What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbooks that encouraged students to confront the thorniest parts of U.S. history: to identify problems, and try and solve them. And it was just as controversial as the fights we're seeing today. In this episode: a media mogul, a textbook author, and a battle over what students should – or shouldn't – learn in school.
At an event hosted by the Carter Center and Dutch Consulate of Atlanta on Feb. 28, 2024, Sweet Auburn Stories producer Royce Bable sat down with Xernona Clayton, 93, for a wide-ranging interview about her Oklahoma childhood, a stint in Hollywood, her prominence in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and her long media career. The storytelling series began in 2019 and focuses on Black pioneers.
Olympic gold medalist Florence "Flo-Jo" Griffith Joyner died in her sleep on Sept. 21, 1998. The sprinter's world records for the 100 meter and 200 meter events remain unbroken.
The 92nd Street Y, New York was originally founded to help Jewish immigrants assimilate. Today, 92NY is a cultural force for all. But its response to the Israel-Hamas war has been divisive.
A delicate cleanup is underway in historic Lahaina on Maui. Cultural monitors are working closely with federal officials to assure the process protects cultural and archeological artifacts.
Washington, D.C.'s famous cherry blossoms hit peak bloom this week. This will be the last season for about 150 of the famous flowering trees — they'll soon be cut down to adjust to sea-level rise.
The former vice president ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination before dropping out ahead of any primary contests. He said Trump has moved too far away from conservative values.
One of the most pro-Palestinian nations in the world is not an Arab or Muslim country. It's not even in the Middle East. Polls show Ireland has some of the highest support for the Palestinians.
In 2011, the world was shaken by the Arab Spring, a wave of "pro-democracy" protests that spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The effects of the uprisings reverberated around the world as regimes fell in some countries, and civil war began in others. This week, we revisit the years leading up to the Arab Spring and its lasting impact on three people who lived through it.
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The SS United States, once a luxurious ocean liner, holds the speed record for crossing the Atlantic. It's rusting away at a pier in Philadelphia and could soon be evicted and scrapped.
On August 6, 1945, a stone-faced President Harry Truman appeared on television and told Americans about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
The attack on Hiroshima marked the first time nuclear power was used in war, but the atomic bomb was actually tested a month earlier in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico.
At least hundreds of New Mexicans were harmed by the test's fallout. Radiation creeped into the grass their cows grazed, on the food they ate, and the water they drank.
A program compensating victims of government-caused nuclear contamination has been in place since 1990, but it never included downwinders in New Mexico, the site of the very first nuclear test.
This week, the Senate voted to broaden the bi-partisan legislation that could compensate people who have suffered health consequences of radiation testing. Now, the bill will go to a House vote.
Generations after the Trinity Nuclear Test, will downwinders in New Mexico finally get compensation?
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For most of its early history, Israel was dominated by left-leaning, secular politicians. But today, the right is in power. Its politicians represent a movement that uses a religious framework to define Israel and its borders, and that has aggressively resisted a two-state solution with Palestinians. And its government – led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — is waging a war in Gaza which, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, has killed over 30,000 people, many of them children. The government launched the war in response to the October 7th, 2023 Hamas-led attack that, according to Israeli authorities, killed over 1,200 Israelis with an additional 250 being taken hostage.This is not the first time that tension has erupted into violence. But the dominance of right-wing thinkers in Israeli politics is pivotal to how the war has unfolded. On today's episode: the story of Israel's rightward shift.
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