Meg Favreau
We are headed into one of the diciest holiday shopping seasons in recent memory. Will consumers open their wallets or not?
Meg Favreau knows what makes people buy. Meg worked for a television shopping channel. She talks with Dick about how she got sucked into the vortex of TV commercialism and why she didn't stop customers who were bitten by the bargain bug.
William D. Lewis
Wall Street firms are in a freefall, and unemployment rates have now jumped to a five-year high.
When William D. Lewis lost his job, his life went spiraling out of control. He was fired from his position as a pharmaceutical representative, lost his personal car wash business, then watched his investments dry up. His wife left with the kids and his house went into foreclosure.
William talks with Dick Gordon about the day he was found sleeping in his storage unit and why he enrolled in college to pull himself out of homelessness.
Thursday, September 11 2008 - Flying with Bullets
Pastor Phillip Miles
In the 7 years since 9/11, much has changed in the United States and abroad - especially when it comes to air travel. Virtually all passengers know what it's like now to take off their shoes, get rid of their bottled water, and wade through long checkpoint lines.
Pastor Phillip Miles has gone to the Russian city of Perm off and on for the past 10 years. At the last minute before his most recent rip, Pastor Miles packed a box of bullets in his luggage as a gift. He got permission to fly with the bullets by airport security in South Carolina, but authorities in Moscow arrested him and charged him with smuggling. Pastor Miles was sentenced to 3 years and 2 months in prison.
He talks to Dick Gordon about what life is like inside a Russian prison and how it felt to win his release.
Thursday, September 04 2008 - Bedside Comfort
Sandra Clarke, Del Townley, and Jim Clark
Every day, patients die alone in hospitals without family or medical staff to comfort them. Nurse Sandra Clarke decided to do something about this. She once had a dying patient who asked her to stay with him but she couldn't. When she returned to the room, he was dead.
Sandra talks to Dick Gordon about how she turned her guilt into a hospital vigil program - and how she convinced her co-workers to volunteer between shifts so patients wouldn't die alone.
Del Townley and Jim Clark also join the conversation. They are hospital maintenance workers who will sit at the bedsides of dying patients. They tell Dick why they joined the program and what keeps them volunteering.
Learn more about Sandra's vigil program, No One Dies Alone
See photos of Sandra and her volunteers
When Jabari Aali Shaw first talked to Dick Gordon, he'd been out of prison for seven months. While there, he had an epiphany: he was his own worst problem.
Now that he's been out of prison for two years, life is better but not always easy. He tells Dick about his stand-up comedy routine, what it was like to lose his job, and how he tries, and sometimes stumbles, to set an example for his sons.
Wednesday, June 04 2008
(DOUBLE FEATURE)
Reports of sexual assault in the Army have increased since anonymous reporting was implemented. According to the Department of Defense, 21% of women soldiers say they have been sexually assaulted.
Army Specialist Kymberlea L. Durant says that statistic is too low. She was sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier during the Gulf War and told by her lieutenant that reporting the crime would make America look bad. So she kept quiet.
Kymberlea talks to Dick Gordon about why she's speaking out now after 18 years of silence.
Rmega Tafari - larger >>
We received dozens of emails about Dick's conversation with Rmega Tafari, a woman squatting in an abandoned foreclosed home with her family. When Dick last spoke to Rmega, the bank that owned the home had asked her to leave.
Dick checks in with Rmega to find out what's happened since: she and her family have moved to Tallahassee where life is much better. Dua, Rmega's 4-year-old son, also shares his thoughts on the home they're renting and their new garden.
Wednesday, March 12 2008
Shahram Ahari
Shahram Ahari goes before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging today to say that the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors compromises the health of patients.
Shahram knows what he's talking about: he was a drug rep with Eli Lilly, where he learned how to entice doctors with gifts, slanted statistics, and psychological profiles.
Shahram tells Dick Gordon how the techniques he honed actually worked. He even earned the nickname "safe cracker" for getting into the offices of doctors who avoided pharmaceutical reps. He also recounts the crisis of conscience that led to his quitting the industry.
Friday, February 22 2008
Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder paints her way through pain and pleasure. Last year, her 40-year career as an abstract painter was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation with a $500,000 fellowship.
But Joan didn't always want to be a painter. She was studying social work at university when she enrolled in a painting class. Years later, Joan's powerful "stroke" paintings earned her major recognition.
Dick Gordon talks to Joan about why she passed up a career in social work to become a painter and how she turns scribbles on playbills into art.
Music heard in this story: Les nuits d'été, Op.7: II. Le spectre de la rose by Anne Sofie von Otter, Berliner Philharmoniker & James Levine for the album Berlioz: Les nuits d'éte & Mélodies; Opening by Philip Glass Ensemble for the album Glassworks - Expanded Edition; Mass in C Minor, "The Great," K. 427: XI. Et incarnatus est by Amor Artis Chorale, Ann Murray, Carole Bogard, English Chamber Orchestra, Michael Rippon & Richard Lewis for the album Mozart: Sacred Choral Masterpieces
A satellite was shot out of space this week. Another less-noticed story was that our galaxy may in fact be home to other planets like Earth.
For Maggie Turnbull, the search for extra-terrestrial life is a personal mission, ever since she saw the movie "Contact" years ago. She talks to Dick about how scientists try to look for signs of life 'out there', and what drives her to do so.
Maggie Turnbull
She also gives Dick a sneak preview into NASA's plan of action should they ever discover extraterrestrial life.
Dr. Maggie Turnbull works at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
Lawmakers in Virginia, Kentucky and Colorado are considering tightening up the way payday lending institutions conduct business. These short term loans are designed to help people make ends meet between paychecks, but the interest rates they carry can veer upwards to 400%. As a result, many people get sucked into a vortex of never-ending debt.
Lisa Engelkins found herself needing money all the time in 1998. She was a single mom making $7 an hour at one of her jobs, and it just wasn't enough. So she went to a payday lender and before she knew it, was trapped paying off the same loan for nearly 2 years. She eventually clawed her way out of debt and is now a credit and housing counselor in Winston-Salem, NC.
Alba Onofrio
Yet the issue may be more complex than some observers think. Alba Onofrio used to authorize the kinds of loans people like Lisa needed. While Alba didn't like the fact that such loans can overburden people, she makes the point to Dick Gordon that some people have no other option, and that imperfect help is arguably better than none at all.
Thursday, February 07 2008
Audrey Serrano
For 9 years Audrey Serrano thought she was HIV positive. Audrey took an anonymous HIV test at a clinic after her boyfriend reluctantly revealed he had HIV. Her test came back positive, and she underwent years of grueling medical treatments and lost custody of her daughter.
Eventually Audrey got herself retested and those results were negative. Last year, she sued her doctor and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in damages. Dick Gordon talks with Audrey about the mental and physical obstacles she confronted while trying to prove she didn't have HIV.
Steve DeJoseph
Steve DeJoseph grew up listening to his Italian grandfather complaining about family back in the old country. His grandfather constantly said his Italian relatives were "no good" and that all they wanted was the money he sent them. Steve tried to convince his granddad to take a trip back home, but it never happened.
Finally Steve went himself to meet the "no good" people his grandfather had talked about. It was there that he had a revelation: his grandfather had been lying about his family all those years. Steve tells Dick that if his grandfather had admitted how wonderful his family actually was, he never could have handled the emotional cost of living so far away from them.
Wednesday, January 09 2008
Rasheda Ali - Rasheda and her father >>
More than 4 million American suffer from Parkinson's disease. Among them is one of the greatest boxers of all time: Muhammad Ali.
Ali's second daughter, Rasheda Ali, was only 10 years old when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Over the years she researched the disease and struggled to explain to her own children why the hands of their "Poppy Ali" shook all the time. Rasheda has written a children's book about Parkinson's Disease called I'll Hold Your Hand So You Won't Fall.
Dick Gordon talks to Rasheda about how she's tried to help her dad cope with Parkinson's disease, and how she now has the one-on-one relationship with him that she has yearned for since she was a child.
Friday, January 04 2008
Dr. Alice Ginott-Cohn
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the first Kinsey Report on Human Sexual Behavior. The identity of many of the participants who divulged the details of their sex lives to Kinsey remains secret. However, one woman decided to shed her anonymity.
Dr. Alice Ginott-Cohn was interviewed by Dr. Kinsey when she was 19 years old. He was seeking female volunteers in her psychology class at Indiana University. Alice says she found Kinsey very attractive and comforting, so she volunteered to be interviewed. Dick Gordon talks to Alice about the famous study and how participating in it has influenced her own life and work.
Thursday, January 03 2008
McCain Correctional Hospital
Over the past 10 years, the number of inmates across the US who are over 50 years of age has skyrocketed. In North Carolina, where our radio program is produced, the number of elderly inmates has tripled to nearly 3,500. This accounts for nearly 10 percent of all prisoners.
Aging prisoners are an added cost for the system. As prisoners age, they get sicker. Many prisons now have a dual role - prison and nursing homes or hospital ward.
Dick Gordon traveled to McCain Correctional Hospital in Raeford, NC, to speak with several of the aging inmates.
The four men he interviewed have a variety of ideas about what should happen to them in "the system" as they age.
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