Faith gives the retired NFL star and his wife the strength to cope with cancer and death; Minnesota volunteers make tools to improve the lives of small farmers and poor villagers around the world; and a surgeon and writer ponders medicine and “what matters in the end.”
Author Archives: Fred Yi
Who Is My Neighbor?
In Minneapolis, dozens of retired engineers and other volunteers at Compatible Technology International are making water purifiers, threshers, grain tools, and other inventions designed to improve the lives of farmers in small villages around the world. They see it as being good neighbors in a global community.
Atul Gawande on Being Mortal
Watch R&E’s interview with best-selling author and surgeon Atul Gawande about aging, dying, end-of-life care, and the limits of medicine—all themes in his latest book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, also featured on FRONTLINE on February 10. The book includes the story of his father’s final illness and death and his family’s journey to the Ganges to spread his father’s ashes.
During his surgical training and practice, writes Gawande, “I encountered patients forced to confront the realities of decline and mortality, and it did not take long to realize how unready I was to help them.”
Interviewed by Susan Goldstein and Missy Daniel. Edited by Lauren Talley. Produced by Susan Goldstein.
Watch Atul Gawande on Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s story about the suffering and death of Ivan Ilyich:
Selma March 50th Anniversary; Average Mohamed; Baha’i Nineteen-Day Fast
Fifty years ago, the voting rights struggle in Alabama culminated in a march from Selma to Montgomery; a Minneapolis man challenges the violent message of Islamic extremists with an animated cartoon series; and Baha’is observe nineteen days of fasting leading up to their New Year.
Selma Civil Rights March 50th Anniversary
Fifty years ago, civil rights activists organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand the right to vote in that deeply segregated state. When they were violently beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, an event now known as Bloody Sunday, many faith leaders were moved to action. “When you saw black and white moving forward to get rid of segregation, get rid of misuse of people, it made a difference in all America,” says movement and march organizer Rev. C.T. Vivian, who famously confronted Selma’s notorious sheriff, Jim Clark, on the city’s courthouse steps.
Glenn Eskew on Selma Marches
“The church had been waking up to the need for race reform in the post-war era,” says Georgia State University history professor Glenn Eskew. “The change had been slow among the establishment within the churches from the top down, but from the seminarians, the young people from the bottom up—they embraced the movement. They embraced the idea of racial change.”
Average Mohamed
Radical Islamic groups are using high-quality videos to recruit young Muslims in the US and Europe to join their fight. Now, a Somali Muslim immigrant in Minnesota is fighting back with his own videos—an animated series called “Average Mohamed” that counters extremist ideas about Islam.
Abdu’l Karim Ewing-Boyd Extended Interview
Watch more of our interview with Abdu’l Karim Ewing-Boyd about the nineteen-day period of fasting leading up to the Baha’i new year.
Syrian Refugees in Turkey; Millennials and Religion
The humanitarian crisis mounts as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee war in Syria (Originally broadcast December 19, 2014); people under the age of 30 leave behind traditional religious affiliations but not necessarily religious beliefs (Originally broadcast November 7, 2014); Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche, an international network of residential communities for people with developmental disabilities, wins the 2015 Templeton Prize (Originally broadcast May 26, 2006)
Recruiting Radical Muslims; B Corp Business Ethics; Blind Boys of Alabama
The growing appeal of ISIS and other extremist groups in the West; for-profit companies that try to solve social and environmental problems; and the gospel music and spiritual journey of five blind boys from Alabama.
