Scene on Radio
Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University
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About This Podcast
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. Our latest is Season 7, Scene on Radio: Capitalism. 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 democracy in the U.S. and why we don’t have more of it; The Repair (Season 5), on the cultural roots of the climate crisis; and Season 6, Echoes of a Coup, the story of the only successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. Produced and hosted by John Biewen, with collaborators, Scene on Radio comes from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.
The show is distributed by PRX.
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Recent Episodes
Proxy: Nicole Can't Stop Being Aggro
A guest episode from the podcast Proxy: Nicole is an organizer who's good at channeling her anger. The trouble is she can't always downshift -- or even allow herself to feel sad about the problems…
Historical Maturity and Cowardice: Keeping ScOR #15
Host John Biewen reads an essay from his newsletter, Keeping ScOR. After a visit to his hometown, Mankato, Minnesota -- the subject of the Scene on Radio episode, "Little War on the Prairie" -- John…
Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders
We're sharing an episode from another podcast that asks big questions about who we are and how we got here: The Alabama Murders, a new series by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist…
Voices of Hiroshima
A rebroadcast of a Scene on Radio episode, eighty years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The word “Hiroshima” may bring to mind a black-and-white…
Lever Time: Trump, Colbert, And The War On Truth
A bonus episode from the Lever Time podcast: Their latest, exploring the decision by CBS to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the wider context for that move -- Donald Trump's effort to…
Making Ignorance Sacred Again: Keeping ScOR #7
Host John Biewen reads an essay from his newsletter, Keeping ScOR. Reflections on the Trump Administration's attempt to wrangle control of the national story and how it's told. Will this attack on…
The New Old Racism: Keeping ScOR#4
Host John Biewen teases Season 8 and reads an installment from his new newsletter, Keeping ScOR. Eight years after our "Seeing White" series, whiteness is still a helluva drug -- and a powerful tool…
Bonus: Michael Kliën and the Body Politic
Michael Kliën wants to help bring about profound change in the world, but not through the usual means. An Austrian-born Dance professor at Duke University, Kliën is a leading social choreographer. He…
S7E13 S7 E13: CAPITALISM Bonus, Live at Motorco
With our Capitalism season and the election behind us, now what? Can we find hope and a way forward? In a live show taped December 5, 2024, at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, North Carolina, Season 7…
Post-election '24 All-Star Special
Host John Biewen is joined by Celeste Headlee, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Ellen McGirt, and Amy Westervelt, co-hosts of Scene on Radio's full-length seasons -- Seeing White, MEN, The Land That Never Has…
S7E12 S7 E12: Reimagined Economies
In our season finale, we visit with people on two continents who are turning core structures of capitalism on their heads – or, at least, sideways. By John Biewen with co-host Ellen McGirt.…
S7E11 S7 E11: Better Capitalism?
In the first of two episodes looking at responses to capitalism’s failings, we explore reforms aimed at making the current economic system more humane, fair, effective, and sustainable. By John…
S7E10 S7 E10: The Extracted
A visit to West Africa and Western Europe to look at the cocoa trade. Did the colonial side of early capitalism – Western countries getting rich at the expense of poorer nations – ever change, or…
S7E9 S7 E9: At the Tipping Point
In 1972, a team of young scientists at MIT published a study exploring what would happen to human civilization if people kept pursuing endless economic growth on a finite planet. They weren’t just…
S7E8 S7 E8: The People's Pushback
S7 E8: The People’s Pushback Over several decades, a growing number of people in the United States and elsewhere – especially younger people – have turned against capitalism. The reasons are not…
S7E7 S7 E7: Gilded Age 2.0
S7 E7: Gilded Age 2.0After 40 years of neoliberalism, most Americans of every political stripe agree that the economy is “rigged” in favor of corporations and the wealthy. But we may not know the…
S7E6 S7 E6: Thirty Glorious Years
How the balance of power shifted, for a time, in the decades after World War II, and led to a better kind of capitalism – if you think prosperity being broadly shared is a good thing. By John Biewen,…
S7E5 S7 E5: A New Thing in Human History
An age of invention and mass production, propelled by a new mechanism – the corporate research lab – leads to a surge in material wealth like the world has never seen. How does a new nation, the…
S7E4 S7 E4: Invisible Hand Guy?
Economic change happens in a cultural context. We trace the tectonic shifts in the Western mind that made capitalism thinkable – in part through a look at two Enlightenment thinkers: Baruch Spinoza…
S7E3 S7 E3: Ships, Swords, and Fences
From the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama to colonial conquest and the Atlantic Slave Trade, to the privatization of land in western Europe: humanity’s turn toward the capitalist world we live…
Frequently Asked Questions
Scene on Radio has published 128 episodes since September 2015, covering topics in Documentary, Society & Culture.
Scene on Radio is currently sporadic with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 37m.
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