Documentary filmmakers take us into the lives of their subjects in a way that the written word can’t capture. We see what they see. We get a sense of the physical space they occupy with our own eyes.  We hear their voices.  Elaine McMillion Sheldon weaves these elements together in powerful films that explore everything from love to addiction. McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated, and Emmy and Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker based in Appalachia. She has been commissioned by Netflix, Frontline PBS, The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Oxford American, The New York Times Op-Docs, TEDWomen, Field of Vision, and The Bitter Southerner. Sheldon is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries, “Heroin(e)” and “Recovery Boys” that explore America’s opioid crisis. “Heroin(e)” was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award and won the 2018 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary. The short film premiered at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival and went on to screen hundreds of times across America as part of a community-driven impact campaign. Sheldon has appeared on “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah, Anthony Bourdain’s CNN show, “Parts Unknown” and “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd. She’s a founding member of the All Y’all Southern Documentary Collective. She is a recipient of the 2020 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. In 2016 she received a highly-competitive national “Breakthrough Award” and fellowship from Chicken and Egg Pictures. She was also named a 2018 USA Fellow by United States Artists, one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker magazine, one of 50 People Changing The South by Southern Living magazine, and grants from Sundance, Tribeca, Catapult, Chicago Media Project, and Field of Vision. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Story in the Public Square

Brining Big Topics to the Big Screen with Elaine McMillion Sheldon

The Human Rights Campaign estimates that there are 2 million transgender people living in the United States, today. Yet Kylar Broadus says the fight for human rights is not yet won as long as transgender Americans lack equal rights under the law. Kylar Broadus is a Black trans man that has been a pioneer in the movement as an attorney, long-time activist, public speaker, author and professor. Broadus is known worldwide for his avant-garde work in the LGBT and Trans movements. He was just awarded the Trans Trailblazer Award by the LGBT Bar Association of Los Angeles and issue a Proclamation by the City Attorney’s Office of Los Angeles on March 28, 2019. In 2018, he was awarded the 2018 Gentleman of Excellence Award by the Gentlemen’s Foundation of Atlanta. Mastercard featured Broadus for Pride Month that same year, and he was recognized by the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office of King’s County in Brooklyn, New York in 2018 for his contributions to the legal field. Liberty Mutual honored him at the GLAAD Awards for his 30 years contribution to the movement and he was awarded a Certificate of Legal Excellence by the City of New York District Attorney’s Office. The Advocate recognized Broadus as one of “25 Legal Advocates Fighting for Trans Rights.” He was honored to stand with President Obama while signing the Executive Order adding protections for millions of workers in 2014. He is the first out transgender American to testify before the United States Senate in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2012. Broadus was given the Pioneer Award at the Trans faith of Color Conference by the Freedom Center of Social Justice. He is founder and director of the Trans People of Color Coalition the only national organization dedication to the civil rights of transgender people of color and is on the board of the National Black Justice Coalition. He currently serves on the Freedom For All Americans board of directors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fighting for Human Rights for All Americans with Kylar Broadus

In 2009, an acclaimed historian of the Holocaust was shown a picture of one family’s execution by Ukrainian allies of the Nazis some 70 years earlier.  In the years that followed, Dr. Wendy Lower’s research gave names to the victims and the killers and lays bare the horror of the Holocaust on an intimate, personal level. Dr. Lower is an acclaimed historian and widely published author on the Holocaust and World War II.  She is the John K. Roth professor of history at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.  She was also named the director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont in 2014.  Lower chairs the Academic Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and directed the Visiting Scholars Program at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies from 2000 to 2004.  Her research and teaching focus on the history of Germany and Ukraine in World War II, the Holocaust, women’s history, the history of human rights, and the history of genocide.  Lower’s 2013 book, “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,” was translated into 21 languages and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award in the nonfiction category and for the National Jewish Book Award.  Her latest book, “The Ravine: A Family, A Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed,” was published in 2021. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Uncovering the Truth Behind a Haunting Holocaust Photograph with Wendy Lower

Everyone of us knows heartache—the sweet melancholy of a love that just doesn’t work. Multi-talented Dessa traces much of her musical inspiration to that pain, and commissioned a team of neuroscientists to help her fall out of love. Dessa is a singer, rapper and writer whose musical resume includes performances at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-compositions for 100-voice choir, performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, and top-200 entries on the Billboard charts. She contributed to the number one album The Hamilton Mixtape: her track, “Congratulations,” has notched over 16 million streams.  Her writing has been published by The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler and broadcast by Minnesota Public Radio and published as a memoir-in-essays, entitled “My Own Devices” in addition to two literary collections.  Dessa has delivered keynote speeches and presentations on art, science, and entrepreneurship, guest lectures at universities and colleges across the United States and a TED Talk about her science experiment on how to fall out of love.  She hosts the “Deeply Human” podcast, created by the BBC and American Public Media. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Exploring Heartache Through Word and Music with Dessa

Love is the stuff of poetry, and heartache, and hope, and songs.  Valarie Kaur says love can be revolutionary and is needed as a public ethic to confront hate, and nationalism, and the violence born from ignorance. Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, and celebrated prophetic voice.  She leads the Revolutionary Love Project with a mission to reclaim love as a force for justice.  In the wake of the 2016 election, Kaur’s “Watch Night Service” address went viral with 40 million views worldwide.  Her question, “is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?” reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change.  Her debut book, “See No Stranger: A Memoir & Manifesto of Revolutionary Love,” was released in 2020 and expands on her popular TED Talk.  In the last twenty years, Kaur has won policy change on multiple fronts–hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, internet freedom, and more.  She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice.  Kaur is a regular commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post.  A daughter of Sikh farmers in California’s heartland, she earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harnessing Love as a Force for Pivotal Change with Valarie Kaur

The prognosticators of doom would have you believe that humanity is cursed to a future without work as Artificial Intelligence replaces people in the workforce.  But Jamie Merisotis says we’ll still be working—doing the kinds of things only human beings can do. Jamie Merisotis is a globally recognized leader in philanthropy, education, and public policy and the author of “Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines.”  Since 2008, he has served as president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all.  He previously served as co-founder and president of the nonpartisan, Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Higher Education Policy and as executive director of a bipartisan national commission on college affordability appointed by the U.S. President and Congressional leaders. His work includes extensive global experience as an advisor and consultant in southern Africa, the former Soviet Union, Europe and other parts of the world.  A respected analyst and innovator, Merisotis is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  Merisotis is the author of the widely-acclaimed book, “America Needs Talent,” named a “Top 10 Business book of 2016” by Booklist.  A frequent media commentator and contributor, his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Washington Monthly, Politico, Roll Call and other publications.  Merisotis serves as chair of the Council on Foundations in Washington, D.C. and was a past chair of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the world’s largest museum for children.  He also serves on the boards of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership and the UK-based European Access Network. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Earning, Learning and Serving: Jamie Merisotis on Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines

Hate crimes are nothing new to members of the Asian American community.  Dr. Janelle Wong helps us put them in historical context—from the Asian Exclusion Acts to the rise in violence targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wong is a professor of American Studies and a core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland.  From 2001-2012, Wong was a member of the Departments of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.  She received her Ph.D. in 2001 from the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Wong is the author of  “Immigrants, Evangelicals and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change” (2018), “Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions” (2006), and co-author of two books on Asian American politics, including “Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities” (2011),  which is based on the first national, multilingual, multiethnic survey of Asian Americans.  Wong was a Co-Principal Investigator on the 2016 National Asian American Survey, a nationwide survey of Asian American political and social attitudes and served on the national board of the Association for Asian American Studies from 2014 to 2017. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Discussing The State of Asian-American-Targeted Violence with Janelle Wong

Folk music has a long and rich tradition in the United States, telling stories by capturing life in lyric and melody.  Singer-songwriter Mariee Sioux uses those tools to tell stories that reflect her indigenous heritage. Mariee Sioux was raised in a small gold mining town in Northern California and is of Indigenous and Polish Hungarian ancestry.  She was exposed to melody, harmony, and the way music brought community together since childhood, going to Bluegrass festivals, and her father in a bluegrass band.  In connection with her native roots, Sioux values the medicinal qualities of music and believes gathering to share her songs is ultimately for healing purposes.  An abstract storyteller, she serves as a voice for the natural world and trials of humanity through song.  Sioux’s finger-picking guitar has been compared to the greats of Nick Drake and Bert Jansch.  She has extensively toured Europe and the United States, opening for acclaimed artists like Mazzy Star, Buffy St. Marie, Frank Black, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and Joanna Newsom.  She has produced seven records, including “Gift for the End” and “Grief in Exile.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Capturing Life in Lyric and Melody with Mariee Sioux

Books have always seemed like self-contained worlds to me.  Pick up a book, and you can transport yourself to any time in history—or the future. Delve into the mystical or the romantic.  Books help us to open our minds and our hearts, and over the last 30 years, Jonathan Karp has put more of those books into the hands of readers than just about anyone else. Jonathan Karp has been president and CEO of Simon & Schuster since May 2020. He joined Simon & Schuster in June 2010 as publisher of their flagship imprint and was promoted to president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing in 2018.  Karp worked briefly as a reporter for The Providence Journal and then The Miami Herald before being hired in 1989 by Random House.  He worked there for 16 years, rising to editor-in-chief of the Random House division.  He moved to Hachette Book Group in 2005, where he founded the Twelve imprint.  There, Karp published the acclaimed bestselling works, “True Compass” by Edward M. Kennedy, “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, and “War” by Sebastian Junger.  Since joining Simon & Schuster, Karp has overseen the publication of “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, “What Happened” by Hillary Clinton, “Fear” by Bob Woodward, “Frederick Douglass” by David Blight, the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History, “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, “In One Person” by John Irving, and “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jonathan Karp Matches Books with their Readers

The analytical mind can explain the world around us, but the creative mind can help create our future. Dr. Julian Chambliss explores the power of Afrofuturism in comic books, the expression of creativity in the midst of the pandemic, and the way we think about and process history as a society. Chambliss explores the real and imagined city. From planning and community development to comic books and popular culture, his research, teaching, and writing explore how perceptions shape policy and action creating our collective urban experience.  Chambliss studied urban history at the University of Florida and focused his attention on policy formation, culture, regionalism, and civic infrastructure issues.  His research evolved to focus on urban development and culture in U.S. cities.  Chambliss served as Professor of History in the Department of History at Rollins College from 2004 to 2018.  He joined the Department of English at Michigan State University in 2018 with a joint appointment in the Department of History and as core faculty in Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research.  There, he teaches courses exploring critical making, or the process of creative synthesis that animates his class projects, comics and culture in the United States.  In 2019, Chambliss joined the Michigan State University Museum as the Val Berryman Curator of History, where he designs generative digital projects that use the classroom as a platform for students to act as co-researchers to trace community development, document diverse experience and explore culture.  Chambliss is one of the producers of “Every Tongue Got To Confess,” a podcast exploring the experiences and stories of communities of color. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Creating a Collective Urban Experience with Julian Chambliss

The pandemic has had a profound effect on the entertainment industry, disrupting live performances and posing challenges for production in both film and television.  Ida Darvish and Josh Gad are two of the bright lights of Hollywood and they tell us that the creative process continues. Ida Darvish is a producer and actor who has played multiple characters in the “Assassin’s Creed” video game franchise, a common house proprietor on “The Mandalorian,” and Marta Alvarez in Tom Hank’s “Inferno.”  She and her husband have both appeared in “She Wants Me,” “The Lost Nomads: Get Lost!,” and “Big Guy.” Together, they run a production company called “Angry Child,” which has produced a number of shows, notably “Central Park” and “1600 Penn.” Josh Gad is an actor and singer and is known for voicing Olaf in the “Frozen” franchise, playing LeFou in the live-action adaptation of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and Elder Arnold Cunningham in the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.  Gad played Skip Gilchrist in the political sitcom “1600 Penn” on NBC, and a fictionalized version of himself on FX’s The Comedians, alongside “Billy Crystal.”  Several of his other film roles include “The Rocker,” “The Internship,” “Love & Other Drugs,” “The Wedding Ringer,” “The Angry Birds Movie,” “A Dog’s Purpose,” “Marshall,” and Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”  He has also appeared in “ER,” “The Daily Show,” “Modern Family,” “New Girl,” “Bored to Death,” and “Numb3rs.” In 2020, he began starring in the HBO comedy series “Avenue 5.”  His continuing pandemic series, “Reunited Apart,” has been very popular and it raises money for many charitable causes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Continuing the Creative Process During the Pandemic with Ida Darvish and Josh Gad

In the midst of a year that saw pandemic disease, social unrest, and bare-knuckled politics, Hollywood churned out a tremendous body of work—even while theaters closed and films created for the big screen streamed directly to our homes.  Pete Hammond says this year’s Academy Awards reflect the issues facing Americans. Hammond is currently Chief Film Critic for Deadline Hollywood, where he has been the Awards Columnist, covering the seemingly year-round Oscar and Emmy seasons, for the past seven years.  For the past eight years, he has been Awards Editor and Columnist for Deadline and previously covered a similar column for the Los Angeles Times.  He has also served as a frequent contributor to Variety and as a film critic for Boxoffice magazine, Backstage magazine, Maxim magazine and Movieline.  He is in his seventeenth year as host of the “KCET Cinema Series” in Los Angeles, and UCLA extension’s “Sneak Preview” for the past ten years.  He also hosts the TV series, “Must See Movies,” which showcases classic films every Friday night and Saturday afternoon on KCET.  He is the recipient of five Emmy nominations for his television writing and is the winner of the 1996 Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award.  He is the second journalist in the organization’s 50-year history to receive the award twice, winning again in 2013.  He also served on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences representing writers for six years. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Covering the 2021 Academy Awards with Pete Hammond

Stories from the Second World War continue to educate, fascinate, and even entertain audiences around the world. Tim Gray tells those stories to educate a new generation about the horrors of war and the heroism of the generation that saved the free world. Gray is a national award-winning documentary film director, producer and writer who has produced and directed 17 documentary films on the personal stories of the World War II generation. His latest film is “Surrender on the USS Missouri,” which focuses on the individuals who served on the ship and witnessed the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, which ended World War II.  All of Gray’s films air nationally on American Public Television and globally in China, Australia, France and England.  In 2012, his World War II Foundation dedicated the Richard D. Winters Leadership Monument in Normandy, France, honoring American leadership on D-Day and approved by the late Major Richard D. Winters of WWII’s Band of Brothers.  The foundation oversaw all the fundraising for the thirteen-foot statue and organized the dedication event in France, attended by the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Gov. Tom Ridge. Prior to documentary film making, Gray worked as a television sports and news anchor and reporter for over fifteen years in U.S. markets including Michigan, Washington State, Florida, New York and Rhode Island. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Telling the Stories of the Greatest Generation with Tim Gray

Some call it climate change, others call it a crisis, and still others call it a hoax.  Dr. Michael Oppenheimer tells us to take seriously the impact climate change will have in all of our lives. Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), the Department of Geosciences, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University.  He is the Director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) at SPIA and Faculty Associate of the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Oppenheimer joined the Princeton faculty after more than two decades with The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a non-governmental, environmental organization, where he served as chief scientist and manager of the Climate and Air Program.  He continues to serve as a science advisor to EDF.  He has authored over 200 articles published in professional journals and is co-author, with Robert H. Boyle, of a 1990 book, Dead Heat: The Race Against The Greenhouse Effect. He is co-author of the book Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy, published in 2020 by the University of Chicago Press.  Oppenheimer is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, most recently serving as a Coordinating Lead Author on IPCC’s Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate in 2019 and as a Review Editor on the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Addressing our Changing Climate with Michael Oppenheimer

Anybody on social media has seen it: dueling posts, arguing over a hot political issue. The protagonists in these online debates are generally sincere in their convictions, but Vanessa Otero says that too many of us remain unaware of the media biases that shape our understanding of the world. Otero is the creator of the Media Bias Chart®, the viral image that rates news organizations on their reliability and degree of political bias in their work and maps them accordingly.  The chart prompted lively discussions about where people get their news when it was published.  She is the CEO of Ad Fontes Media, the company she founded in 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the Chart—the need for an easy-to-understand, reliable news rating system.  Otero seeks to impact the way consumers, educators, and organizations deal with today’s complex media landscape through her work at Ad Fontes Media.  She is a practicing patent attorney and earned her J.D. from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Untangling News-Media Bias with Vanessa Otero

“Story in the Public Square” is a year-round initiative to study and celebrate public storytelling. It features an annual conference, lectures, awards and student contests, as well as original scholarship about public storytelling and how those stories can affect the public debate. Story in the Public Square is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal, and is directed by visiting fellow G. Wayne Miller with Pell Center executive director Jim Ludes.

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Story in the Public Square

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