Humankind on Public Radio

A spiritual intimacy comes through in these warm remarks by Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk. He talks of finding gratefulness and joy throughout the inevitable peaks and valleys of the inner journey.

Overworking has become a cultural norm in Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s opinion. Waskow’s coalition “Free Time/Free People” is spearheaded by members of various faiths, and insists that a workable culture must actually work less, and a functional population functions best when there’s less to do. Today, he posits that we have become alienated from our lives […]

For most people, an encounter with serious illness stimulates self-reflection. It can force patients to re-evaluate their priorities, their behaviors, their lives. But taking a good, deep look at oneself may not be easy. Often introspection unfolds in layers and stages. This program explores two powerful self-reflective techniques.

With the movement to “opt out” of high-stakes standardized tests gaining traction in schools among students, parents and educators, we consider alternative ways to evaluate when education is effective.

When a gifted artist and media producer near Los Angeles is stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), a community of friends comes together to support him as he develops ingenious ways to continue creating his art work, even without the use of his limbs.

Rather than merely write checks to charities they don’t really know well, a group of concerned women formed a “giving circle” which identifies social needs and then seeks out worthy recipients.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the renowned Stress Reduction Clinic at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical School, discusses how the technique of “mindfulness” can be physically and mentally therapeutic.

A no-holds-barred look at the stressful conditions in which many nurses work: the long hours, the emotional toll, the rapid pace, and the way that technology and institutional practices can make it hard to form a caring bond with patients. In this segment, we hear the fascinating stories of nurses in various locales who use […]

A no-holds-barred look at the stressful conditions in which many nurses work: the long hours, the emotional toll, the rapid pace, and the way that technology and institutional practices can make it hard to form a caring bond with patients. We hear nurses’ stories about the challenge of providing quality care under normal circumstances, and […]

After John Wood trekked through Nepal and saw under-educated children, he quit his job as a Microsoft executive and founded Room to Read, a nonprofit that has now established more than 9,000 libraries aimed at spreading literacy in developing nations worldwide.

The Constitution specifies that once federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they can hold their office “during good behavior,” in other words for life — unless they’ve misbehaved, that is. But the average American today lives a lot longer today than in 1789, when President George Washington signed the […]

The Republican party has not won the majority of votes in six of the last seven presidential elections. And yet vacancies on the Supreme Court have allowed Republican presidents to appoint six of the last ten justices. Does this skew the Court in a way that’s out of step with public opinion? Here we explore […]

Renewable energy (including low-carbon sources like solar and wind) is rapidly shifting to a higher profile sector of the way Americans derive electricity to power homes and workplaces.

This documentary features recent interviews with associates of Martin Luther King Jr. and his role model, Mahatma Gandhi, on their philosophy of nonviolent social change, plus archival audio.

In this episode we visit William J Ostiguy High School. It is a learning facility designed to help kids with a history of substance abuse—who support each other in their quest to remain clean and sober.