Scene on Radio

This season we've explored how the news media are failing the American people and our democracy. In this concluding episode, we look at solutions -- how to help good journalism survive, and how we might imagine a better, more democratic media system.  By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Les High and Victor Pickard.  Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arle...

Many people in the United States and around the world view the rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement as a grave crisis. At the same time, most Americans are angry with the news media. What role did the media play in making a President Trump possible?  By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Nicole Hemmer, Dan Froomkin, Michael Tomasky, and others. Story editor: Diane...

Ever thought about whether America's overwhelmingly corporate, for-profit news system is working as it should? It didn't have to be this way. In the 20th century, reformers fought for a more democratic and more accountable news media in the United States. They won victories, including the creation of the nation's public broadcasting system. What happened next?  By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjer...

The early history of the news in Europe and the U.S. offers surprising lessons about the best traditions of journalism, and about the news we need in our own time of crisis.  By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Pascal Verhoest, Rachael King, Joseph Adelman, and Victor Pickard.  Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol...

Scene on Radio requests and receives an independent analysis of its own journalistic biases. We then return the favor, examining the examiner. The exercise leads to fresh insights into the muddled ways people often think about bias. By John Biewen, with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interview with Vanessa Otero. Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna P...

For generations, many on the political right have claimed that major news media in the U.S. have a pronounced liberal bias. Is it true? And why does it matter? We take a fresh look.  By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Michael Massing, Peter Beinart, and William Youmans.  Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer, Arlene Arevalo. Fact-checking by Anna Pujol Mazzin...

Many people know that the journalism industry is struggling financially, especially at the local level. But the disastrous depths of that crisis, and its impact on communities and American democracy, are not as well understood. We visit a news desert in southeastern North Carolina.  By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews: Penny Muse Abernathy, Mark DeLap, Angelica Das, and oth...

Americans have access to a flood of news, and yet we're in a deep information crisis. What's really wrong with the news media? Is it what we think it is? And what about news consumers? Most of us don't trust the media, but can we trust ourselves?  By John Biewen with co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews: Ethan Jordan, Dannagal Young, and others.  Story editor: Diane Hodson. Assistant Producer,...

Everybody's mad at the media. And Americans seem helpless to solve our problems, in large part because we have no shared narrative and few shared facts. A well informed citizenry we are not. In Scene on Radio's 8th season, producer and host John Biewen and returning co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika will examine the deep crises facing American journalism, how things got this way, and what it might mean...

We're happy to share this episode from award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt, co-host of Scene on Radio's 5th season: The Repair. Amy returns with a new season of Drilled, her podcast about the deception, disinformation, and power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach. Drilled: Carbon Cowboys exposes how Midwest Republican corn ethanol mogul Bruce Rastetter sold "sustain...

Host John Biewen reads an essay from his newsletter, Keeping ScOR. After a visit to his hometown, Mankato, Minnesota -- the subject of the Scene on Radio episode, "Little War on the Prairie" -- John reflects on the changes there and America's latest assault on history.  Music by goodnight, Lucas.  To read see the Keeping ScOR newsletter archive or subscribe to receive it, go here: https://buttondo...

A rebroadcast of a Scene on Radio episode, eighty years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.   The word “Hiroshima” may bring to mind a black-and-white image of a mushroom cloud. It’s easy to forget that it’s an actual city with a million people and a popular baseball team. What did the cataclysm of 1945 mean in the place where it happened, to the peopl...

Host John Biewen reads an essay from his newsletter, Keeping ScOR. Reflections on the Trump Administration's attempt to wrangle control of the national story and how it's told. Will this attack on factual history succeed?   Music by goodnight, Lucas.  To read see the Keeping ScOR newsletter archive or subscribe to receive it, go here: https://buttondown.com/KeepingScOR#subscribe-form The video of...

Host John Biewen teases Season 8 and reads an installment from his new newsletter, Keeping ScOR. Eight years after our "Seeing White" series, whiteness is still a helluva drug -- and a powerful tool for Trump 2.0.  Music by goodnight, Lucas Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Michael Kliën wants to help bring about profound change in the world, but not through the usual means. An Austrian-born Dance professor at Duke University, Kliën is a leading social choreographer. He sets up experiments involving people moving amongst each other -- wordlessly -- in pursuit of new ways of being and the "soul democratic."  By Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen. Music by go...

With our Capitalism season and the election behind us, now what? Can we find hope and a way forward? In a live show taped December 5, 2024, at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, North Carolina, Season 7 co-hosts John Biewen and Ellen McGirt are joined by journalism professor, podcast maker, and two-time Scene on Radio co-host Chenjerai Kumanyika . They discuss how to move toward a more democratic econo...

Host John Biewen is joined by Celeste Headlee, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Ellen McGirt, and Amy Westervelt, co-hosts of Scene on Radio's full-length seasons -- Seeing White, MEN, The Land That Never Has Been Yet, The Repair, and Capitalism -- for a free-wheeling conversation about the 2024 U.S. election of Donald J. Trump and what it all means.  Scene on Radio comes from the Kenan Institute for Ethics a...

In our season finale, we visit with people on two continents who are turning core structures of capitalism on their heads – or, at least, sideways.   By John Biewen with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with John Fullerton, Ander Etxeberria, Deseree Fontenot, Corrina Gould, Regan Pritzker, Dana Kawaoka-Chen, Mateo Nube, and Marjorie Kelly. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Music by Michelle Osis; Li...

In the first of two episodes looking at responses to capitalism’s failings, we explore reforms aimed at making the current economic system more humane, fair, effective, and sustainable.  By John Biewen with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Lutz Schwenke, Jordi Llatje i Espinal, Marjorie Kelly, Oren Cass, Jayati Ghosh, John Fullerton, and Rick Alexander. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Music b...

A visit to West Africa and Western Europe to look at the cocoa trade. Did the colonial side of early capitalism – Western countries getting rich at the expense of poorer nations – ever change, or does it continue today?  Reported by Ugochi Anyaka-Oluigbo and written by Ugochi and Loretta Williams, with co-hosts John Biewen and Ellen McGirt. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Mixed by John Biewen. Int...

In 1972, a team of young scientists at MIT published a study exploring what would happen to human civilization if people kept pursuing endless economic growth on a finite planet. They weren’t just disbelieved, they were ridiculed. The story of Donella Meadows and The Limits to Growth. Reported and produced by Katy Shields and Vegard Beyer, with co-hosts John Biewen and Ellen McGirt. Story editor:...

S7 E8: The People’s Pushback  Over several decades, a growing number of people in the United States and elsewhere – especially younger people – have turned against capitalism. The reasons are not mysterious.  Reported by Lewis Raven Wallace and produced by John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Esteban Kelly, Josh Bivens, Malaika Jibali, and Evan Caldwell. Story editor: Loretta Wi...

S7 E7: Gilded Age 2.0 After 40 years of neoliberalism, most Americans of every political stripe agree that the economy is “rigged” in favor of corporations and the wealthy. But we may not know the half of it.  By John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Nancy MacLean, Edward Balleisen, Brad DeLong, Marjorie Kelly, and Oren Cass. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Music by Michelle Osis...

How the balance of power shifted, for a time, in the decades after World War II, and led to a better kind of capitalism – if you think prosperity being broadly shared is a good thing.  By John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Eric Rauchway and Brad DeLong. Thanks to the Studs Terkel Archive at WFMT. Story editor: Loretta Williams. Music by Michelle Osis, Lilli Haydn, Chris Westla...

An age of invention and mass production, propelled by a new mechanism – the corporate research lab – leads to a surge in material wealth like the world has never seen. How does a new nation, the United States, overtake its parent as the leader of the surging capitalist order? And what does it all mean in the lives of ordinary people?  By John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Wood...