San Francisco is studying a London-style plan to charge drivers a fee when they travel to high-traffic areas, like downtown San Francisco, or Doyle Drive during peak commute hours. But is congestion pricing a boon for public transportation? Or the death of downtown? This feature got a huge response, tapping into a subject no one's neutral on: traffic. San Francisco and New York are both seriously considering doing this -- other big cities, stay tuned...

Iowa Public Radio's "The Exchange" and New Hampshire Public Radio's "The Exchange" are joining forces for a series of three co-hosted specials, called "The Iowa/New Hampshire Exchange." Ben Kieffer and Laura Knoy will co-host from IA and NH. The specials represent a collaboration with NHPR to give voters in the two "first-in-the-nation" states an opportunity to talk to each other about important issues in the campaign. Listeners from both states will be able to interact with guests in Iowa and New Hampshire. We want a substantive conversation that allows citizens from two different parts of the country, who have a lot of influence in the choice of the next president, an opportunity to hear where they agree and where they differ on some of the big issues.

In the first installment of The Iowa/New Hampshire Exchange, we?ll explore the economies of both states. What are each state's main industries? How does trade affect each state? And what are the candidates saying in Iowa and New Hampshire about economic policy?

As clean-up crews in hazmat suits scour the beaches, scientists say they'll be dealing with the aftermath of last week's oil spill for months, maybe even years. Why is it so hard to clean up oil? And what will happen to the thousands of gallons of spilled oil that can't be recovered?

Six years ago, President Bush signed "No Child Left Behind." The law requires states to prove students are learning. Now schools across the country are using standardized tests to measure and quantify student progress. The goal is to get every student to pass the tests by the year 2014. The clock is ticking, and so far the results are mixed. There?s evidence that elementary students are doing better on national tests in math, but little to show much improvement at the high school level. And some studies actually show a decline in reading skills since No Child Left Behind was passed. What?s going on? Are the tests helping? Is education getting better? To look for answers, reporters from North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC teamed up with American RadioWorks, the documentary unit of American Public Media. They spent two years at Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina to observe up-close how ?No Child Left Behind? is working. In this six part series, we follow two students and their teacher over the course of two school years to explore how standardized testing is changing schools, and education.

Six years ago, President Bush signed "No Child Left Behind." The law requires states to prove students are learning. Now schools across the country are using standardized tests to measure and quantify student progress. The goal is to get every student to pass the tests by the year 2014. The clock is ticking, and so far the results are mixed. There?s evidence that elementary students are doing better on national tests in math, but little to show much improvement at the high school level. And some studies actually show a decline in reading skills since No Child Left Behind was passed. What?s going on? Are the tests helping? Is education getting better? To look for answers, reporters from North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC teamed up with American RadioWorks, the documentary unit of American Public Media. They spent two years at Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina to observe up-close how ?No Child Left Behind? is working. In this six part series, we follow two students and their teacher over the course of two school years to explore how standardized testing is changing schools, and education.

Six years ago, President Bush signed "No Child Left Behind." The law requires states to prove students are learning. Now schools across the country are using standardized tests to measure and quantify student progress. The goal is to get every student to pass the tests by the year 2014. The clock is ticking, and so far the results are mixed. There?s evidence that elementary students are doing better on national tests in math, but little to show much improvement at the high school level. And some studies actually show a decline in reading skills since No Child Left Behind was passed. What?s going on? Are the tests helping? Is education getting better? To look for answers, reporters from North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC teamed up with American RadioWorks, the documentary unit of American Public Media. They spent two years at Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina to observe up-close how ?No Child Left Behind? is working. In this six part series, we follow two students and their teacher over the course of two school years to explore how standardized testing is changing schools, and education.

Part Two- Violence or Non-Violence: From Germany to Sweden to Norway, we report on anti-racism activists who use varying means to counter Neo-Nazis and anti-immigrant policies. This report looks at what is happening on the ground and arguments for and against violence. 8 min. Phillip Martin, Reporter.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europeans have seen a steady resurgence of Neo-Nazi and anti-immigrant activities. While a great deal of attention has been focused on racist "skinheads", particularly in the eastern half of Germany, Sweden, and in Russia, far less attention has been paid to a loosely defined grass-roots, ANTI-racism Movement that has surfaced across the continent. Activists are working largely unseen to counter the proponents of hate. It is their story that I report in this four-part series titled "Standing Up To Hate in Europe". Part One: In the Spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. a German activist describes how MLK influenced her life and her life-long struggle against right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism. 7 min, 19 sec. Phillip Martin, Reporter.

With election cycles in constant motion, this time on Peace Talks Radio, we offer a conversation about the possible impact of electing mediators to public office. We'll talk with Dr. Dan Dana, a mediator and former candidate for the US House of Representatives in Missouri. After his failed, non-adversarial bid for office, Dan created the "Elect Mediators to Public Office" project. He believes that having more mediators in public office who use a non-adversarial approach to conflict resolution would result in better political processes and better government. Of the total U.S. work force, only 6 percent are lawyers. Yet 45 percent of the members of Congress are lawyers. Would more mediators in public office change political discourse? We'll talk with other mediators who have run for public office to learn how they hope to change public service including Texas Representative Henry Cuellar(pictured above), 2006 Texas U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Ann Rodnofsky, and former mayor of Manzanita, Oregon, Hugh McIssac. Suzanne Kryder is host. For a 54 minute or 59 minute version of the program, visit that episode at PRX: http://www.prx.org/pieces/21104

Every major social movement has its music, its anthems, its songs. Music tells the story of a people, their dreams, their hopes, their vision for a different world. But what happens when the music crosses borders to embrace new cultures? In the U.S., people of color have been turning more and more to the Zapatismo, a Mayan indigenous movement in the jungles and mountains of southern Mexico, as a source of hope and as proof that, as the Zapatistas say, a different world is possible. On this Edition: we go to East Los Angeles, where a number of Chicano artists inspired by the Zapatistas have been using music to raise awareness in their own communities and to struggle for a better world. This show has been a special collaboration between National Radio Project and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Thanks to student producer, Alejandro Reyes who wrote and edited this show under the guidance of independent media producer and UC Berkeley journalism lecturer, Claire Schoen.

We started out putting together a show we were planning to call "Nerd Alert." But soon we realized that most of our stories were really about games...nerdy games, but games nonetheless. So, B-Side's Tamara Keith went to the E For All video game convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center in search of both games and nerds. They weren't hard to find. Liner Notes: "A Disturbance in the Force" Aaron Henkin: The online multi-player game Star Wars Galaxies can be rather addictive. Aaron Henkin has a story of someone who got in too deep. "Duck Hunt Gun" David Shurtleff: Remember that old Nintendo game Duck Hunt? It turns out the gun didn't quite operate in the way it seemed. David Shurtleff went on a quest to understand the Duck Hunt gun. "D&D" Ethan Lindsey: Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game where you create your own character and set off on imaginary adventures. B-Side contributor Ethan Lindsey learned the hard way that D&D is a really nerdy thing to do. "Bridge" Sarah Neal: Bridge isn?t part of today?s social scene, well, not today?s mainstream social scene. And you probably wouldn?t associate it with anyone under 50, but B-Side contributor, and bridge freak, Sarah Neal tells us a different story ? about her young, modern, underground scene ? of bridge. "Nerdy Dad" Rene Gutel: All this talk of geek sheik and geek culture got B-Side?s Rene Gutel thinking about the nerdiest guy she knows. So she called him.

Patti Zylstra is a mother of five. Her birthday's coming up, and at her party, she should have 48 candles atop her cake. ...But she'll probably only have 12. And rightly so: Patti is one of the world's 4-million "leaplings." She was born on February 29th, 1960, one of those kooky 366-day epochs known as "leap years." But why do we have leap years, and where do they come from? With help from an astronomer, a science whiz and an ancient Alexandrian with an unpronounceable name, Rebecca Sheir finds out.

Urban development threatens rural communities across America. People who live and work in these beautiful landscapes face some tough decisions about the future. Saving The Sierra's producers traveled California's Sierra Nevada mountain range to explore communities in the midst of struggle against the development pressures closing in on them. In each place, they met unlikely allies who came together to find grassroots solutions for sustaining both the environment and their ways of life. As Roger Adams, Program Director of Wyoming Public Media notes, "The issues examined in Saving the Sierra, while located in the Sierra Mountains of California could as easily be along Wyoming's Wind River Mountain range, in Florida's Everglades, on the shores of the Great Lakes or in any stretch of former farmland now lined with rows of condos." Most rural communities within driving distance of sprawling cities and suburbs face these issues. And most urban dwellers have been to a place just like the communities in these three stories: In a remote mountain valley, both ranchers and environmentalists have begun to use the tool of conservation easements to save wide-open rangelands and preserve the largest wetlands in the mountain range. In a small town north of Lake Tahoe, resort development will blanket the mountain with million-dollar luxury homes. But after a long legal battle, a deal was struck that will provide permanent, on-going funding for affordable housing, public transit, and habitat restoration. The city of Los Angeles was forced to become a leader in water conservation because of a landmark legal ruling that kept them from draining an entire watershed in the pursuit of drinking water. The city now collaborates with environmentalists on restoration and public education programs at Mono Lake. This beautifully designed documentary was produced by 2-time Peabody award winner Catherine Stifter and award-winning community media maker jesikah maria ross. It's available for Earth Day broadcast, but the topic will resonate with listeners any time of year. Saving The Sierra's Dottie award-winning companion website provides photos, podcasts, and a blog. For listeners interested in more information about public participation in conservation, land use, and watershed issues, there's an online toolkit produced by the Sierra Business Council. Project website and storybooth was produced in partnership with The Sierra Fund, the Sierra Nevada Alliance, and the Center for Sierra Nevada Studies at Sierra Community College.

Today, running for the nation?s highest office has become so costly that by the time the November election rolls around total presidential campaign spending will, in all likelihood, easily exceed $1 billion for the first time in history. From Day One of every presidential campaign, how well candidates fare in amassing their war chests is a critical factor in how they are portrayed by the press and in how well they can make their cases to the public. As the amount of money that pours into the process has grown, so has concern about its influence. Reducing the influence of money in politics has been a long, difficult, and continuing struggle since the nineteenth century. Throughout the nation?s history, as soon as new campaign-finance reforms are enacted, inventive political strategists and lawyers dream up ways to circumvent them. This piece focuses on the campaign finance reforms that were enacted after Watergate and explains how we reached the point where, in the current campaign, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are raising untold sums. This piece contains essential knowledge for anyone who's wondered why politicians are allowed to raise and spend money without revealing where their funds are coming from or where they are going.

Secret Asian Woman is a personal exploration of identity and Mixed Race by Independent Producer Dmae Roberts, who has to make a daily decision to reveal her ethnicity. Through her personal story, Dmae charts four decades of a search by multiracial peoples for a name. The politics of calling out racism has changed through the years as has identification. In this half-hour radio documentary, Dmae talks with other Mixed Race Asian women with identities not easily recognized and addresses with humor the complexities involved in even discussing race. This piece perhaps creates some understanding of why people seem confused by Barack Obama's Mixed Race identity.

This updated evergreen documentary, which originally aired on Fresh Air in 1998, and won the Overseas Press Club Award for radio, explores the human side of what many consider the world's most intractable conflict. The documentary, pegged to the 60th anniversary (on May 14-15) of the founding of Israel and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, tells the story through a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the region. It explores how the 1948 war, known to Israelis as the War of Independence, is, to Palestinians, the Nakba, or Catastrophe. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Palestinian Bashir Khairi sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, who arrived in Israel as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, and moved into the same house, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care center for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. The stories of Dalia and Bashir form a personal microcosm of the last sixty years of Israeli-Palestinian history. In a region that seems ever more divided, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and of all that is still possible. The documentary is told almost entirely through the voices of Bashir and Dalia, interwoven with archival tape from the era. There is a new postscript updating the story of Dalia and Bashir. This is also the 10th anniversary of the original broadcast of The Lemon Tree.The documentary was the seed for Tolan's book: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East ( 2006, Bloomsbury), which has won numerous literary nonfiction awards. For more information, go to http://www.sandytolan.com/the-lemon-tree For May tour dates, and possible tie-ins to local stations, go to http://sandytolan.com/the-lemon-tree/readings-and-other-events The second piece in the hour, The Imaginary Village, produced with Melissa Robbins and released through Transom.org, explores an untold aspect of the much-chronicled Israeli-Arab dispute: The longing for land and home by Palestinian refugees. The piece was produced in 2004 and is also evergreen. Together the two pieces form a powerful, reflective, and even hopeful hour on the anniversary of this tragic conflict. The documentary would be ideal to be broadcast throughout May, but as an evergreen piece it can air any time.

Part 5 China - China has succeeded in lifting millions out of poverty and is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving dollar a day poverty. The economic boom has drawn millions of rural migrant workers from all over China into cities such as Beijing in search of a better life. Many now work in the construction sector or as domestic workers, and the money they earn supports their families in poorer provinces. Weng Yueshing earns a basic salary of 800 Yuan a month (about $114) working in an estate agent office in the town of Changping, selling properties he can only dream of affording to rich clients. His salary has to support his parents and jobless younger brother back in the village. Once his family had land and made a reasonable living from farming and work at the state enterprises or factories. But now the Iron Rice Bowl has been smashed and they are faced with a far more insecure life. Along with other villagers, they are now struggling to get compensation for their land, which was sold off for development by a corrupt local official. Mike Wooldridge reports on the current situation in China.

Part 3 India - Veeran is a spirited 75 year old living alone in the back streets of the town of Rohtak, north west of Delhi. In her small, spartan home -the kitchen does not even have a roof- she symbolizes one of India's newest challenges. More and more people are surviving into their seventies and beyond, thanks to overall improvements in health care. But there is a growing problem of destitution among the elderly too. The tradition in India, as in many Asian societies, of younger family members caring for the elderly can no longer be relied on. This is largely because of the impact of rapid urbanisation and increasing employment opportunities for women, the primary carers of older relatives. Mike Wooldridge hears at first-hand how elderly people cope and how they see the changes taking place around them. Those who neglect their relatives could end up before tribunals - but is this what the elderly themselves want? The policy issues involved are crucial. It is predicted that by the middle of the century Asia will be home to almost two-thirds of the world's older people.

Part 1 Kenya - The series starts in Kaimosi, Western Kenya. Poverty was a key issue in the recent elections in Kenya and the unrest that followed. It is here that Mike meets Isaiah, his disabled wife and six grandchildren, who live on the little they can grow on their small plot of land and the paltry seven to ten dollars a month he makes from growing tea. He has debts to pay to the tea company for the fertilizer he needs, and they can only live a day at a time. The corrugated iron roof on their two roomed tin shack is so full of holes, the rain pours in, and one of their grandchildren recently died from malaria because there's no way they can afford to buy a mosquito net on their hand to mouth existence. By contrast, their neighbors Francis and Christine are both able to work, growing and selling maize, mending bicycles and making bricks. Between them they make about two dollars a day, and own one mosquito net. Francis dreams of one day building another house he can rent out to get more income, and has plans for his future. But he complains that the pressure on the land due to the growing population and poor governance means that things are much harder today than they were twenty years ago. Mike Wooldridge visited Kenya before the recent troubles caused by the disputed presidential election.