A new limited podcast series has been released by WOUB Public Media. “Who Lies Beneath: The Asylum” tells the true-life stories of people who were buried in numbered graves at an abandoned mental health facility. Host and creator Cheri Russo describes to Spectrum host Tom Hodson how she and a team of experts identified those buried in certain graves and fleshed out their lives through the help of voice actors. It is her hope to bring dignity and respect to those who were abandoned by their famil...
Jul 28, 2022•37 min
A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted after the killing of 10 blacks in Buffalo in a racially motivated shooting spree indicates that 75 percent of Black Americans “are worried that they or someone they love will be attacked because of their race.” In addition, after the attack, “only 10 percent think the problem of racism will improve in their lifetime, while a 53 majority think it will get worse.” The Poll also found that a “70 percent majority of Black Americans think at least half of...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 15 min
The terms “comic storytelling” and “journalism” may sound a bit discordant to the average news consumer. Yet, “comic storytelling in journalism” is rapidly becoming a growing trend to get younger eyes on the news products of mainstream media. It is the marriage of drawn images and text to tell serious stories in a series of drawn panels similar to a comic strip. Hannah Good and Rachel Orr of the “Washington Post” are strong proponents and practitioners of this form of journalistic storytelling. ...
May 12, 2022•45 min
Veteran comedian Lewis Black is on the road with his “Off the Rails” tour. While traveling, he took some time to have a conversation with Spectrum’s guest host Emily Votaw of WOUB. They talked about his philosophy of comedy, the importance of education in our society and his work with the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum. Even though he is known for his outrageous ranting humor on stage, he also professed some cautious optimism that the human condition can improve. He will perform in Cincinnati ...
Apr 20, 2022•16 min
Given the current controversy over the incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars, WOUB’s Spectrum Podcast wanted to get the perspectives on the issue from two notable black women. Recently, we met with journalist, scholar, and author Dr. Janice Collins and path-setting jurist Judge Gayle Williams Byers for their perspectives They examine the issue from multiple aspects including race. The two women have a wide-ranging conversation on topics from role modeling to the impact on the ...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Ken Burns has been a documentary filmmaker for 45 years and his latest series is a four-hour PBS special about Benjamin Franklin airing on PBS Stations April 4 and 5. He discusses, with guest host Emily Votaw, the complexities and brilliance of Franklin and the many different venues in which he excelled. Some call Franklin a genius of his age. Burns describes how he traverses the complexities and nuances of history for his films and how he ferrets out stories and facts previously untold. Burns a...
Apr 04, 2022•27 min
Policymakers, leaders, and corporate heads need to look at the world through a “population lens,” according to Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, an international expert on political demography and demographic security. Sciubba is an author, associate professor at Rhodes College and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Her latest book, is “8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape the World.” In it, she differentiates between the 20th Century which was a century of popul...
Mar 25, 2022•47 min
Since the Supreme Court of the United States eliminated much of the 1960’s Voting Rights Act in 2013, many states have added restrictions to voting and some are considered draconian. This is especially true after the 2020 Presidential Election and former President Donald Trump and his followers spreading theories that he really won the election, according to Dr. Katherine Jellison, an award-winning history professor and author at Ohio University. Most changes impact women more than men, says Dr....
Mar 16, 2022•52 min
While other news media are fading in popularity, local television news programming is gaining popularity across the country. Newspaper staffs have been gutted and cable and network news have been staggering but local news is hiring more people and is becoming more popular than ever, according to Lesley Van Ness, Director of Talent Acquisition at Gray Television. Gray television currently owns 113 local television stations across the country including WOIO Television in Cleveland, OH. Ian Rubin, ...
Mar 01, 2022•51 min
In just over a decade, America will face a shortage of up to 124,000 doctors and 200,000 nurses will need to be hired each year, according to the American Hospital Association. Overall, there will be a 3.2 million shortage of healthcare workers by 2026, according to a white paper presented by https://www.mercer.com/. Some of this is attributable to “COVID burnout” by healthcare workers but we also are facing a crisis of both our population getting older and healthcare workers quitting the profes...
Feb 22, 2022•37 min
Author, career counselor, podcast host and executive coach Beverly Jones explains to WOUB’s Spectrum Podcast how we can chase away the “Winter Blues” and shake ourselves out of those “February Doldrums” at work. She gives us tips on how we can improve of emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing during these dull days of isolation from weather and the COVID pandemic. She outlines concrete steps for us to improve your purpose, your people skills, and your performance. Jones is a strong propone...
Feb 02, 2022•44 min
Dr. Janice Marie Collins is an author, journalist, documentarian, educator, and humanitarian. Her most recent book is Teaching Without Borders: Creating Equity, and Inclusion with Active Centralized Empowerment (ACE). She also authored, 250 Years and Still a Slave. Dr. Collins says that people, and especially students, can feel marginalized, trapped, and enslaved through lack of diversity, inclusion, and empowerment. She is a strong advocate for giving students power and opportunities in the cla...
Jan 19, 2022•56 min
Author, food journalist, content creator and social media celebrity Katie Quinn just finished her first personal book tour in the United States to promote her book “Cheese, Wine, and Bread: Discovering The Magic of Fermentation in England, Italy, and France.” She recently spent time in Manhattan and made some personal appearances in the Midwest before heading back to her current home in Italy. This was her first time to promote her book in person in America since it was published by Harper Colli...
Dec 28, 2021•54 min
Earl Johnson trained as a pastor at Yale’s Divinity School, worked for anthropologist Margaret Mead in African and observed firsthand violence in London and in Jerusalem. He then returned to a church in Columbia, Missouri but was restless. He then made major life decisions. He took a sabbatical from his church, came out as a gay man, and moved to New York City. While in New York, he was discovered by agents, and he became a world-renowned model for high-end men’s clothing designers in Europe and...
Dec 22, 2021•55 min
Joe Nuxhall was a famous pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds. He also was a highly popular broadcaster for the club for over four decades. Radio fans loved him for his colorful stories about his career and the game he loved. He was the youngest pitcher ever to pitch in a major league game at age 15, toiled in the minors, and then became a stalwart part of the Reds’ pitching staff. Later, he remained batting practice pitcher while holding his place in the broadcast booth. All the time he was collecti...
Dec 14, 2021•44 min
Former President Donald Trump’s power over the GOP is not waning, instead it is growing stronger. Trump’s influence surges as Democrats and President Joseph Biden tries to find ways to push their agenda through a gridlocked Congress, according to Philip Elliott, Washington correspondent for TIME and author of TIME’s weekday newsletter “The D.C. Brief”. Elliott tries to unravel some of the current Congressional complexities and make them understandable. He also charts what we might expect before ...
Dec 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Judge Gayle Williams Byers, a black female judge in Northeastern Ohio, and Tom Hodson, Spectrum host and legal analyst, break down the impact of the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittals on the judicial system, on the black community and on the future of peaceful protest. While both respect the sanctity of the jury’s verdicts, they highlight advantages in the trial process that were given to Rittenhouse. They discuss the judge’s behavior and some of his rulings along with the inherent racism and white pri...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 5 min
While many of us have been mired in malaise about our careers during the COVID-19 pandemic, executive coach, career consultant and author Beverly Jones tells us how we can “Find our Happy at Work” in a new book that helps us get unstuck, move past boredom, and discover fulfillment. Jones, in short pithy chapters, lays out 50 ways to turn your tedium into active steps to take control of your emotions and actions and to make work much more enjoyable and less dreary. She says if you hate your job a...
Oct 29, 2021•40 min
Carolyn Bailey Lewis is a woman who has been determined to always push herself and to set new standards throughout her career. She has been a pioneer in her field, but it hasn’t been easy. While forging her path, as a black woman, Carolyn has had to fight battles against racism, bigotry, and prejudice as well as sexism. Coming from the small town of Bluefield, West Virginia where she attended segregated schools and lived in a segregated neighborhood, Carolyn became the only black woman in her cl...
Oct 18, 2021•51 min
The Republican Party has morphed from one in chaos shortly after President Joseph Biden’s inauguration to one that is now firmly under the thumb of former President Donald J. Trump. Loose ends are being roped in by the former President and the GOP is now firmly in Trump’s hands, says Philip Elliott, Time Washington correspondent and author of TIME’s weekday newsletter “D.C. Brief.” Elliott believes that efforts by Trump devotees to limit voting access in many states, along with redistricting of ...
Jun 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Katie Quinn, sometimes known as qkatie to her millions of follows, has written a new book that was over 3.5 years in the making: “Cheese, Wine and Bread: Discovering the Magic of Fermentation in England, Italy and France.” She studied the role of fermentation in the trio of staples of life: cheese, wine and bread as she worked in and studied all three industries in three different countries. The book is a combination of personal stories, personality profiles of people she encountered and recipes...
May 24, 2021•51 min
Dr. George Wood is an educator, a former school administrator, a writer, and a podcaster. He also is a resident of small town Amesville, Ohio. Just before the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, he retired from a lifetime in education, and he found himself restless and looking for something meaningful to do. After conversations with his wife, he took off on a two-month 7,500 trip through the Midwest. He started his journey as a trout fishing trip but ended up spending much more time talking to p...
May 04, 2021•37 min
As the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s death comes to its conclusion this week, against a backdrop of additional police violence, many African Americans still feel the trauma of police violence. While the trial of police officer Chauvin has moved forward, at least, two other people of color have been gunned down by police. Duante Wright in Minnesota and a 13 year-old Latino Adam Toledo in Chicago. The other cases amp up even higher the desires in the Black Community for guilty verdicts...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Conspiracy theories have grown and continue to multiply as newsrooms downsize and more people rely on social media to fill the void. This is the belief of Dr. Michael Bugeja, distinguished professor of liberal arts and sciences at the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. “Journalism is not dead but on life support. Social media dominates civic, political and familial debate, offering snap judgments to affinity groups,” Bugeja adds in a recent commentary. Buge...
Mar 30, 2021•49 min
The Biden Administration has targeted climate change as a priority in its first 100 days. It is unraveling four years of President Donald Trump’s deregulation and laisse-faire attitude toward the environment. Rarely have we seen so much change so quickly, says Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko, professor and associate dean at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Policy at Ohio University and senior advisor on “climate issues” at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. President Joseph Biden has made s...
Mar 23, 2021•44 min
Eunice Hunton Carter and her family were “unsung heroes” in social justice movements in the early 20th Century and now her life is brought into focus by a new biography, “Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice,” published by the Fordham University Press. Co-Author and noted biographer Marilyn Greenwald highlights the many accomplishments of Carter. She was the first black woman prosecutor in the Manhattan Prosecutors Office in the 1930’s. While trying her cases, Carter establi...
Feb 22, 2021•53 min
The Dave Thomas Foundation recently celebrated its 10,000th adoption of a child from foster care and the milestone was reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Foundation was created by Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas as an independent non-profit foundation separate from the restaurant chain, says Rita Soronen, CEO of the Foundation. The Foundation focuses on the adoption of children who have been in foster care the longest and those who might soon turn 18 without being adopted by a family. It work...
Feb 16, 2021•35 min
After President Joseph Biden’s inauguration and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, the Republican Party has undergone a struggle to chart the future of the party. Will it still be the party of Trump and his zealous base or will more traditionally mainstream Republicans take the party’s helm? Will Trump’s appeal fade? Daily news unfolds showing a chess game for control between groups led by GOP Senate stalwart Mitch McConnell and more radical members of his party in the House and the Senate ...
Feb 04, 2021•59 min
As of Jan. 13, the Athens County Ohio Health Department has vaccinated only 438 of its approximately 65,000 population for a frustratingly low .67 percent. Meanwhile, the county remains one of the counties in Ohio that is in greatest danger of COVID-19 spread. Athens County is a rural Appalachian County in Southeast Ohio that also houses a major state university – Ohio University. Athens County is indicative of many rural counties across America. The Spectrum Podcast decided to look deeper into ...
Jan 13, 2021•59 min
Too often African American women and girls are targets of violence and abuse in America. The abuse is caused by interactions with law enforcement as well as domestic abuse, says Dr. Aretina Hamilton, a human geographer, scholar, and author. She says Black women live in a patriarchal environment where they are, unfortunately, valued less than even Black men. As a result, Dr. Hamilton says that too often Black women and girls are considered “disposable” in society and are not valued in the caste s...
Nov 17, 2020•47 min
