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  • 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

    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

    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

    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

    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 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

    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 …

  • 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

    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

    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

    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 …

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • Cafeteria Lunch

    Cafeteria Lunch

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

  • Taking the Climate Fight to the Table

    Taking the Climate Fight to the Table

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Food for 9 Billion: The Scientific Challenge

    Food for 9 Billion: The Scientific Challenge

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

  • The Square Deal

    The Square Deal

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Picture Me Rolling

    Picture Me Rolling

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.