Category: Watched on PBS
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Remembering Community: Fixing the Future via Community Currency at Hour Exchange Portland
Community is more like something that we're remembering than something that we're creating all over again. I was inspired by physical therapist and sailor Stephen Becket's words at the end of a segment of David Brancaccio's upcoming special edition of PBS Now, Fixing the Future, shown on tonight's PBS Newshour. I'd forgotten how much I…
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Violent communication, emotional contagion, genocide and eliminationism
Last night, I watched a disturbing show on PBS, Worse than War, "the first major documentary to explore the phenomenon of genocide and how we can stop it". Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, narrator of the film and author of the book upon which it is based, argues that contrary to common conceptions of irrational and spontaneous…
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Applying the One Percent Doctrine to Climate Change
I remember hearing an NPR Fresh Air interview with Ron Suskind, author of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of It's Enemies Since 9/11, shortly after the book came out in 2006, in which he explained that the title came from a statement made by [then] Vice President Dick Cheney about the Bush…
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A Lion in the House, Tears in my Eyes: On Cancer, Courage, Honesty and Generosity
Leukemia. Children. Families. Doctors. Nurses. I just watched the second half of A Lion in the House. I don’t think I have ever had tears in my eyes for as long a stretch as during the last two hours. I feel sadness, gratitude and awe at the inspiring stories that unfolded in this episode of…
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Boxing and Belly Dancing, Boldness and Dreams
I rarely watch television, but I was captivated by the Ken Burns documentary film, “Unforgivable Blackness”, profiling the rise and fall of Jack Johnson, the first African-American Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, shown this week on PBS. I regularly listen to NPR (and yes, I’m a member of both KCTS and KPLU), and Wednesday…