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Playlist: To Audition

Compiled By: Todd Mundt

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Action Speaks! - What Now? 1937: The Flint, Michigan United Auto Workers Sit-In

From Action Speaks Radio | 58:58

Action Speaks!-Underappreciated Dates that Changed America presents What Now? a series of 8 one hour programs suitable for individual or serial airplay.

Banks, Auto and Insurance Companies bailed out, lay-offs abound and yet...Where's the anger of the past? The Auto Industry, unions and the drive to protest; has it stalled and are union's pot-holes on the road to recovery?

Flintsit-in_small Action Speaks! is a series of contemporary topic-driven panel discussions framed by the theme "Underappreciated Dates that Changed America."  Each panel draws three or four experts, academics, creatives, and other relevant guests into an open-ended discussion with the larger community in the casual atmosphere of the downtown Providence arts organization, AS220.  Action Speaks! has partnered with RI's NPR station, WRNI, since 1995, and holds the honor of being been the first locally generated show aired on the station. Now you can tune in nationwide to Action Speaks! to hear host Marc Levitt and an endless parade of perceptive intellects and insightful audience members!

The spring season of Action Speaks: Underappreciated Dates that Changed America is organized around the theme ‘What Now?’ With our country mired in its worst economic collapse since the great depression, history can be a guide for what actions our nation should or shouldn’t take to provide for its citizens and whether or not it is time to re-set our priorities.

Featured Guests:

Richard McIntyre, PhD is Professor of Economics and Director of the University of Rhode Island Honors Program at The University of Rhode Island. He has written and published extensively in the fields of international and comparative political economy and labor relations. McIntyre is the author Are Worker Rights Human Rights? (University of Michigan Press, 2008) and editor of the New Political Economy book series for Routledge Press.

Travis James Rowley is a conservative republican and native of the state recently named the most democratic in our nation, Rhode Island (Gallup, 2009). A 2002 Brown University graduate, Rowley co-founded the Foundation for Intellectual Diversity at Brown University, an independent 501(c)3 committed to the promotion of underrepresented ideas, beliefs, and perspectives through lectures, conferences, publications, and academic programs at academic institutions in southern New England, including his liberal alma mater. Rowley is the chair if the RI Young Republicans and works as an independent financial advisor for New York Life Insurance Company. Rowley is the author of Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative (BookSurge Publishing, 2006) and a frequent contributor to the Providence Journal.

Rachel Miller serves as the Rhode Island director of Jobs with Justice, a strongly pro-union non-profit organization with a national presence of around 40 local coalitions. These coalitions bring together labor unions, community organizations, religious groups, and student groups in their fight for economic and social progress in workplaces and communities. Jobs with Justice works on the direct concerns of the labor movement, such as first contract campaigns and organizing, as well as broader economic issues, including affordable housing and health care.

 


 

Action Speaks!, a co-production of AS220 and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, would like to thank The National Endowment for the Humanities who provided major funding to our program; our Media Partners: WRNI, RIPBS & the Providence Phoenix.  Thanks to The What Cheer? Brigade for our intro music.

Find out more at http://actionspeaksradio.org/ 


Contact the production crew at actionspeaksradio@as220.org with any feedback, ideas for future shows for press info or to request a personalized ID. You can also write to us at Action Speaks! c/o AS220 Main Office, 95 Mathewson St. Dreyfus #204, Providence RI 02903. If you are a radio station and wish to receive a CD of Action Speaks! please visit Creative PR's website: creativepr.org to make a request or contact them at info@creativepr.org / 1-888-233-5650. After December 2009, please contact actionspeaksradio@as220.org with any CD requests.


Ice- Part One

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | 54:00

For more than four billion years, ever since comets first crashed into the Earth, ice has been inextricably linked to life on this planet. From cold-hardy microbes to freeze-resistant frogs, nature has evolved many tricks for survival. Even human beings have learned to adapt to the challenges – and opportunities – of life with ice. Now, as glaciers shrink and ice vanishes from the polar seas, Richard Longley takes us back to our icy roots, rekindling wonder for this alluring frozen water.

In_praise_of_ice_small Episode 1 - Ice and the Evolution of Life on Planet Earth

In the beginning, there was no ice and certainly no life on the Earth. This newborn planet was churning and searing hot, far too hot for ice, or even liquid water. But as the dust settled, and the heat began to subside, ice arrived on earth with a bang!

The oldest relics of life on earth, aside from some traces of chemicals, are fossils of single cell microbes. They’re found locked in rock from the Pre Cambrian Era, dating back more than three billion years. Today, in the Arctic and Antarctica, the coldest places on earth, microbes that look very similar flourish in those icy worlds.

The Cyanobacteria are especially dazzling. “Cyano” means blue in Greek which is why they’re are also known as Blue Green Algae.

About 2 million years ago, The Pleistocene Era was about to begin and the Earth was looking much more like the world we live in today. There were flowers, grasses and trees, reptiles, and fish, insects, birds and mammals, including apes who were the ancestors of us Humans.

These primates lived in Africa, as Hunter Gatherers. But they weren’t the only apes in Africa at that time. There were also refugees from Europe and Asia who’d escaped the Ice Sheets that were creeping South. And it wasn’t only Eurasia that was covered in ice. Much of North America was too.

When we think about that period today, we call it The Ice Age. Towards the end of the Ice Age, some of our tropical ancestors moved into Europe, and into the cold. They had the brains to survive - and thrive - in hostile environments their bodies weren’t really built for.

Around 25,000 years ago, the last big freeze-up of the Pleistocene Ice Age was drawing to a close. The Earth was heading towards the warm Interglacial Period that we’re living in today. Eventually, even the Americas were occupied by Humans.

Ice- Part Two

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | 54:00

For more than four billion years, ever since comets first crashed into the Earth, ice has been inextricably linked to life on this planet. From cold-hardy microbes to freeze-resistant frogs, nature has evolved many tricks for survival. Even human beings have learned to adapt to the challenges – and opportunities – of life with ice. Now, as glaciers shrink and ice vanishes from the polar seas, Richard Longley takes us back to our icy roots, rekindling wonder for this alluring frozen water.

Martha-l-black_small Episode 2 - The Opportunities & Challenges of Life With Ice in the 21st Century

Ice is beautiful and complex, which makes it ideal for the different games we play on it. People who know ice, and work with it, can exploit that complexity and tailor the properties of ice to meet their exacting standards.

In sports arenas, unlike the great outdoors, the climate can be adjusted and controlled. This allows ice-makers to achieve their goal: making perfect ice for skaters, curlers and hockey players.

The art of ice-making, is based on science. Water normally freezes at zero degrees Celsius. In this new solid state, we call it “ice”. But ice is not entirely solid. There’s always a little layer of liquid water, floating on it. Water also expands as it freezes, with enough force to burst pipes and even rocks when it turns to ice. And because these molecules are less crowded (or less densely packed), ice is also lighter than water. This is why icebergs can float on water.

The Martha L. Black is a Canadian Coastguard Icebreaker that clears shipping lanes on the St. Lawrence River, just past Quebec City. Navigation is tight here. Ships, ferries and bridges loom out of the fog, and the river
is paved with ice. It could easily puncture the hull of an ordinary vessel.

Ice is magical and romantic, even when it torments us! No matter who we are, or where we live in this country, we all learn to live with ice. Assuming of course there’s ice around for us to live “with”…

These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t heard that ice is melting around the Poles. But it turns out, there’s more to it than sea ice. Glaciers are also moving, at unprecedented speeds.
Now that it’s melting and threatens to vanish from our world, the new frontier is in outer space, which ironically is where ice came from in the first place, before it even got to earth. And so it goes…

Amazing Grace

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | 50:34

The story of "Amazing Grace"- a piece of music that has an extraordinary impact on American history.

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Author Steve Turner's book "Amazing Grace: the story of an America's Favourite Song" unearths the fascinating background of a piece of music that's had an extraordinary impact. It's been a hymn of redemption. A song of comfort. A gospel favourite, a bagpipe standard, a folksong, a civil rights anthem, the most popular song for funerals. It's the song people turned to after 9/11, Columbine, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Challenger tragedy. There are at least 450 recorded versions of it - everyone from Elvis to Mahalia Jackson. The English man who created the lyrics, John Newton, the "wretch" of the first verse, had an unbelievable life. And yet its roots are more American than anything else.

Steve Turner has written about Marvin Gaye, The Beatles, Jack Kerouac, and Van Morrison. He's published his articles about music in Rolling Stone and The London Times.

America Up Close

From Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | 58:51

The harsh realities of America's globalized economy, as seen by the country's neighbor to the north.

Superiorne_small While economists and politicians alike tout "thinking global" as a win-win situation, the USA's next-door neighbors to the north examine real life for working Americans in the new global economy. Manufacturing jobs lost: In North Carolina, for example, the textile industry is bleeding jobs at the rate of 17 every hour. In the heartland of Nebraska, dying family farms, and sick small towns whose local businesses can't compete with Wal-Mart, leave a legacy of rural poverty and crystal meth. And what of the industry that was supposed to take the place of those erstwhile economic mainstays – the so-called knowledge sector? It's being outsourced to Asia faster than you can click on a web link. Produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "America Up Close" puts America's vaunted economic supremacy under the microscope, presenting a warts-and-all portrait of the country as seen by its closest neighbor.

B-Side: Lost and Found

From B-Side Radio | Part of the B-Side: Cure for the Weekend Blues series | 59:28

On this edition of B-Side, Tamara Keith and Charla Bear get lost on purpose. They are dropped off in a mysterious suburban location and have to find their way back to downtown Washington, DC. Think of it as a low budget version of one of those survival shows on cable TV.

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Lost Streams: Kristin Espeland
Some things seem easy to lose.  But a stream?  Reporter Kristin Espeland has this story from Appalachia, where residents have seen hundreds of miles of streams disappear under piles of coal mining waste.

 

Hearing Loss: Judah Leblang
Judah had a life-long connection to the deaf.  Then he lost most of the hearing in his left ear.

 

Lost Collection: Andrew Walsh
Some things get lost and you barely miss them. But when music reviewer Dave Segal lost a huge chunk of his record collection, he lost part of himself.  

 

Dear Diary, Where Are You?: Anna Sachs
A lot of girls when they reach a certain age start keeping a journal, a diary. Anna Sachs had a diary when she was younger and she spoke to Tamara about how she discovered she had lost it.

 

Finding People: Dan Bobkoff
Have you ever had a cool experience of running into someone in an unexpected place?  Dan Bobkoff says it happens to him all the time in the most unlikely of places. New York City.  He calculates the odds of these chance encounters.

 

Finding Yourself, an Interview with Adam Roberts
Today Adam Roberts is a food blogger, the man behind the incredibly popular Amateur Gourmet. He has a show on Food 2 and wrote the book: The Amateur Gourmet: How to Shop, Chop, and Table Hop Like a Pro. But there was a time, not that long ago when he was lost…not physically, but metaphysically in Law School. He talks about how he changed his career and found his true calling.

 

Addicted to Junk: Mwende Hahesy
You can get a real thrill from an unexpected find.  Some people get hooked on that feeling and look in unexpected places to keep it going. Reporter Mwende Hahesy introduces us to a man who finds his thrills at storage unit auctions.

 

The Wren’s Nest: Katy Shrout
Our last story is about the author of the Brer Rabbit book. You might know the story from the Disney movie Song of the South…and the ride at Disneyland Splash Mountain. Well, it has quite a back story complicated by issues of race. Katy Shrout has the story of the great great grandson of the author and what he’s found as he explores his family’s legacy.

Afghanistan's Other War

From Vermont Public | 28:30

A half-hour documentary that examines the challenging counter-insurgency mission of the National Guard and how the Guard is training the Afghan Police.

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The war in Afghanistan is no longer solely a fight against insurgents. In fact, training the country's security forces and building relationships are now central to the U.S. military's mission in Afghanistan and critical to any plans to withdraw troops. That means soldiers have had to adjust to a new role where the tools are words, not weapons.  Vermont Public Radio Reporter Steve Zind spent three weeks with National Guard soldiers in Afghanistan this fall. In this documentary, he takes us on patrols and to police training sessions to learn how soldiers carried out their complex mission and how they view the prospects for success.