Scene on Radio
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
1 Creator
5.0
(12)
Scene on Radio is a two-time Peabody-nominated podcast that dares to ask big, hard questions about who we are—really—and how we got this way. Previous series include Seeing White (Season 2), looking at the roots and meaning of white supremacy; MEN (Season 3), on patriarchy and its history; The Land That Never Has Been Yet (Season 4), exploring the not-so-accidental failings of democracy in the U.S.; and The Repair (Season 5), on the climate crisis: Where did we go so wrong in our relationship with the rest of the natural world, and who's "we"? Produced and hosted by John Biewen, Scene on Radio comes from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (CDS) and is distributed by PRX.
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How Race Was Made (Seeing White, Part 2)
Scene on Radio
03/01/17 • 28 min
For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Photo: The Monument to the Discoveries, Lisbon, Portugal. The highlighted figure in the center is an effigy of Gomes Eanes de Zurara. The figure at the top right is Prince Henry the Navigator. Photo by Harvey Barrison.
7 Listeners
Turning the Lens (Seeing White, Part 1)
Scene on Radio
02/15/17 • 16 min
Events of the past few years have turned a challenging spotlight on White people, and Whiteness, in the United States. An introduction to our series exploring what it means to be White. By John Biewen, with special guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
5 Listeners
On Crazy We Built a Nation (Seeing White, Part 4)
Scene on Radio
03/30/17 • 36 min
5.0
“All men are created equal.” Those words, from the Declaration of Independence, are central to the story that Americans tell about ourselves and our history. But what did those words mean to the man who actually wrote them? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Key sources for this episode:
Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People
Ibram Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning
4 Listeners
4
Made in America (Seeing White, Part 3)
Scene on Radio
03/16/17 • 33 min
Chattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today. By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Key sources for this episode:
Ibram Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning
Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People
4 Listeners
A Racial Cleansing in America (Seeing White Part 9)
Scene on Radio
05/31/17 • 29 min
In 1919, a white mob forced the entire black population of Corbin, Kentucky, to leave, at gunpoint. It was one of many racial expulsions in the United States. What happened, and how such racial cleansings became “America’s family secret.”
The history of Corbin as presented by the Corbin city government, with no mention of the 1919 racial expulsion.
Elliot Jaspin’s book, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansings in America
3 Listeners
Little War on the Prairie (Seeing White, Part 5)
Scene on Radio
04/12/17 • 62 min
Growing up in Mankato, Minnesota, John Biewen heard next to nothing about the town’s most important historical event. In 1862, Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history – the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors – following one of the major wars between Plains Indians and settlers. In this documentary, originally produced for This American Life, John goes back to Minnesota to explore what happened, and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it afterwards.
Image: The Minnesota State Seal, 1858
Key sources for this episode:
Gwen Westerman, Mni Sota MakoceMary Wingerd, North Country: The Making of Minnesota
3 Listeners
Things I'm Afraid to Say
Scene on Radio
03/23/16 • 20 min
5.0
A refugee from Bosnia. An NYC-born survivor who grew up poor, black, Muslim, and gay. And how one, and her music, saved the other.
3 Listeners
1
That's Not Us, So We're Clean (Seeing White, Part 6)
Scene on Radio
04/26/17 • 40 min
When it comes to America’s racial sins, past and present, a lot of us see people in one region of the country as guiltier than the rest. Host John Biewen spoke with some white Southern friends about that tendency. Part Six of our ongoing series, Seeing White. With recurring guest, Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Image: A lynching on Clarkson Street, New York City, during the Draft Riots of 1863. Credit: Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation.
Shannon Sullivan’s books, Revealing Whiteness and Good White People.
Thanks to Chris Julin, whose 1991 NPR report on the Wisconsin fishing rights dispute we featured.
2 Listeners
Skulls and Skin (Seeing White, Part 8)
Scene on Radio
05/17/17 • 48 min
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter
2 Listeners
S4 E8: The Second Redemption
Scene on Radio
04/15/20 • 63 min
5.0
The conservative, neoliberal counterrevolution in the face of expanding democracy in America: It started long before Donald Trump. Even before Ronald Reagan and his like-minded counterpart across the Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher.
By host and producer John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Nancy MacLean, Wendy Brown, and Rhon Manigault-Bryant.
The series editor is Loretta Williams. Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.
2 Listeners
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