserve the geography, history, music, and myths of a now-scattered people using digital mapping technology and collective memory. The story served as a pilot for the “Worlds of Difference” series.

  • Coming North

    Coming North

    A visit to a shelter for transients in the Mexican border town of Nogales, where would-be migrants prepare for the harrowing trip across the border to the United States.

  • Laguna Madre

    Laguna Madre

    A profile of people and place – a fragile ecosystem spanning both sides of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo near the Gulf of Mexico.

  • Laguna Madre (Spanish)

    Laguna Madre (Spanish)

    A profile of people and place – a fragile ecosystem spanning both sides of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo near the Gulf of Mexico. Spanish version.

  • Me and Hank

    Me and Hank

    The story of a boy and his hero, baseball slugger Hank Aaron, 25 years after Aaron’s traumatic chase for baseball’s all-time career home run record, and an exploration of the hatred Aaron endured in chasing a white man’s record.

  • Ethiopian Jews

    Ethiopian Jews

    A profile of Shula Mulah, an Israeli woman of Ethiopian descent, who came to Israel in 1984 as part of an airlift called “Operation Moses.”

  • Operation Pedro Pan

    Operation Pedro Pan

    The story of a six-year-old girl and the secret U.S.-funded program that sent her and thousands of unaccompanied Cuban children to live in the United States.

  • Gloria Flora and the Elko Uprising

    Gloria Flora and the Elko Uprising

    A rising star in the U.S. Forest Service runs afoul of monied interests – and her own agency – as she tries to protect public lands from depredation.

  • Cholera Diary

    Cholera Diary

    A Canadian physician who joined Doctors Without Borders to help others ends up learning quite a bit about herself.

  • Mucho Corazón

    Mucho Corazón

    The story of a Dutchman, a Cuban woman, and true love in a Cuban factory for pipe organs. A chronicle of passion, music, and international politics.

  • Alicia’s Story

    Alicia’s Story

    A documentary exploring how Alicia Rodriguez, the U.S.-born, middle-class daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, became a self-described freedom fighter for an island she first visited at age 21.

  • The Paint Factory

    The Paint Factory

    Townsfolk debate the fate of an abandoned 19th century paint factory on Gloucester’s inner harbor. It’s symbolic of a larger debate over Gloucester’s economic and cultural identity.

  • The Stone and the Viola

    The Stone and the Viola

    A first-person profile of a West Bank boy who grew up throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. Now, as a teenager, he has embarked on a life in music. The inspiration for Sandy Tolan’s 2015 book “Children of the Stone.”

  • The Lemon Tree

    The Lemon Tree

    An audio documentary, weaving the voices of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man whose families occupied the same house, exploring the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  • Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs

    Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs

    Part 5 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

  • Lost at Sea

    Lost at Sea

    Over the last four centuries, Gloucester has lost, on average, one fisherman every thirteen days. The memory of the dead, and the knowledge that there will be more, have always haunted the town and its people.

  • Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation

    Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation

    Part 4 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

  • Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza

    Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza

    Part 2 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

  • Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank

    Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank

    Part 3 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

  • Picture Me Rolling

    Picture Me Rolling

    In his pursuit of the American dream, a young man finds himself at a crossroads.

  • The Poet and the Rickshaw Driver

    The Poet and the Rickshaw Driver

    An Indian poet, Gagan Gill, describes her encounter with a homeless rickshaw driver on the streets of Delhi.

  • St. Peter’s Fiesta

    St. Peter’s Fiesta

    For nine nights each summer, the Italian-Americans of Gloucester gather to pray to the patron saint of fishermen. It’s been a tradition since the 1920s. But with the depletion of the fish stocks, townsfolk are beginning to contemplate a very different future.

  • Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water

    Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water

    Part 1 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

  • Carolyn

    Carolyn

    A documentary about a woman who grew up hating blacks in a white Boston neighborhood, and how her attitudes have changed.

  • The Penny Fish and the Multinational

    The Penny Fish and the Multinational

    Gloucester was once one of the greatest fishing ports on earth. Today it’s a gritty place where fishermen struggle to make a living. A debate over a proposed foreign-owned herring processing plant casts light on the challenges facing a town – and an industry – in transition.

  • The Fire Within

    The Fire Within

    African-American men in an Illinois prison describe their conversion to Islam in this 1996 documentary.

  • Solar Energy and Middle East Peace

    Solar Energy and Middle East Peace

    Developing solar energy is part of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, but the modest plans may be overwhelmed by market forces.

  • Can Hydrogen Fuel the United States?

    Can Hydrogen Fuel the United States?

    Although scientists and engineers have shown that hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, is a clean substitute for fossil fuels, politicians and big business may never be ready to switch.

  • Visions of a Sustainable World

    Visions of a Sustainable World

    City officials from throughout Latin America come to Curitiba, Brazil, to learn about low-cost, environmentally sound planning from urban planner Jaime Lerner.

  • The State of Solar Energy

    The State of Solar Energy

    In Israel, where developing alternative energy was always seen as a matter of survival, solar technology is pointing a way out of dependence on fossil fuels. Story produced in 1995.

  • Mining History for its Lessons

    Mining History for its Lessons

    Have human beings always had the potential to destroy their own society, or is this a more recent, industrial phenomenon? Can anything be learned from the environmental missteps of our ancestors?

  • Miracle Farmer

    Miracle Farmer

    In India, where signs of faith are everywhere, a deeply spiritual farmer has found a way to grow abundant supplies of rice without the use of harmful chemicals.

  • Brazil’s Birth Control Crusader

    Brazil’s Birth Control Crusader

    In northwestern Brazil, a controversial doctor is on a mission to lower birth rates.

  • Brazil Sterilization

    Brazil Sterilization

    With few contraceptive options, Brazilian women seeking to control the size of their families often turn to sterilization and illegal abortions.

  • Women’s Empowerment in India

    Women’s Empowerment in India

    The cultural, religious, and social realities that stand in the way of lowering fertility rates in India are apparent in the tiny farming villages where one women’s group is trying to bring about change.

  • India Food and Global Trade

    India Food and Global Trade

    Indians have long considered “food security” to be a national priority. Now, dependence on the global economy sends India on an uncertain and, some say, dangerous course.

  • Norplant

    Norplant

    In India and Brazil, population control advocates have come into conflict with feminists over the contraceptive drug Norplant, considered by some to be among the most effective birth control methods available.

  • Family Planning in India

    Family Planning in India

    With funding from USAID, Indian health officials have launched a massive new family planning effort in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most densely populated state.

  • Gaviotas

    Gaviotas

    A group of Colombian visionaries has created a sustainable community in one of their country’s most inhospitable and dangerous places. This piece formed the basis of Alan’s award-winning book “Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World.”

  • Food for a Billion Indians

    Food for a Billion Indians

    It’s growing increasingly difficult for food production to keep pace with population growth. In India, failure could spell disaster.

  • The Great Hydrogen Car Race

    The Great Hydrogen Car Race

    While German automakers race to produce the world’s first pollution-free, hydrogen-powered car, the world’s largest consumer market for automobiles, the U.S. remains stuck in a Faustian bargain with fossil fuels. From 1994.

  • Flowers for Export

    Flowers for Export

    Outside Bogotá, some of Latin America’s best soils have been covered with a sea of greenhouses for growing flowers for export.

  • Caribbean Dreams

    Caribbean Dreams

    Different sorts of dreams collide in the Dominican Republic, where industrial parks, sugar cane fields, and a posh resort all belong to a single U.S. corporation.

  • Sustainable Colonization

    Sustainable Colonization

    In Brazil, a peasant cooperative has planted native crops using methods designed to preserve the delicate forest soils. But the farmers have little formal education, and even less experience managing a business.

  • Escaping the Tourist Trap

    Escaping the Tourist Trap

    In the Mexican state of Chiapas, Chamula Indian artisans are trying to create a tourist economy on their own terms.

  • Rainforest Crunch

    Rainforest Crunch

    Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, seasonal rubber tappers harvest Brazil nuts to sell to Ben & Jerry’s. But the tappers aren’t happy, and the relationship with their NGO sponsor has frayed.

  • Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole

    Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole

    The world’s southernmost population, in Chile’s Magallanes province, finds itself on the brink of a deepening danger that may one day force them from their beautiful homeland – and eventually imperil us all.

  • Yacyretá

    Yacyretá

    A giant dam project on the border of Paraguay and Argentina raises questions about the social and environmental impact of major infrastructure projects.

  • Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 2

    Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 2

    Part 2 of a two-part report from Honduras examines attempts by foreign and private relief agencies to regenerate the soil and help farmers stay on their lands.

  • Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 1

    Refugees from a Fallen Landscape, Part 1

    Part One of a two-part feature about the effects of deforestation and desertification follows poor farmers in Honduras who are fleeing their damaged lands to an uncertain life in Tegucigalpa.

  • Shrimp Cocktail

    Shrimp Cocktail

    Backed by U.S. government funds, salt flats along the southern Honduran coast have been converted into giant shrimp farms where lax enforcement of environmental, social, and labor laws are the norm.

  • Ecuador’s Golden Cities

    Ecuador’s Golden Cities

    During the 16th century, the hills of southern Ecuador were a center of gold production for the Spanish. Today the region booms anew, its mines worked by thousands of desperate peasants.

  • In Panama, a Clash of Cultures on the Frontier

    In Panama, a Clash of Cultures on the Frontier

    The construction of a road and hydroelectric dam in eastern Panama has threatened the survival of Guna Indians who live in the area.

  • Quichua Indians and Oil

    Quichua Indians and Oil

    In the Amazon of Ecuador, two native villages have radically different attitudes toward oil development.

  • Ecuador’s Amazon

    Ecuador’s Amazon

    Faced with crushing debt and pressure from lenders, Ecuador is rushing to open its section of the Amazon to oil development. But spills and dumping threaten settlers, indigenous people, and the land itself.

  • Argentina’s Guaraní Indians

    Argentina’s Guaraní Indians

    Once the largest tribe in South America, the Guaraní have nearly all left their native forests. But one last band is holding out.

  • Saving Jungle Souls

    Saving Jungle Souls

    The story of Bolivia’s nomadic Yuqui Indians and the American Evangelical Christians who coaxed them out of the jungle. The first story in the Vanishing Homelands series.

  • Celebrating the Discovery

    Celebrating the Discovery

    Preparations for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas raise questions about the value of celebrating the event that led to the European conquest.

  • Homelands Regained

    Homelands Regained

    In Colombia, the Paez Indians have resorted to guerrilla insurrection to reclaim their ancestral territory from the great landed families of Spanish descent.

  • Miskito Coast

    Miskito Coast

    On Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, Miskito Indians and American investors face off in a battle over the future of the region’s resources.

  • Oil in Ecuador’s Amazon

    Oil in Ecuador’s Amazon

    A U.S. oil company has a controversial plan to build a new road and oil pipeline into some of the most remote Indian lands in the Amazon.

  • Sugar and Sorrow in Hispaniola

    Sugar and Sorrow in Hispaniola

    Haitian sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic live in squalid conditions. Although the sugar they produce is exported to the United States, the U.S. government has declined to intervene.