Health care will be one of the main issues facing Presidential candidates in the 2020 Election, according to Dr. Daniel Skinner, a political scientist and health policy professor at the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University. People are concerned about issues of health costs, access and health care quality, says Dr. Skinner. They also are extremely concerned that health insurance proposals cover pre-existing conditions. He states that there is some confusion among the electo...
Mar 04, 2020•51 min
Long before the Civil War and the Underground Railroad, “free people of color” were instrumental in settling the Northwest Territory as Americans pushed West after the Revolutionary War. Dr. Anna-Lisa Cox, an award-winning historian on the history of racism and race relations in 19th Century America, has discovered hundreds of Black families who came West, owned land, and were instrumental in taming the frontier. “When Detroit was still a Fort, African American pioneers were succeeding and risin...
Feb 26, 2020
Anne Hazlett is the Senior Advisor for Rural Affairs at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the year she has been in that post, she has traveled rural America to assess the drug crisis. After meeting with grassroots elements across the country, she is encouraged that progress is being made in the opioid battle. Overdose deaths are down breaking a long-time upward trend. Hazlett says she is heartened with the efforts generated by small rural communities across the country i...
Feb 12, 2020•22 min
Lisa Friedman, a veteran reporter about climate change and environmental policy, says that covering climate change issues during the Trump administration has been a real challenge. “I often feel like I’m just writing the obituaries for environmental and climate change policies,” she added. Friedman notes that the Trump Administration has spent the bulk of the first three years in office ‘’undoing” the climate change policies and agreements of previous administrations. She says, although currentl...
Feb 05, 2020•19 min
Three cases are pending before the Supreme Court of the United States that could have significant impacts on the employment rights of LGBT workers. Decisions will be issued before the Court recesses at the end of June. These cases will determine if the 1964 Civil Rights Act prevents employment discrimination based upon sexual orientation and transgender status. Lydia Lavelle, politician and law professor, breaks down these cases in plain English and gives us some context for these monumental dec...
Jan 29, 2020•36 min
We often hear stories about drug addiction and the opioid crisis from physicians, policy makers or people involved with the legal system. However, we rarely hear from people directly impacted by the epidemic. That’s not the case in the book “Not Far from Me: Stories of Opioids and Ohio” co-edited by Dr. Daniel Skinner and Dr. Berkeley Franz from the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University. They collected some 50 personal stories from people living in 20 Ohio counties. The sto...
Jan 15, 2020•41 min
The Friday killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani by an American drone has thrown the Middle East into chaos. Philip Ewing, the former national security editor for National Public Radio (NPR) and currently an election security editor on the NPR Washington Desk, sorts out some of the possible short term and long term consequences of this action. Even after Iranian officials have pledged “revenge” for the death of their national hero, United States President Donald Trump continues to threate...
Jan 08, 2020•41 min
Abdul Williams has had a hot decade of screenwriting for both the big screen and television. Over the past 10 years, he has written a feature film and two award winning series for the Black Entertainment Network (BET). In 2010, his first feature film “Lottery Ticket” was released and in 2017 and 2018 BET released major series – “The New Edition Story” in 2017 and “The Bobby Brown Story” in 2018. Both are winners of NAACP awards. Williams was the recipient of NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Wri...
Dec 11, 2019•36 min
Since 2002, Rachel Dissell has been a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. During her 17 years at the newspaper, she has covered trauma and trauma victims and one major tragedy after another. Her career has focused on complex and emotionally draining issues such as the impact of violence on women and children, life-changing environmental topics, corruption and several instances of social injustice. Her reporting has instigated major policy changes, new governmental procedures, and legislatio...
Nov 20, 2019•43 min
The concept of using foreign correspondents housed in other countries to help inform the American public of the news is a concept that goes back to Colonial days. Yet today, news organizations have drastically cut back on full-time correspondents abroad opting instead for a smaller reporting corps and the use of free-lancers and citizen journalists. So says long-time journalists and authors John Maxwell Hamilton and Peter Copeland as they discussed the history, present and future of using foreig...
Nov 13, 2019•48 min
Freelance journalist Tania Rashid says covering human tragedies can take a psychological toll on reporters who face human misery day-after-day. She says it is immensely distressing to see people suffering, through no fault of their own, simply because of their race or ethnicity. Rashid has spent a great amount of time covering the Rohingya refugee crisis as the Rohingya people flee Myanmar into Bangladesh to form the world’s largest refugee camp. Her reporting of the trials, tribulations and tur...
Oct 30, 2019•41 min
Author and election analyst Kyle Kondik, from the University of Virginia Center for Politics, says the latest poll results are tipping toward favoring impeachment because voters can more easily grasp the issues comprising the Ukrainian controversy. The elements surrounding President Trump asking Ukrainian officials to provide political dirt on his potential Democratic opponent Joe Biden are much easier for voters to understand than the muddled and legalistic report from Special Counsel Robert Mu...
Oct 16, 2019•39 min
President Donald Trump’s newly announced withdrawal of American troops from Northeastern Syria opens the door for Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies in the region, says Dr. Nukhet Sandal, Chair of the Political Science Department at Ohio University. The potential of Turkey attacking an unprotected U.S. ally is dangerous at many levels, according to Dr. Sandal. Primarily it sends a message to other U.S. allies that we will not stand behind them during times of international upheaval. We wi...
Oct 09, 2019•36 min
Chris Thile is an acclaimed musician and songwriter, as well as the host of American Public Media’s nationally syndicated live, weekly variety show “Live From Here.” WOUB’s Emily Votaw speaks with Thile about the creative process behind his work for “Live From Here”, what it’s like to host a live radio show in 2019, and what he enjoys about performing on college campuses. Besides being a solo artist, Thile was one of the co-founders of the Grammy-winning acoustic trio, Nickel Creek, and is a mem...
Oct 04, 2019•11 min
College and university student enrollments are in a downward spiral because of multiple factors including parents and students questioning the value of a college education, according to Dr. Richard Vedder, author, historian, columnist, and emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University. Demographically, there is a decline in the number of traditional college eligible students born during a period of low fertility in America and the numbers are expected to get worse. The number of traditional...
Sep 11, 2019•44 min
Ohio University researchers and students are fighting to prevent the dreaded Chagas disease in Ecuador and its spread to the United States. Each year, according to the World Health Organization, over 8 million people are infected with Chagas disease mostly in Latin America. However, nearly 300,000 people in the United States are also infected. The disease kills nearly 20,000 people each year. Additionally, some 15,000 babies are born infected with the disease. Chagas disease is spread by a paras...
Sep 04, 2019•44 min
Amy Nordrum, a veteran science journalist, feels that fact-based science reporting helps an audience navigate through new technologies and new discoveries that will impact people’s daily lives. Nordrum currently is news editor of “IEEE Spectrum,” an award-winning technology and engineering magazine based in New York City. She also is a frequent guest on Public Radio’s “Science Friday” with Ira Flatow talking about a wide-range of science topics. Nordrum writes and edits news stories about comput...
Jun 26, 2019•37 min
Most entertainment news is generated on the east or west coasts and not in the heartland. Yet, John Kiesewetter spent 40 professional years at the “Cincinnati Enquirer” and three decades as its “Television Critic” writing everything from local criticism to major features. After his job was eliminated at the Enquirer, his career continues to this day. He is now the TV/Media reporter for Cincinnati Public Radio, WVXU FM and wvxu.org. There he writes an almost daily blog, and contributes on-air int...
Jun 19, 2019•49 min
Science reporting and writing has become the mainstay of award-winning journalist Maria Gallucci. She feels that factual writing about the environment and in-depth science reporting is important and necessary in a world clouded with concepts of “alternative facts” and “spin.” Gallucci is a bi-lingual reporter who has had global experience with an emphasis on reporting about energy and the environment. One of her specialties is reporting about the environmental footprint and issues facing the con...
Jun 12, 2019•33 min
Throughout his 31 years as an astronomer on the faculty at Harvard Dr. Robert Kirshner has been a leader in using supernovae to map the universe and chart the universe’s expansion over time. Some of his discoveries gave him Science Magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year Award in 1998 and led to a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. He is one of the leaders in the concept that the universe is not only expanding but it is doing so today at an accelerated rate compared to years past. This expansion is tha...
Jun 05, 2019•43 min
As storms, tornadoes and flooding ravage the Midwest and The Plains and as a new and scary hurricane season approaches, more and more people rely on The Weather Channel and the Weather Group to provide them live coverage of major weather events. We count on up-to-the-minute, live weather storytelling to keep us abreast of the latest developments and whether we, or our friends and relatives, are in harm’s way. Most of us who watch the Weather Channel during times of live weather coverage rely on ...
May 29, 2019•34 min
“The Wall: Unknown stories. Unintended consequences.” is a Pulitzer Prize winning multimedia series from USA Today Network and Gannett that delves into life along the southern border of the United States – the same border where President Donald Trump proposes to build his wall. “The explanatory report, led by then Arizona Republic’s vice president of news and editor Nicole Carroll, recently named editor in chief of USA TODAY, provides an in-depth look at the border through immersive technology, ...
May 22, 2019•35 min
A new podcast will launch on Memorial Day – “Defining Moments Podcast: Conversations about Health and Healing. The podcast is created by Dr. Lynn Harter and is produced by WOUB Public Media. Dr. Harter is a Communication Studies professor, Emmy-winning documentarian, storyteller and the co- founder of the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. Her academic specialty is narrative theory and storytelling practice and...
May 15, 2019•37 min
Listening is the key to important and difficult conversations, according to Al Letson the current host of “Reveal,” the first hour-long public broadcasting show and podcast produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). He claims with the explosion of social media and cable news shows that Americans have lost the ability to listen to each other. We talk past one another instead of with one another. He also claims that sometimes the best way to deal with a...
May 08, 2019•20 min
Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, a molecular biologist, is president of the Royal Society in Great Britain, the same organization formerly headed by Sir Isaac Newton and Ernest Rutherford. He feels it is the duty and obligation of top scientists to explain, in understandable terms, their discoveries to the general population to extend understanding and knowledge. Dr. Ramakrishnan, in this Spectrum Podcast, explains ribosomes. They exist in every living cell to synthesize proteins. For his work in ribosom...
May 01, 2019•36 min
Despite covering major stories in over 100 countries, award winning photojournalist Jeff Widener is best known for his iconic photograph of a lone Chinese protester standing in front of a column of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing, China in 1989. The ‘Tank Man’ photo won Widener worldwide acclaim. He was a Pulitzer Finalist and his photo was picked by America Online as one of the top 10 photos of all time. More interesting than the photo, however, is the backstory of how Wide...
Apr 24, 2019•37 min
Kashmir is a region located high in the Himalayan Mountains between two historical adversaries: India and Pakistan. It was partitioned in the 1940’s at the end of British colonial rule but it remains a point of unrest even today. Over the past decades, Kashmir has been a battleground for skirmishes and armed conflict between the two nuclear powers of India and Pakistan. It is part of the geo-political tug of war between these two powers. However, many groups within Kashmir are pushing for indepe...
Apr 17, 2019•38 min
Tania Rashid views storytelling focusing on human rights and women’s issues through her own personal lens of experiences. Her life encounters have molded her into the journalist and filmmaker that she is – tracking down stories of the enslaved, the impoverished, and women who are abused, raped, trafficked and discounted by various societies. As a young girl, Rashid grew up in Saudi Arabia where she witnessed her Bangladesh mother be deprived of even the most basic rights – such as the right to d...
Apr 10, 2019•33 min
Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff believes in the power of stories and storytelling to build communities and to bridge cultural and religious divides in our country. Zunikoff is a storyteller, poet, educator, facilitator and coach and is the founder and director of The Golden Door: Storytelling for Social Justice. “It is an organization that brings storytellers and facilitators to schools to coach teachers and to educate students and build safe, encouraging classroom communities,” says Zunikoff. For almo...
Apr 03, 2019•33 min
A group of reporters at The Cincinnati Enquirer worked together to create a multimedia series that would tell the real story of one week of the heroin epidemic in the Cincinnati metropolitan area from many different aspects. To tackle this voluminous task, it would take the commitment of the whole newsroom, says Dan Horn the leader of this reporting and photographic entourage. Once the group got approval from editors for this project, they launched into a massive effort to look at the heroin epi...
Mar 27, 2019•39 min
