Audio by Adam

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:26 — 17.8MB)

In the mid-1990s, I was the initiator, designer and lead producer for a very ambitious series about the emerging field of conflict resolution and its applications. It covered everything from war, to marital discord to the role of the media in preventing or stoking discord, to the psychology of violence, peace and forgiveness. This 20 minute story was the first in the series (which also took me to South Central LA and South Africa, among many other places) that explained the field, and explored its potential range.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:24 — 4.9MB)

Einstein may have had one of history’s most enviable cerebaums, but its post-mortem wherabouts were a mystery until an intrepid reporter found out about the weirdo pathologist who stole them at the physicist’s autopsy. He offered to drive the doctor and the the brain from New Jersey to the California to return it. This is a report on their very, very weird road trip.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:58 — 5.5MB)

Little League is Americana itself, and I was shocked and privileged to be a part of it all as my son’s coach in Washington DC in the late 1990s. I produced this profile of one game for the Voice of America. In it, I had to explain the game of baseball to our foreign listeners, keep it personal, and report on the game itself – the closest I may ever get to being a sportscaster.* The Marlins won, by the way…

* See also my story about a high school football game between Jenks and Broken Arrow, in rural Oklahoma.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:45 — 7.1MB)

There are hundreds of musicians, good and bad, tooting and strumming and bowing and belting in the New York subway system, but Mr. Spoons is sui generis. Not only is he fantastic at playing the spoons, he has an outsize character to match. I spent some serious time with him, and filed this report for VOA.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:58 — 5.5MB)

Folk all over the world have their own versions of homemade liquor that will blow the top of your head right off.,  but “White Lightning” from the stills of Appalachia have their own appeal for Americans who have heard about it through family lore and popular culture, or tasted it in a parking lot or next to a trailer or at a wood burning stove.  During a trip to the back-country road trip through Tennessee and North Carolina, I sought out a real “moonshiner,’ and I sure found one in the person of “Popcorn Sutton.”   With his long beard, beat up old hat, and impossibly thick mountain accent, he fit the stereotype to a “T.”  His booze ain’t bad ‘nuther. I still have some underneath the kitchen sink you are welcome to try.  Banana flavored!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:21 — 4.0MB)

There are zillions of ways to sing and play Auld Lang Syne. Here I had fun melding some of them

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:21 — 4.9MB)

The scope and the shock of the attacks prompted rage, fear and profound puzzlement. Almost immediately, people started to look for some spiritual response to what had happened that paralleled the pain. Here is a story that features rabbis, ministers, Buddhists and others looking for some wisdom amid the rubble.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:17 — 4.8MB)

New York City was full of ritual, ceremony, art and other forms of creative and numinous expression in the months following September 11th. This tells the story of one old ceremony that Native Americans brought to the Museum of the American Indian, near Ground Zero after several months had elapsed. It was a ceremonial moment to mark the necessity for drying the tears and moving on.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:19 — 7.6MB)

A Dateline report recorded about two months into 2002 with the work crews tasked with clearing the debris from Ground Zero, sorting through it for human remains, and making it ready to be put on barges to be floated for disposal in Fresh Kill. The stress, sadness and nobility of the men there were quite amazing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:35 — 6.9MB)

The late Terence McKenna is one of the smartest and most inspiring guys I’ve ever interviewed. Ethnobotanist, psychedelic philosopher of DMT, shamanism and fundamental erotic connection between the “Deep Animal” and the “Deep Vegetative” Kingdoms. This is just a snippet from one of our many interviews. Over several years, I talked to him about space exploration, the rain forest, ecology, psychology, human evolution, ethno-botany, art, philosophy and the Eschaton. Many see him as the kind of serious man that Timothy Leary could have been if he hadn’t been so absorbed in his personal dramas with his family and the law and so addicted to playing to the media as brand.

I was allowed by VOA to make this tribute to him soon after he died of a brain tumor as a relatively young man. Very sad. Many of us really miss him.