Blog - Homelands Productions

September 25, 2014

Project finds lessons in group’s healthy forests

10_guerra_kuna_yala — The Guna won their land from the Panamanian government after a revolution in 1925 and have been managing it communally ever since. Here Marcos Ramirez (center) directs members of the Yarsuisuit Collective as they weed a plot that they cultivate in the forest. Photo by Bear Guerra.

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 is not nearly as dire as it might be. One reason is their communal system of forest management, which is emerging as a model of conservation and the sustainable use of resources.

Homelands’ Bear Guerra and Ruxandra Guidi spent time with the Guna this summer and teamed up on a photo essay and article for the environmental magazine Ensia.

September 22, 2014

History’s most important invention

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.

September 5, 2014

Remembering Chuck Bowden

Charles_Bowden_2014 — Charles Bowden, 1945-2014.

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 read him, but don’t try to imitate him. You can’t. No one could. But learn from his fearless commitment to saying exactly what needed to be said… Let me rephrase that: Chuck Bowden wasn’t fearless. He was scared plenty — but he had the courage to never turn away, regardless.”

September 3, 2014

Who speaks for the speaker?

"Getting usable tape from a three-person, two-language conversation can be a culturally, linguistically, emotionally, and ergonomically complicated business," says Jonathan Miller. — Jonathan Miller interviews marathoner Selena Kosgei and her mother in western Kenya. “Getting usable tape from a three-person, two-language conversation can be a culturally, linguistically, emotionally, and ergonomically complicated business,” he writes on Transom.org.

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?

Homelands’ Jonathan Miller tackles this and other thorny questions in the latest “Thoughts on Translation” column on the public radio website Transom.org. Previous contributors were independent producer Ann Heppermann and NPR East Africa correspondent (and honorary Homelander) Gregory Warner.

September 2, 2014

Work show shines light on LA’s less glitzy side

Musician Teodoro Cuevas waits for business in LA’s Mariachi Plaza. Photo by Emmanuel Martinez/Neon Tommy.

In 24 Hours: A Day in the Working Life, 12 Los Angeles-area workers – including a stripper, deli waitress, bus driver, metal scrapper, and bathroom attendant – take us inside their workplaces to show us what they do and why they do it.

The Labor Day special aired on public radio stations around the country yesterday. It was reported by graduate students at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC as part of a course taught by Homelands’ Sandy Tolan and Karen Lowe of the web and radio project Bending Borders.

Karen is an old friend of Homelands; as an editor for Marketplace, she worked on many of the profiles in our WORKING series.

24 Hours is a co-production of Homelands Productions, Bending Borders, and the USC Annenberg School. It is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange (PRX).

August 20, 2014

“Countdown” is a New York Times Editors’ Choice

Chief's wives in Bargaja, Niger. The average woman in Niger gives birth to seven children. The country's population is among the fastest growing in the world. — Chief’s wives in Bargaja, Niger. The average woman in Niger gives birth to seven children. The country’s population is among the fastest growing in the world.

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 call it a “rousing sequel” to Alan’s previous book, The World Without Us.

August 13, 2014

Weisman: Farting craters silent but deadly

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, a key ingredient of something we don’t usually mention in polite company: farts…. Unfortunately, neither propriety nor intestinal discipline can suppress its unpleasantness lately, because now not just us, but the Earth itself is farting.”

August 13, 2014

Tolan: Blown chances in Gaza

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 tragic confrontation.

“Alongside the toll of death and broken lives, perhaps the saddest reality of the latest Gaza war, like the Gaza wars before it, is how easy it would have been to avoid. For the last eight years, Israel and the U.S. had repeated opportunities to opt for a diplomatic solution in Gaza. Each time, they have chosen war, with devastating consequences for the families of Gaza.”

Sandy’s piece was republished in Salon.com; you can check out that version and read the comments here.

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About Homelands

WHAT WE ARE

Homelands Productions is an independent nonprofit journalism cooperative. Since our founding in 1989, we have reported from more than 60 countries, produced nine special series for public radio and television, and won 22 national and international awards.

We also serve as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor for projects that excite us, and our Public Interest Reporting Defense Fund helps journalists whose work has gotten them in trouble.