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  • The Homelands Blog

    Seventeen years after Jonathan Miller profiled a metal worker with irreparable lung damage, the Inter-American Court ruled that Peru is responsible for failing to protect the population of one of the most polluted places on Earth.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Emmy for “Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking” is the latest of many awards (including a Peabody and two Sundance awards) for the film about Indigenous land rights and threats to the Brazilian rainforest. Homelands serves as the project’s fiscal sponsor.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Long known for our work in public radio, Homelands has been increasingly looking to nonprofit fiscal sponsorship as a way to fulfill our public service mission. We are currently sponsoring five extraordinary projects.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ producer and board president is one of ten people receiving grants for projects that promote racial equality. She will use the award to produce a narrative podcast, Happy Forgetting, that tells untold stories about racial justice victories in the United States.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In her essay “The Spirit of the Rillito,” Ruxandra Guidi looks at how Indigenous worldviews can help us understand the world we live in. The piece in High Country News grew out of conversations at the Religion and Environment Story Project, a fellowship that trains journalists and scholars interested in the intersection of the environment and religion.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The documentary film The Territory, produced by Documist, purchased by National Geographic, and now streaming on Disney+, has added a prestigious Peabody Award to its long list of achievements. Homelands is proud to serve as fiscal sponsor for the film’s impact campaign and other activities.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Chris Brookes, a brilliant radio producer, writer, actor, and all-around creative genius who worked with Homelands on several projects, died in an accident at his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Senior producer Alan Weisman provides a remembrance.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an article for the Sierra Club, Ruxandra Guidi looks at the connections between a 2019 massacre of Latinos in El Paso and a history of racism in environmental movements. She argues that the killer was not the first to make the claim that poor brown people were an environmental threat.

  • The Homelands Blog

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection has blocked shipments of raw sugar from a top Dominican producer after finding indications of forced labor at its plantation. The probe followed an investigation led by Homelands’ Sandy Tolan and Haitian-Dominican journalist Euclides Cordero Nuel.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a piece published by The Intercept, Sandy Tolan and Euclides Cordero Nuel describe how armed bands of masked men descend on labor camps and forcibly evict residents. Tolan and Cordero Nuel won an Overseas Press Club Award for their reporting on labor abuses by the giant Dominican sugar exporter Central Romana.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The freelance journalist, producer, and writer founded the Spanish-language news service Conecta Arizona, which connects people in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The award is named after Homelands co-founder Cecilia Vaisman, who died in 2015.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The film, which chronicles the efforts of a small Indigenous group in Brazil to defend its land against encroachment by peasant farmers, opens August 19 at cinemas in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, Vancouver, and Toronto. It will screen at cinemas around the world beginning August 26. Homelands served as fiscal sponsor.

  • The Homelands Blog

    A profile on the website of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies looks at Bear Guerra’s career documenting globalization, human rights, social justice, and environmental justice issues around the world.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ Ruxandra Guidi reports, produces, and hosts “The Catch,” a new six-part series from Foreign Policy on what the global squid fishery can teach us about the health and future of the world’s seas.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The fund is intended for journalists who need help paying legal fees and related costs incurred as a consequence of being arrested while doing their jobs, or those who are facing lawsuits filed against them because of their reporting.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Fiction can be more revealing than fact, writes author and environmental journalist Alan Weisman. In a post on the new book recommendation website Shepherd.com, he shares five “astonishing” novels that can help us understand the times we live in.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an op-ed for Salon, Homelands’ Alan Weisman says the US must not be tempted to pump more gas to compensate for supply disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine. The author of the bestselling “The World Without Us” writes that a recent visit to Iraq provided yet more evidence of the existential threat posed by fossil fuels.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Jonathan Miller profiles Dmitry Bykov, one of Russia’s best-known public intellectuals, who was poisoned, banned from teaching, and labeled an “enemy of the people.” Bykov has taken a fellowship at Cornell University, where he vows to continue to write and speak out.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ Sandy Tolan, Haitian-Dominican journalist Euclides Cordero Nuel, and Reveal’s Michael Montgomery won the Morton Frank Award from the Overseas Press Club of America for their investigation into the treatment of sugar workers on plantations in the Dominican Republic.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In the latest episode of the Peace Talks Radio public radio show and podcast, Homelands’ executive director and senior producer Jonathan Miller looks at cities of asylum, communities that put out the welcome mat for writers, artists, journalists, and human rights defenders whose work puts them at risk in their home countries.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The documentary, about a Brazilian land conflict with global ramifications, won the Audience Award for World Documentary Cinema at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Judges also gave the film a special jury award for documentary craft. National Geographic announced that it had acquired worldwide rights to the film shortly after its premiere at the festival.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Calling it “an urgent story of courage and resilience, beautifully told,” National Geographic announced its purchase of the documentary “The Territory,” directed by Alex Pritz and co-produced by the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people of northern Brazil. Homelands served as the project’s nonprofit fiscal sponsor, allowing it to receive grants and donations.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Central Romana Corporation destroyed a workers’ encampment in the Dominican Republic in November, two months after damning reports on conditions for Haitian cane cutters were published by Homelands’ Sandy Tolan. Residents say the destruction of houses and their forced removal were unannounced, according to an update by Tolan that appeared in Mother Jones in December.

  • The Homelands Blog

    “The Territory,” a documentary feature film that provides an up-close look at threats to the Brazilian Amazon, has been accepted in competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It premieres on January 22. Homelands has served as the project’s nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a reported essay for The Atlantic, Ruxandra Guidi explores the often-ignored relationship between American notions of masculinity and attitudes toward environmental responsibility. Is it too much to hope that men can learn to care about the climate?

  • The Homelands Blog

    Citing reporting by Homelands’ Sandy Tolan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade is calling for a “swift and thorough investigation” into the labor practices of large sugar producers in the Dominican Republic.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an episode for the 70 Million podcast and an article in High Country News, Ruxandra Guidi takes us to rural St. Johns, Arizona, where officials have transformed a juvenile detention center into a place where teens can play pool, make music, and receive mentoring instead of going to jail.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Senior producer Jonathan Miller tells a hometown story for a national audience in a half-hour piece on Ithaca, New York’s ambitious Green New Deal and what it might mean for hometowns everywhere.

  • The Town that Would Transform the World

    The Town that Would Transform the World

    Homelands senior producer Jonathan Miller reports from Ithaca, New York, whose ambitious Green New Deal seeks to deliver drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and major benefits for the community’s most vulnerable members. It’s a hometown story with implications for hometowns everywhere.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan returns to the Dominican Republic after 30 years to find out what happened to a young Haitian sugar cane worker he met in 1991. He reports what he discovered in an hour-long program on Reveal and an in-depth feature in Mother Jones.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists will present BBC bilingual video journalist Angélica M. Casas with the 2021 Cecilia Vaisman Award at a virtual ceremony and conversation on September 30, 2021, at 6:30 p.m. EDT.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ Bear Guerra accompanied volunteers with the group Aguilas del Desierto as they searched for missing migrants in the desert near the Mexico-Arizona border. Nine of his photos appear in the BuzzFeed News article “We Know How They Suffer.”

  • The Homelands Blog

    A district court in Minnesota decided not to pursue criminal trespassing charges, but left open the possibility that the case could be refiled. Alan’s attorney is considering filing a lawsuit for rights violations. Alan was covering an anti-pipeline protest for a book and article.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a June 30 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Homelands’ Alan Weisman reports on resistance to Enbridge Inc.’s Line 3 pipeline on the grounds that it will add to global temperature rise and imperil vital waterways. Alan was arrested while covering anti-pipeline protests in early June.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Journalist, author, and Homelands cofounder Alan Weisman was arrested on June 7 while covering the Line 3 anti-pipeline protests in northern Minnesota. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for local officials to explain the arrest. Weisman was clearly working as a journalist at the time.

  • The Homelands Blog

    “Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, with its unconscionable numbers of civilian casualties, is proof of a bankrupt U.S. policy,” writes Sandy Tolan in the Daily Beast. To make progress toward a lasting peace, America “must confront the tragic mess it helped create, and abandon the foreign policy its own inaction undermined.”

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an essay in The Atlantic, Homelands co-founder Sandy Tolan shares what he learned from the baseball legend, who died on January 22. Aaron was Sandy’s childhood hero and the subject of his first book, Me and Hank. His story resonates far beyond the realm of sport.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a public journal on social media and Medium, Sandy Tolan chronicles his road trip through a vast country both changed and unchanged by the churn of the historical moment.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The spectacle of far-right hate groups launching violent attacks around the country cannot obscure the deeper changes that are transforming political and social life across the region, Ruxandra Guidi writes in High Country News.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ Bear Guerra’s photos and photo collages accompany an essay on time, memory, land, and language by American Book Award-winning Diné poet Jake Skeets in Emergence Magazine.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The $5,000 award, given by Northwestern University’s Medill School and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, is named for Homelands’ co-founder, who died in 2015. This year’s winner is an investigative journalist at WBEZ in Chicago.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a series of 12 photos from February, Bear Guerra documents the Bernie Sanders campaign’s efforts to woo Latino voters in Nevada, where they have become an important voting bloc.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an ambulatory interview in western Massachusetts, Homelands’ co-founder and author of “The World Without Us” talks with Talk of the Town about humankind’s dynamic relationship with nature.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an audio story for BorderLore, Ruxandra Guidi and her seven-year-old daughter find calm in a new kind of ritual, one rooted in everyday gratitude and signs of spring in the desert Southwest.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an Earth Day essay for The Boston Globe Magazine, Alan Weisman argues that the COVID-19 pandemic is a sign that human beings have grown too numerous and destructive.

  • Is the coronavirus pandemic Mother Nature’s revenge?

    Is the coronavirus pandemic Mother Nature’s revenge?

    On the 50th Earth Day, it’s long past time to recognize that this overcrowded planet has run out of room to cut us any slack. By Alan Weisman Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine, April …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an op-ed in The Guardian, Homelands’ senior producer decries the decision of Wisconsin’s supreme court to hold the state’s April 7 primary election as scheduled despite the rising risk of Covid-19.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The United States immigration system wasn’t always so punitive or so cruel, observes Ruxandra Guidi in High Country News.

  • The Homelands Blog

    We are pleased to announce that Roberto (Bear) Guerra has been named photo editor of High Country News. Bear is an award-winning documentary photographer and photojournalist whose work addresses globalization, development, and social and environmental …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Slate has selected Homelands co-founder Alan Weisman’s 2007 bestseller The World Without Us as one of the top 50 English-language nonfiction books of the last 25 years. Book critics Dan Kois and Laura Miller write: …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Latino USA producer Antonia Cereijido received the first annual Cecilia Vaisman Award, named after the Homelands Productions co-founder who died in 2015. Antonia was a student of Cecilia’s at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    What a joy to see the 2019 Cecilia Vaisman scholarship winners at the Third Coast conference in Chicago. The scholars are all students at Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For astronomers, building an enormous telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano could be a “Galileo moment” — a chance to “peer through space-time to the beginning of the universe.” For many Native Hawaiians, it would be …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ Sandy Tolan will appear with the subject of his most recent book in a concert in Los Angeles on September 15. The show, at Zebulon Café, will feature Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan and his …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In an essay for High Country News, Homelands’ Ruxandra Guidi tells of her attempt to assuage her feelings of helplessness by connecting with a young Guatemalan in detention in California. “Over just the past two …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Senior Producer Alan Weisman’s piece in the August 15, 2019 issue of the New York Review of Books looks at two recent works on the future of humanity, a topic Alan has explored in depth …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Ruxandra Guidi left Venezuela for the U.S. in 1990, when she was just 14. Over time she and her father drifted apart; he was an ardent believer in the revolution, she was disillusioned by the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands producer and board president Ruxandra Guidi has moved to Tucson, where she will begin a new position as a professor in the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism. Ruxandra has reported throughout the United …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A People’s Map, Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra‘s yearlong collaboration with the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning, has wrapped up with free newspapers, books, and community events throughout the East San Gabriel Valley. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan recently returned from Gaza, where he was reporting on water in the context of the ongoing war there. He found people living under siege but determined not to give up hope. Sandy posted …

  • Back to the Garden

    Back to the Garden

    Alan Weisman reconsiders the Genesis story in the light of what we now know came after it. His essay originally appeared in the 2018 book “Eden Turned on Its Side” by photographer Meridel Rubenstein.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Bear Guerra has been spending a lot of time around the Los Angeles River, contemplating its meaning and (lucky for us) shooting photos. His photo essay “A Possible River” was recently published in Emergence Magazine …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan is in Gaza, reporting on the water crisis there. Here is a Facebook post from July 26: This morning in Gaza, a whiff of war in the air in the wake of Israel’s …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In her latest commentary for High Country News, Ruxandra Guidi writes how the U.S.-Mexico border has become a stage for political theater,  and why the Trump administration’s “deterrence” tactic against undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers is cruel and inhumane. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Cecilia Vaisman Award for Multimedia Reporters will recognize Latinx and Hispanic audio and video journalists “who bring light to the issues that affect the Latinx and Hispanic communities in the U.S. and around the world,” according to …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands member Ruxandra Guidi has been named Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies 2018 Susan E. Tifft Fellow. The award, now in its second year, offers a woman journalist or documentarian the opportunity to spend …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a major piece for Pacific Standard magazine, Homelands’ Alan Weisman goes deep into the wilderness of northern Mexico and southern Arizona on the trail of jaguars who venture across the border. The 300-pound cats are at the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For the last several years, Homelands’ Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra have been visiting California’s Coachella Valley to document the environmental and health disasters there, from contaminated water to pesticide pollution to hazardous waste. Now, in a major piece …

  • 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

    On April 9th, Bear and Rux’s year-long collaboration with LA’s KCRW – Going Gray in LA: Stories of Aging Along Broadway – will have a culminating event in Los Angeles that’s free and open to the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Last year, Homelands’ Bear Guerra spent two weeks in the Ecuadorian Amazon making images to accompany anthropologist Mike Cepek’s upcoming ethnography about the impacts that oil has had on the life of the indigenous Cofán. The …

  • 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

    Sandy Tolan spent several weeks researching a piece for the Daily Beast (to be co-published by Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting) on police violence at Standing Rock, with reporting gathered over his five trips there …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan has returned to North Dakota to report on the status of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the aftermath of the presidential order instructing the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the approval of construction permits. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In his latest story from North Dakota for the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Tolan asks what we can expect now that the Army Corps of Engineers has declined to approve a permit that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan was in North Dakota today as police and National Guard troops marched in to break up the protest over the proposed Dakota Access oil pipeline. He writes: “The protesters faced down the advancing forces with …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan is headed back to North Dakota, where he recently covered the protests by members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters against the proposed 1,172-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline. In his October 18 story in Salon.com, Sandy describes the tense …

  • 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 …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands co-founder Sandy Tolan, author of the book Children of the Stone, is touring the eastern U.S. this fall with the book’s protagonist, the Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan. They’ll be joined by Ramzi’s Arab/French fusion ensemble …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The photo above, from a 2015 story by Bear Guerra and Ruxandra Guidi published in Americas Quarterly, has won a prestigious American Photography award. The piece, “Indigenous Residents of Lima’s Cantagallo Shantytown Confront an Uncertain Future,” describes how …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If the current presidential race has soured you on the democratic process, you might seek solace in the latest episode of Scene on Radio, an excellent podcast produced by our old pal John Biewen at Duke University’s Center for Documentary …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Earlier this week we published the eulogy delivered by Sandy Tolan at a January 25 memorial event for Cecilia Vaisman at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Today we’re sharing the words of David …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Family, friends, colleagues, and students gathered to celebrate the life and work of Cecilia Vaisman at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University on January 25, 2016. You can watch a video of the event here. Below are the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Our Bear Guerra recently spent two days with Ecuador’s most popular soccer team as part of an article and photo spread in today’s New York Times. There are 12 photos in all. Freelancer Noah Schumer wrote …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In a wide-ranging review of recent books on the Middle East, essayist N.S. Morris lauds Sandy Tolan’s Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land for its intimacy and freshness. “Tolan exhibits novelistic …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The strawberries on your breakfast cereal might not taste so sweet if you knew how bitter life can be for the folks who pick them. As if backbreaking labor and extremely low wages weren’t enough, strawberry workers are …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan‘s Children of the Stone has been named one of Booklist‘s Top 10 Art Books of 2015. The news was published in the magazine’s November 1, 2015, issue on the arts. Reviewer Donna Seaman wrote: “Tolan illuminates …

  • The Homelands Blog

    There’s a sweet write-up about Homelands’ Bear Guerra on the Dispatches from Latin America section of the American Illustration and American Photography (AI-AP) website. Bear was recently honored in the group’s Latin America Fotografía competition …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We Homelanders have lost our beloved friend and colleague Cecilia Vaisman. Ceci died of cancer early on September 27 in Chicago. She was 54. Our love goes to her husband, Gary Marx, daughter, Ana, and son, Andres. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands’ co-founder and senior producer Alan Weisman is spending nearly a month in Colombia and Ecuador giving talks and interviews about his two most recent books, The World Without Us and Countdown.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Since August 13, Ecuadorians from across the political spectrum have been observing a nationwide strike and marching in the streets against the policies of President Rafael Correa. Homelands’ Bear Guerra has been documenting the protests, which have received little attention in the international …

  • The Homelands Blog

    This month, as part of a special issue on the environment, VICE Magazine asked leading thinkers to weigh in with their ideas about what to do about climate change. Below is Homelands’ Alan Weisman‘s essay, based …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    We were thrilled to learn that State of the Re:Union, a terrific radio show dreamed up and hosted by poet and playwright Al Letson, has won a Peabody Award. The Peabodys are considered the most prestigious awards in broadcast …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Music, occupation, hope, despair, healing, and the terrible weight of history are all the subjects of Sandy Tolan‘s rapturously reviewed new book, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land.  While you …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you happen to visit Johnson City, NY, just outside Binghamton, you’re likely to pass under a stone arch inscribed with the words, “Home of the Square Deal.” The arch (there are actually two, one …

  • The Homelands Blog

    This year’s Semana Santa, or Holy Week, brought thousands into churches and out on the streets of Ecuador, where an estimated 80 percent of people identify as Catholic. Homelands’ Bear Guerra was there to document the festivities in Quito’s historic …

  • Children of the Stone

    Children of the Stone

    Sandy Tolan’s book about freedom and conflict, determination and vision, and the potential of music to help children everywhere see new possibilities for their lives.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan’s new book, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land will be published in April by Bloomsbury USA. Sandy will launch the book on April 21 at the Los Angeles Public Library, then head out on …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands board member Dori J. Maynard died yesterday at her home in West Oakland, California. She was 56. A fearless champion of diversity in America’s newsrooms, Dori was sharp, funny, kind, intelligent, insightful, and a great friend. We …

  • The Homelands Blog

    What if we could transform sand, salt water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide into soil, fresh water, vegetables, trees, biofuel, and electricity? That’s what an ambitious Norwegian-led initiative has been doing in the desert near Doha for the last two …

  • The Homelands Blog

    On the day Ruxandra Guidi  arrived in Quito last year, she spoke with the owner of her bed and breakfast, an English-speaking Ecuadorean in his late twenties with obvious entrepreneurial savvy. He’d attended college in the U.S. on his parents’ …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Before we say goodbye to 2014 we thought we’d give you a sneak peek at what we’re cooking up for the year to come. If you feel it’s worth supporting, far be it from us to stand …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We were closely watching the Kickstarter campaign for “The SEAMS,” a new podcast and radio series probing the history, culture, class, gender politics, and other deeper meanings hidden in the folds of clothing and fashion. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Our spiffy new website went live four weeks ago, and now that we’ve lived with it for a while, we thought it was time for a formal introduction. The redesign is meant to make it easier …

  • The Homelands Blog

    As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline this week, we thought we’d let you know about a terrific photo essay from the path of the proposed pipeline that recently appeared in Politico. Photographer …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For the 60,000 residents of Cañar, Ecuador, the costs of migration can be great, especially for children. But the benefits can be great as well: unprecedented access to education and jobs, freedom of movement and financial independence for …

  • Who We Are

    Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

  • Who We Are

    Co-Founder, In Memoriam

    Cecilia Vaisman, our beloved colleague and friend, died on September 27, 2015. In addition to serving as a senior producer for Homelands, she was associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and …

  • Who We Are

    Producer, Board President

    Ruxandra Guidi has been telling nonfiction stories for more than two decades. Her reporting for public radio and podcasts, magazines, and various multimedia outlets has taken her throughout the United States, the Caribbean, South and …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Like many of the world’s indigenous groups, Panama’s Guna people are facing formidable challenges: the impacts of climate change, encroaching outside influences, and a younger generation that’s drifting away from its roots. Yet their situation …

  • The Homelands Blog

    What was the most important invention in human history? The printing press? Antibiotics? Nope, says Alan Weisman in this talk from TEDxSitka. And he has a couple of simple ideas for how to undo its damage.

  • Who We Are

    María Blanco is Vice President for Civic Engagement at the California Community Foundation in Los Angeles.

  • Who We Are

    Producer, Board Secretary

    Roberto (Bear) Guerra is a photographer whose work addresses globalization, development, and social and environmental justice issues. His photo essays and images have been published and exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. In …

  • Who We Are

    Senior Producer, Board Treasurer

    Alan Weisman has worked on seven continents, in the Caribbean and Oceania, and in more than 60 countries. The author of six books, he is currently at work on his next, Hope Dies Last, to be published …

  • Who We Are

    Senior Producer, Board Vice President

    Sandy Tolan is associate professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC and author of Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, …

  • Who We Are

    Executive Director, Board Member

    Jonathan Miller’s work as a reporter, writer, editor, radio and television producer, podcaster, communications specialist, human rights advocate, and project leader has taken him to more than 20 countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Journalist and author Charles Bowden died on August 30. Homelands’ Alan Weisman describes an outsized man with an outsized personality in a remembrance on the blog of Orion Magazine. Alan writes: “Should you aspire to write yourself, absolutely do …

  • The Homelands Blog

    More than 1 billion people in the world speak English. You could interview one of them every day for 30,000 years and still not exhaust your supply. So why worry about translating foreign-language voices for the radio? …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Alan Weisman‘s Countdown, which we’ve been urging our followers to read since it was first published in hardcover last September, has been named an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review’s “Paperback Row” column. The editors …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Newly discovered methane-spewing craters in Siberia are one more sign of a planet in trouble, writes Homelands’ Alan Weisman in an opinion piece on CNN.com. “Every day, you have a close personal encounter with methane, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Why have the U.S. and Israel pursued policies in Palestine that have failed again and again? In an op-ed piece in TomDispatch, Homelands’ Sandy Tolan looks at the history, psychology, and cold political calculation behind yet another …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra recently returned from a two-week visit to the indigenous communities of Kuna Yala, on Panama’s Caribbean coast. They were exploring the Guna (also known as Kuna) people’s relationship to their mainland forest, which is among the best …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Move over, Rupert Murdoch. First a website, then a blog, then a Twitter account… now Homelands is making its move on Facebook, a Silicon Valley start-up that describes itself as a “social utility that connects people with friends and …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Back in the early 1990s, Homelands’ four founder-members lived together in a rented house in Costa Rica while working on the Vanishing Homelands series. But after that we scattered, and for the last 22 years or so we’ve …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Took a while, but Homelands Productions is now betwittered. (Twitterated? Atweet?) We’re tweeting about journalism, storytelling, documentary, and some of the things that move us: the environment, international development, cultural identity, migration, climate. Today we actually …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands co-founder Alan Weisman’s “Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?” was awarded the 2013 LA Times Book Prize in the science and technology category. “Countdown” was also named the best general nonfiction book of …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Ruxandra Guidi‘s story about the relationship between the mother of a victim of gun violence and the person who shot him airs this week as part of the hour-long radio documentary “Guns in America.” The program …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The public radio program Interfaith Voices has received a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council for its “God and Government” series, which looks at the relationship between religion and the state in 14 countries around the world. The award …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands co-founder and senior editor Alan Weisman will be on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher tonight at 10 pm EDT. Alan will be talking to Maher about his latest book, Countdown: Our Last, Best …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We are thrilled to welcome journalist Ruxandra Guidi and photographer Roberto (Bear) Guerra to the Homelands family. As our newest producers and members of our board of directors, they bring a wonderful mix of skills, experiences, and …

  • The Homelands Blog

    This slideshow, by Mote Tanabodee, was shown at Raul Ramirez’s memorial service in Berkeley on January 12, 2014. Raul was Executive Editor and News Director at KQED FM in San Francisco, and a board member …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The novelist Louise Erdrich has written a glowing review of Alan Weisman’s Countdown for her blog, Birchbark. She calls the book “urgent, eloquent, harrowing yet hopeful.” Please read this book. Take your time. You will …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Raul Ramirez, longtime director of news and public affairs at KQED in San Francisco, died on November 15. A moving tribute can be found on the KQED website. Raul was also a dear friend of …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We at Homelands are mourning the loss, on the morning of November 15, of our dear friend, colleague, fellow Homelands board member, and trailblazing journalist, Raul Ramirez. Accolades about Raul have been coming in for …

  • Countdown

    Countdown

    In this monumental piece of reporting, Alan Weisman travels to more than 20 countries, beginning in Israel and Palestine and ending in Iran, on an urgent search for ways to restore the balance between our species’ population and our planet’s capacity to sustain us.

  • The Homelands Blog

    We’re thrilled to announce the publication of Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?, by Homelands senior producer and co-founder Alan Weisman. You should be able to find it in bookshops today, and if …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A listener contacted us after our story aired on PRI’s The World about entrepreneur Charles Mulamata’s effort to start an aquaponics business in his native Uganda. (Aquaponics is a combination of fish and vegetable farming that …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We can’t wait for Homelands co-founder and senior producer Alan Weisman‘s latest book to hit the shelves on September 24. It’s called Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? and it’s been getting terrific reviews. “Spirited …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sam Eaton, a freelance radio and video producer who contributed 10 of the features in the “Food for 9 Billion” project, has won the Society of Environmental Journalists‘ award for Environmental Beat Reporting in a …

  • 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?

  • California Looks to Milk China’s Dairy Demand

    California Looks to Milk China’s Dairy Demand

    As U.S. demand falls, California dairies are finding new markets in China. That may make sense for the industry, at least for now. But what about the planet?

  • 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?

  • Farmers in India Find Promise in Ancient Seeds

    Farmers in India Find Promise in Ancient Seeds

    In India, climate change is forcing farmers to adapt to saltwater intrusion, flooding, and droughts. Scientists are racing to breed a new generation of climate-resilient crops that can survive these changes. But many farmers are turning to the seeds that sustained their ancestors.

  • In Search for Food, Singapore Looks Skyward

    In Search for Food, Singapore Looks Skyward

    In Singapore, the challenge of feeding a growing population is pushing the concept of urban farming to new heights.

  • Could Agriculture Bloom in the Desert?

    Could Agriculture Bloom in the Desert?

    Petroleum-rich Qatar has welcomed innovators seeking solutions to the challenges facing desert areas worldwide, from renewable energy to fresh water to food production.

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    It’s the biggest week yet for the “Food for 9 Billion” project, with five stories scheduled to air on PBS NewsHour and two on PRI’s The World. Today on the NewsHour, Sam Eaton visits Costa Rica, where farmers and researchers are finding …

  • Costa Rica Farmers See Value in Biodiversity

    Costa Rica Farmers See Value in Biodiversity

    Scientists in Costa Rica are finding that biodiversity on and around farms can increase yields, lower input needs, and provide protection against environmental stresses.

  • 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.

  • Vertical Lunch

    Vertical Lunch

    A new super-efficient vertical farming system is producing greens for Singapore’s 5 million residents. Inventor Jack Ng hopes to increase local food security while helping cut down on the climate impact of food production.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Reporters Jonathan Miller, Sam Eaton and Mary Kay Magistad have been in Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Singapore, China, Qatar, Uganda and the Netherlands gathering tape for a series of radio and TV stories about the future of food …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Homelands blog may have been idle, but that doesn’t mean we have been! Clearly, though, it’s time for a quick catching up. In October, Jon Miller’s feature Greece’s diet crisis aired on Marketplace as part …

  • 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.

  • China Strains to Satisfy Demand for Meat

    China Strains to Satisfy Demand for Meat

    China’s growing appetite for meat and dairy is driving big changes in everything from farming to food safety. For the country’s increasingly wary consumers, those changes can’t happen quickly enough.

  • 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.

  • Africa’s Supermarket Sweepstakes

    Africa’s Supermarket Sweepstakes

    The spread of modern grocery chains could lift millions of African farmers out of poverty. Or it could ruin them.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The supermarket revolution is sweeping across Africa, transforming everything from the way people eat to the crops farmers grow. Is this good news for the continent’s poor? That’s the question posed by the latest “Food …

  • Spilled and Spoiled in California

    Spilled and Spoiled in California

    About of one-third of all the food we produce is never eaten. In the developing world, losses tend to occur at the production end. In the U.S., it’s consumers who waste the most.

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    With drought, storms, pests, diseases, poverty and a plethora of other constraints, it’s hard enough for the world’s farmers and fishers to keep us all fed. It hardly seems fair that one-third or more of …

  • The Homelands Blog

    http://youtu.be/ut3URdEzlKQ

    Americans love burgers. They’re filling, tasty and cheap. But what we pay at the counter is only part of the story. Check out this animated video from the “Food for 9 Billion” project, a collaboration between Homelands Productions and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). CIR’s Carrie Ching directed and produced; art and animation is by Arthur Jones.

    You can find a fully annotated version by clicking on http://cironline.org/reports/hidden-costs-hamburgers-3701.

  • The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers

    The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers

    Americans love hamburgers. They’re tasty, filling, and cheap. But not if you consider the damage they do to the planet.

  • 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.

  • Re-Greening the Sahel

    Re-Greening the Sahel

    In Niger, farmers race to reclaim the desert and break the link between drought and famine.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Today’s news from the Supreme Court brought back memories of a story I reported in 2006 for a BBC series on juvenile justice around the world. I traveled to Colorado to meet with young men …

  • Graying Farmers Force Japan to Rethink Food System

    Graying Farmers Force Japan to Rethink Food System

    As the average age of its farmers creeps into the 70s, Japan grapples with a question that many industrialized nations now face: Who will grow our food in the future?

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    It’s been more than a month since I posted anything on the Homelands blog! Too busy producing and planning “Food for 9 Billion” stories. Yesterday, a feature I reported in India aired on Marketplace. It …

  • 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.

  • Business Fund Puts African Farmers on Road to Market

    Business Fund Puts African Farmers on Road to Market

    A start-up in East Africa aims to give small-scale producers the tools they need to compete – and business is booming.

  • In Ethiopia, a Battle for Land and Water

    In Ethiopia, a Battle for Land and Water

    A controversial resettlement program in Ethiopia is the latest battleground in the global race to secure prized farmland and water.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The latest “Food for 9 Billion” feature, on the connection between farmland investment and displacement in Ethiopia, airs tonight on PBS NewsHour. It was produced and reported by Cassandra Herrman and Beth Hoffman and edited …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I hope you get to listen to the latest “Food for 9 Billion” piece on Marketplace today, about Bangladesh’s attempts to cope with climate change. It shows how, in the absence of major funding from …

  • 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?

  • The Homelands Blog

    It was great to see National Catholic Reporter blogger Jamie Manson‘s thoughtful response to Sam Eaton’s PBS NewsHour story about food and family planning in the Philippines. It’s worth taking a look at the comments, too, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Today is sort of a coming out for the “Food for 9 Billion” project, with features airing on American Public Media’s Marketplace and PBS NewsHour. Both stories look at the links between population growth and …

  • 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.

  • Turning the Population Tide

    Turning the Population Tide

    When Filipino fishing families got access to birth control, the effects were dramatic: more food, kids in school, and a new will to defend their reefs.

  • The Homelands Blog

    On this day after the first presidential primary, we wanted to let you know about an exciting project we’re involved with called Groundwork, organized by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Through radio …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Happy New Year! I’m just back from South Asia, where I looked at grassroots efforts to prepare for climate change in Bangladesh and avert a water crisis in India. These are for future stories in …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Sandy Tolan and Charlotte Buchen’s thoughts on Egypt’s food policies are on Al Jazeera’s website. The article grew out of the reporting they did for the “Food for 9 Billion” project.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Just a quick hello from the domestic airport in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I’m waiting to board a flight to Jessore, in the south. Some people say Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country in the world …

  • The Homelands Blog

    As Egyptians prepare to vote in the second round of parliamentary elections this week, Sandy Tolan explores the roots of what some have called “the revolution of the hungry.” Listen for his story tonight on …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Some really impressive work by the Fault Lines team at Al Jazeera English on the political and historical roots of the crisis in the Horn of Africa. See this 24-minute program about the origins of …

  • The Homelands Blog

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Otrng-9EEGM

    Sandy Tolan and Charlotte Buchen’s report from Egypt for PBS NewsHour. It’s part of the “Food for 9 Billion” project, a collaboration between Homelands Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting, PBS NewsHour and Marketplace.

  • In Egypt, Food for a Revolution

    In Egypt, Food for a Revolution

    Egyptians used to grow nearly all their own food. Today, the country relies on imports. The people on the street aren’t happy.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Our partners at Marketplace will air a piece by reporter Scott Tong on today’s show about the crucial difference between famine and drought. The story compares the situation in Somalia, where tens of thousands have …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A few comments on Marketplace’s story page for the first piece in the Food for 9 Billion series talk about the need to control population. It’s an important point, and one of our upcoming pieces, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We at Homelands Productions have been talking about doing a series on hunger and food security since before the “WORKING” series was finished in 2009. We’re finally there, with the first two pieces scheduled to …

  • 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 Homelands Blog

    This is a busy month on the feeding-the-world front. October 16 is World Food Day, which means that food and anti-hunger organizations are holding meetings, making statements, handing out prizes, launching campaigns and publishing reports. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Just a quick heads up about the (In)Visible Project led by photographer and multimedia artist Bear Guerra. The project creates mobile physical exhibits featuring photos and audio of San Diego’s homeless population. It got great …

  • The Homelands Blog

    This is from Sandy Tolan, Homelands co-founder and author of The Lemon Tree, about his new book project and blog. I’ll be spending the summer in the West Bank working on a new book about …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Please check out the fourth and final installment in the multimedia series “Hungry in America” on the AARP website. “A Healthy Difference” was reported by Homelands’ Jonathan Miller with photography and video by Alex Webb …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands senior producer Cecilia Vaisman, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas and the production team at Magnum in Motion have created a powerful multimedia feature about the struggles of farm workers to meet their basic food needs …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you’ve been following the news lately, you know that federal funding for public broadcasting is under threat. Today the House voted for a budget that eliminates support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Loyal readers will be pleased to learn that the entire Homelands Productions oeuvre is now downloadable from our website. For the last couple of years you could listen to our radio features on a special …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Back in the early 1990s, Homelands Productions reported on the contamination of portions of the Ecuadorean Amazon by the American oil giant Texaco. Today a judge in Ecuador ordered Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 2001, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The good folks at Transom.org asked me to contribute a “manifesto” on the art of producing a feature series for public radio. The piece went live yesterday. It’s meant to provide a general idea of …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The second piece is now up in AARP’s multimedia series about hunger among older Americans. “Hard Choices” was reported by Homelands’ Sandy Tolan, with photos and video by Larry Towell of Magnum. Magnum in Motion …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Hearty congratulations to our colleagues Trey Kay and Deb George for their Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for “The Great Textbook War,” an hour-long radio documentary they produced for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Deb is …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A new post on the National Geographic blog takes a look at the climate change mitigation strategy known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) from the perspective of two indigenous groups who will …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Please keep your ears open on Wednesday, December 1, for a  story on NPR’s All Things Considered called “The Legacy of George F. Johnson and the Square Deal.” The 13-minute piece was produced by Joe …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands producers Jonathan Miller, Sandy Tolan, Cecilia Vaisman and longtime collaborator Deborah George are teaming up with Magnum Photos on “Hungry in America,” a four-part multimedia series commissioned by AARP. The first piece, “A Little …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Old friend Chris Brookes has won yet another award for radio documentary. The Annotated Jack, about Chris’ neighbor, a retired fisherman in St. John’s, Newfoundland, won the New York Festivals Silver World Medal for profiles. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Belated Happy Labor Day! Last weekend Re:sound, the Chicago Public Radio program that showcases radio documentaries from around the world, broadcast (actually “re:broadcast”) “The Work Show,” featuring Homelands’ WORKING project. The hour, which was first …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A story I reported from Honduras and Virginia for BBC’s domestic service, Radio 4, is being rebroadcast today in slightly edited form on the BBC World Service program “Assignment.” “Cutting the Lifeline” looks at the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you didn’t hear “Ramzi’s Story” today on Weekend Edition Saturday, please check it out online. It’s a portrait of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a Palestinian musician who took part in the intifada as a boy. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Salina Kosgei, who was the subject of a profile in the WORKING series we produced for Marketplace, came in third in today’s Boston Marathon. She won the race last year by less than a second. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    It was wonderful to learn yesterday that two of our freelance friends won Peabody Awards for their radio documentaries. Deborah George, who will edit the Hunger Chronicles series, was editor for “The Great Textbook War,” …

  • The Homelands Blog

    After more than four months of reporting, Homelands co-founder Sandy Tolan and his students at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism have launched a powerful (and disturbing) multimedia series about hunger in California. “Hunger …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you’re interested in the relationship between nature and culture, you’ll want to check out the newly released Biocultural Diversity Conservation: A Global Sourcebook (Earthscan, 2010), compiled by the Canada-based NGO Terralingua with support from …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you’ve been following this blog, you know about our outrage at the murder of self-taught Mexican lawyer Marco Antonio Armendáriz Vega, who was shot to death in his home at the age of 56 …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Documentary radioheads will definitely want to check out Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, just published by the University of North Carolina press. The book’s 20 essays are written by “some of the most …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For the first time, you can download Homelands programs and play them as you commute or jog or snowshoe or do your calisthenics. Thanks to a welcome nudge from our friends at the Public Radio …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Please check out our friend and colleague Ingrid Lobet’s remembrance of two courageous men she encountered as a reporter working in Mexico, both of whom were murdered in 2009. Her piece, “Brave and Dead,” airs …

  • The Homelands Blog

    In October we reported on the murder of Marco Antonio Armendáriz Vega, a self-taught lawyer who had spent years defending the poor and powerless in northern Mexico’s Sonora state. Marcos (as he was known) was …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands co-founder, senior producer and current board president Cecilia Vaisman was part of a multimedia team working on the Open Society Institute’s initiative on statelessness. She conducted interviews with people of Haitian descent who are …

  • The Homelands Blog

    We are saddened and angered by news of the murder of Marco Antonio Armendáriz Vega, a self-taught lawyer who devoted his life to defending the poor and powerless against the corrupt and powerful in the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    If you love radio documentaries and you’re anywhere near Chicago on October 23, you should check out the Third Coast International Audio Festival‘s annual awards ceremony. It’s a celebration of the extraordinary work being done …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I’m just back from the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Cleveland, where the good people at the Third Coast International Audio Festival announced that Gregory Warner‘s WORKING profile of Congolese miner Fidele Musafiri had …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Happy Labor Day! The documentary program Re:sound devoted this weekend’s show to the WORKING series, airing six profiles along with clips from a conversation between me and show host Gwen Macsai. It’s a good introduction …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I’m heading to Indianapolis on Friday to accept the Sigma Delta Chi award for Radio Feature Reporting at the National Journalism Conference organized by the Society of Professional Journalists. Homelands won for the WORKING project. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I’m tickled to announce that the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations has agreed to take over the interactive Worker Browser site that Homelands created as part of the WORKING series. The ILR …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    The profile of Kenyan marathon runner Salina Kosgei is the 29th and final feature in the WORKING series. Kenya is the 25th country we’ve visited. It’s hard to believe that the series is coming to …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Salina Kosgei was the 10th and youngest child of poor farmers in the highlands of western Kenya. The family home had no electricity or plumbing; Salina got her first shoes at age 14. As a …

  • The Homelands Blog

    What a relief to hear that Iason Athanasiadis is in Dubai, confirmedly free! We are anxious to hear what happened from Iason himself. We know that Roxana Saberi, another colleague who was held in Iran, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Rather than rewrite yesterday’s post (is that even allowed?) we thought we’d say that news of Iason’s release, which has been widely reported, is still at the “Iranian foreign ministry officials confirmed” level of certainty. …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Great news today from Tehran. Colleague Iason Athanasiadis, who was detained by Iranian authorities after reporting on the disputed elections last month, was released after more than two weeks in detention. The government of Greece …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Iason Athanasiadis, an extraordinary young freelance writer, radio producer and photographer, was detained by Iranian authorities on June 19 while trying to board a plane to leave the country. Iason had been covering the contested …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Ismael “Babu” Hussein works as an assistant in one of Bangladesh’s giant shipbreaking yards, where armies of laborers dismantle huge old vessels with little more than hammers and blowtorches. The work is perilous, the bosses …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Brandon Davies‘ work is all about risk. After 32 years at Barclays Bank, he decided to try his luck as an independent operator. He quickly found himself with six or seven different jobs. He was …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    In nearly every country in the world, May First is an important holiday – a time when people come together to celebrate the dignity of labor, and to reflect on the crucial role that ordinary …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For Mexican women of a certain age, finding decent work can be nearly impossible. Vicki Ponce was in her 50s, selling tamales on the street, when she and some women friends decided to try their …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I’m tickled to report that Homelands has won the 2008 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Radio Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists. This is for the WORKING project, our collaboration with Marketplace about …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    For most refugees, fleeing the country is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For Alidad, it’s a job. He’s spent more than 30 years smuggling Afghans on a secret nighttime passage through the mountains of western Pakistan into …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    On Saturday we went to a photo exhibit in downtown Nairobi called Kenya Burning, documenting in gut-wrenching detail the post-election violence that erupted between December 2007 and February 2008. More than 1,500 people were murdered, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    For Valentines Day, WORKING goes deep into the world of love and marriage. Well, marriage, anyway. Hang Nga is a Vietnamese woman who works for a South Korean marriage agency. She and her Korean boss, …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    I wanted to make note of two things I heard on the radio this afternoon. The first was an obituary of John Updike, on All Things Considered, that included Updike’s observation that “the big problem …

  • The Homelands Blog

    When we first drew up a list of jobs we hoped to include in our WORKING series, “acrobat” was right at the top. Okay, that’s because the list was alphabetical, but even so, we’ve always …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    Happy New Year, everyone! I wanted to thank you all for listening to our radio programs and for visiting our burgeoning Internet empire (Homelands.org, this blog, the Worker Browser, the WORKING section of Marketplace.org, Worlds …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I hope you get a chance to hear the new WORKING profile of Leandro Carvalho, an idealistic young Brazilian whose job is to find and liberate workers who are held against their will or forced …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    One of the perpetual challenges for any journalist is to figure out when a person or fact or event is somehow representative of some larger reality, and when the personality or information or situation is …

  • The Homelands Blog

    A quick note about some good work that has grown out of reporting for the WORKING project. Kelly McEvers has written a multipart series in Slate about her adventures finding and profiling a pirate in …

  • The Homelands Blog

    One rap against cool web-based media applications is that they attract a disproportionate number of males and a disproportionate number of people who work in information technology. I just sorted the early discoverers of the …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Folks, please check out Gregory Warner’s profile of Fidele Musafiri, a coltan and cassiterite (tin) miner in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s tragic and powerful and pretty much exactly what we were aiming …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    What a thrill to go online today and see that 164 people had put their profiles up on the Worker Browser! Up from just 15 yesterday. We’ve barely mentioned it to anyone, but apparently folks …

  • The Homelands Blog

    I hope you got to hear the latest WORKING profile. It was produced by Kelly McEvers and features a pirate, Agus Laodi, in Indonesia. Agus boards cargo ships in the Strait of Malacca, holds their …

  • 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.

  • The Homelands Blog

    I know if you’re reading this you’re a true fan. So I’d like to invite you to check out something we’ve been quietly developing for two years as part of the WORKING project. It’s called …

  • The Homelands Blog

    The Third Coast Festival has come and gone. What an amazing community we indie producers have managed to create! Two and a half days of hugs, grins, coffee, wine, and dancing. Oh, and networking, workshopping, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    This week, as the global economy collapses, Sandy, Cecilia and I head merrily off to the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Evanston, Illinois. It’s an annual meet-up of people who tell stories with sound, …

  • The Homelands Blog

    Homelands Productions has been around since 1989, creating public radio features and documentaries, writing articles and books, and generally doing our artfully journalistic (journalistically artful?) bit to promote world peace and understanding. In the last …

  • 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.

  • Silk Merchant

    Silk Merchant

    Chanta Nguon says Cambodian women are supposed to be quiet and cool, like moonlight. She’d rather be sunlight.

  • 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!”

  • The World Without Us

    The World Without Us

    How would the Earth respond if humans were suddenly to disappear? How quickly would our cities, our objects, our waste, and the myriad other changes we have wrought disappear – or would they disappear at all? Most urgently, asks this New York Times bestseller, what can we do to lessen the damage we’re inflicting on the only planet we have?

  • 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 Lemon Tree

    The Lemon Tree

    The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people – one Israeli, one Palestinian – that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East. Winner of a Christopher Award, Booklist’s best adult non-fiction book of 2006, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  • 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.