Audio by Adam

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:43 — 16.2MB)

Nanotechnology, which deals with matter in billionths of a meter, allows for the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale. As such, it may represent humanity’s most profound and far-reaching scientific frontier.  This documentary looks at how it works, and what is possible, and what to prepare for, willy-nilly.

The story won VOA’s Annual Award or “Best Original Script.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:32 — 35.3MB)

This is a 38 minute narration-free documentary of the 20th century using (other than my one minute spoken introduction) only archival sound, speeches and other audio artifacts of that talkative 100 years. The montage is of my own making and perspective as the American I happen to be, and hopefully, takes the listener on a real voyage, despite my limitations.

It was prepared for worldwide broadcast on the Voice of America on New Year’s Even 1999; it subsequently won the Grand Prize and the Gold Medal at the New York Festivals, and a Special VOA award, and I was flattered to learn in it often used in journalism classes.

A note on how to listen to it:  all on one 38 minutes go, with the lights off. It’s fun to try identify the source of the sound you are hearing the first time around. Then check your impressions against the complete list of sound elements which I hope to post as a sidebar on this blog (when I learn how to do it.)  You can also write me and request an email copy, no prob.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:52 — 25.5MB)

The Bedouins are ancient clan-centered nomads of the Middle East who have relied on goatherding and camels for millennia. Abraham, for example, was a Bedouin. In modern times, the nomadic way of life, which depended on free movement and embraced a culture of both hospitality and revenge has been threatened due to land enclosures and the lures of Western way of life. In this archival piece, I spent lots of time with the Bedouins of the Negev Desert, and spoke with people from several generations (including an old sheik) to plot their heritage and current predicament.   (NPR “Horizons”; 30 minutes)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:08 — 18.4MB)

In 1995, it was my good fortune to be flown down to Atlanta to interview the Dalai Lama. It was in the middle of a very ambitious and (to me) fascinating multi-million dollar project I was producing at the time on conflict resolution, and the psychology of war, violence, reconciliation and peace.  This long form doc uses some clips from His Holiness, and is leavened with dramatized excerpts from his speeches on these subjects, voiced by my colleagues at the VOA’s Tibetan Service.

May these words benefit all sentient beings!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:27 — 16.9MB)

This is a extended, edited excerpt from my intervierw with (now Dr.)  Max Aguilera-Hellweg, who saw and photographed the strange and difficult beauty of the body as it undergoes radical surgery.  While this is a long form audio story, I hoped to give a sense of the ways the spirit, the “hotness” of fleshy life and medical skill come together in the operating room, and which were compassionately exalted in his remarkable 1997 book.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:46 — 13.2MB)

Between Zionism, Socialsim,  Feminism, Judaism, the Holocaust, and all the American, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian cultural influences that compete for primacy as models for women in Israel, their status and self-image is deeply multi-layered and complex. This half hour documentary, which I completed for National Public Radio back in the early 1990s, offers a sound-rich and varied sampling through the eyes of real women living, working and raising families in that amazing place.