Audio by Adam

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:50 — 9.0MB)

The Masons have long been the subject of curiosity, derision, persecution and admiration for their tight brotherhood, which claims millions of members worldwide, and which has been a mainstay for most American presidents and untold numbers of movers and shakers. The purported “secrecy” of their rites and symbols,  which are sometimes riffs on the belief systems of non-Christian cultures, notably that of Egypt and ancient Greece, has added to their allure and cache.  I met with a group of elite Amercian Masons, who described for me the spiritual path that Masonry can represent for men, and was granted some insight into how this fraternity works.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:29 — 5.9MB)

Down a couple of old Maryland country roads that barely show up on state maps you’ll find Grandma Cora, an elderly African American lady who is known throughout those parts for her delicious sweet potato pies, which she lovingly backs on her old stove and sells to make ends meet nicely. I spent an afternoon with Grandma Cora for this “Women in Business” story, and got both happier and fatter as a result.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:22 — 2.0MB)

Many of us are familiar with people who walk down the street conversing with people and other entitities that we cannot say, but which exist in a hyper-real and undeniable way to them.  What is it like  inside their minds, what do those voices sound like and what do they say?  And what happens when the voices quiet down after a lifetime due to Rispardal or other psychiatric drugs? Meet the late Ken Steele, who vividly described his lifelong struggle with paranoid shizophrenia, and the road back to the shared world.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:25 — 5.9MB)

If California were a nation of its own, it would have the twelth largest economy in the world; agriculture would be a huge percentage of it. Much of the labor that produces is done by migrant farm workers who come to the US, sometimes illegally, and follow the crops, before returning home to Mexico and places even further south. I spent some time with migrant farmworkers in California’s immense – and immensely fertile – Central Valley, and filed this report for the VOA.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:10 — 7.5MB)

The search for life forms (or life-like) forms has intensified in recent years as our technical prowess has increased and our understanding of the forms and chemistry of what life could be has expanded and grown more refined. This piece examines the branch of science that deals with this, and looks at various ways we might recognize and relate to life beyond our planet.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:48 — 2.2MB)

This is a story about some of the most beautiful short poetry I have ever come across. Edited by the poet Jane Hirshfield (see “Given Sugar, Given Salt” elsewhere in this blog), it is a collection of short erotic haiku-like poems written by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, who were part of the Japanese medieval court.  The themes – transience, love, loneliness, and erotic longing – are eternal, but the words come across both artful and vividly personal (not to mention steamy) across the centuries.

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: 6:40 — 6.1MB)

2009 marks the 400th anniversary of English sea captain Henry Hudson’s arrival in what’s now New York harbor.  British colonists would play a major role in the development of Manhattan Island.  But historian Russell Shorto says it was largely the 17^th century Dutch and their pioneering settlement of New Amsterdam that influenced what Manhattan, New York City and to some extent, even America itself, would become.  Shorto explains how in his book, “The Island at the Center of the World — The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:25 — 5.0MB)

It may be hard or many of us to imagine the glitter and the sometimes risque fun associated with the old nightclubs, burlesques and vaudeville houses of the 1920s and 1930s, especially in New York, where such entertainment reached a certain height of glamor. But what was that life like for those on the other side of the footlights? For this piece, I spoke with the late Dorshka Rafaelson, formerly of the Ziegfeld Follies, and Isabelle Powell,  widow of Adam Clayton Powell, who graced Harlem’s Cotton Club.  Both were  still-beautiful, and beautifully spirited, women.