Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders

Reformed picky eater Jill Colella Bloomfield believes that teaching kids to cook is the way to avoid the pitfalls of picky eating. She shares her strategies for helping kids discover there is more to life than peanut butter and jelly.

Christina Ammon inherited a diamond ring worth $22,000 from her grandmother. She did some quick calculations: $22,000 could restore sight to 660 people in Bangladesh, send 133 Nepalese children to school, protect 220 acres of rainforest, or provide 220 micro-loans to women in the Congo. Her question: do I want a diamond ring, or a better world?

In The Whale, winner of the 2009 BBC prize for nonfiction, Philip Hoare investigates the dark, shadowy beasts who swim below the depths only to surface in a spray of spume to find out what it is about them that exerts such a powerful grip on our collective imagination?

British husband and wife Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett join forces to show that one common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: not wealth, not resources, not culture, but the degree of equality among their members. So, by that measure, how does America stack up?

Punk astronomer Doug Reilly thinks that you are not spending enough time looking up. He explains why looking up at the awe-inspiring night sky is punk and why it might be the best way for us humans to expand our horizon of possibilities, and our consciousness.

After the frenzy of holiday cooking, baking, and feasting, and with no major holidays until Easter, it often seems that winter cooking is an afterthought. Anne Bramley, a self-proclaimed lover of winter, disagrees. She shows us that winter is full of inspiration in the kitchen, and that the holidays are not the only reason to look forward to a long cold snap.

As Google threatens to quit China over censorship, many Chinese citizens pleaded online for the company to stay. Does Google's decision help or hurt the democratization of China? Can a company still do well by doing good?

In this century, the human species will need to solve some very big problems, but does our changing world demand humans change, too? Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin joins us to talk about his new book, The Empathic Civilization, which argues that beyond technological innovation, we need to change our consciousness and transform our idea of human nature itself.

The prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus in nineteenth-century France, known as the Dreyfus Affair, exposed misconduct at the highest levels of the French Army and left France painfully divided and disgraced abroad. Author, lawyer, and Holocaust survivor, Louis Begley, transforms this history into lessons and warnings for the United States as it heals itself from the misdeeds of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

After the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Vodou has once again become a part of the public discussion about Haiti. Pat Robertsons remarks are only one of many examples of how the Euro-American perception of Vodou influences the public opinion about Haiti and its people. We talk to Gina Athena Ulysse, Haitian-born anthropologist at Wesleyan University, and to Kate Ramsey, historian of Haiti at the University of Miami, about the complicated relationship between Haiti's history, vodou and the West.

One in seven people in the world doesn't have enough to eat. What is the key to eliminating world hunger? According to Louise Fresco, the answer may lie in mass-produced white bread.

As the reality of the earthquake in Haiti sinks in, we take the time to talk about how hard it is just to watch. Scholars and teachers of witnessing join us to talk us through the practice of witnessing, pointing out both the pitfalls and the positive outcomes that can come through witnessing the suffering of others, even from afar.

Religious conservatives often reject evolution, religious liberals incorporate it, and secularists embrace it. But there is a little-recognized, rapidly growing fourth reaction to the Darwinian revolution. It is emerging from those engaged in what we might call nature spirituality, or nature religion.

Almost one in four Americans has a tattoo today. Gone are the days when only bikers, sailors and self-declared rebels displayed their tattooed arms; today, even academics are getting into the act by tattooing their favorite formula or graph on their bodies. We explore the history of this phenomenon and the reasons for this increased popularity with UW-Madison Professor of Anthropology, Neil Whitehead.

Composer Bruce Adolphe and librettist Carolivia Herron wrote the one-act opera Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Anderson's 1939 Lincoln Memorial Concert, organized after she was denied the right to sing in Constitution Hall. Today we celebrate the story and song of this civil rights veteran.