Francesca Rheannon is an award-winning independent radio producer. In addition to hosting Writer's Voice, she's a freelance reporter for National Public Radio and its affiliates. Recipient of the prestigious Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on substance abuse issues for her news series, VOICES OF HIV, produced for 88.5 WFCR public radio in western Massachusetts. She is also finishing a book on Provence (PROVINCE OF THE HEART) and working on a memoir of her father, THE ARGONAUTS.
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M.P. Barker talks about her new historical novel for middle readers and above, Mending Horses. It’s a sequel to her wonderful first novel, A Difficult Boy. And then Ellen Bryson takes P.T. Barnum’s first circus as the setting to explore the outsider in all of us. Her novel is The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno. Continue reading →
Sports medicine physician Jordan Metzl talks about exercise as medicine. His book is The Exercise Cure: A Doctor’s All-Natural, No-Pill Prescription for Better Health and Longer Life.
Judy Foreman talks about America’s biggest health problem — chronic pain. Her book, A NATION IN PAIN, is a comprehensive and fascinating exploration of what chronic pain is, what’s wrong with how our nation treats it and better ways to treat it, including a saner approach to pain medication and non-drug treatments like massage, acupuncture, exercise and meditation.
The book’s central thesis is that chronic pain is a disease in its own right — and deserves to be treated as the serious health problem it is. Continue reading →
The State Department’s EIS, it turns out, “relied heavily” on studies funded by Alberta, Canada government agencies and carried out by Jacobs Consultancy, a subsidiary of a major tar sands developer, as Cushman reported several days after his interview with WV:
The Jacobs Consultancy is a subsidiary of Jacobs Engineering, a giant natural resources development company with extensive operations in Alberta’s tar sands fields. The engineering company has worked on dozens of major projects in the region over the years. Its most recent contract, with Canadian oil sands leader Suncor, was announced in January.
“The Alberta Oil Sands are a very important component of our business,” the parent company said in late 2011, announcing seven new contracts in the region. “Jacobs has a strong history in the area, and we are pleased to support our clients in these initiatives.”
A journalist in Washington since the mid 70s, Cushman covered the EPA for the New York Times and now works with Inside Climate News, the online news site that won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its report,”The Dilbit Disaster,” an investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.
Ruth Thomas-Suh talks about her powerful new film, REJECT. Joining the conversation is her father, Herbert Thomas, author of THE SHAME RESPONSE TO REJECTION. And environmental journalist John Cushman talks about about what’s really in the State Department’s Environmental Impact report on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Isabel Allende talks about her latest novel — and her first mystery — RIPPER. It’s about an appealing young sleuth who teams up with her grandfather and some online friends to solve a spate of murders in San Francisco. Then we re-broadcast our 2010 interview with Allende about her novel of revolutionary Haiti, Island Beneath The Sea.
Teacher John Hunter talks about the inspiring World Peace Game he’s been teaching to kids for thirty years. His book is WORLD PEACE AND OTHER FOURTH GRADE ACHIEVEMENTS. Â And Heather Rogers talks about her book, GREEN GONE WRONG: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution.
We talk with Inside Climate News reporter Katherine Bagley about Mayor Bloomberg’s record on climate resilience for New York City. She co-wrote BLOOMBERG’S HIDDEN LEGACY with Maria Galucci. Also we hear excerpts from WV’S “Best of 2013” episodes, featuring clips from interviews with Rilla Eskew, Carla Kaplan, Marisa Silver, Ruth Ozeki and Richard Heinberg. Continue reading →
We hear two Stories of British intelligence during World WWar II: Elisa Segrave talks about her memoir/history, The Girl from Station X: My Mother’s Unknown Life, and we replay our 2008 interview with Jennet Conant about The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.