NPR: Hearing Voices Podcast

The Life and Times of Solidod Woods, the last remaining member of her village of Mescalero Apache who lived on the edge of Death Valley.

The voices of people who were or are homeless: Carmen Delzell takes "Crazy John" into her home. Scott Carrier spends a night in DC "Gospel Mission" shelter. The "Land of 10,000 Homeless" is a Minneapolis music/audio documentary project. Dmae Roberts interviews a young homeless girl in "Miracle on the Streets." The Homeless Writers Coalition performs poetry put to music. Homeless people tell their stories to StoryCorps. And the Kitchen Sisters visit with street and low-income people whose main ...

In December 1944 the Allies were closing in on Germany. HHitler had a desperate plan to save the Third Reich, a massive assault he believed would so demoralize that the Allies, they would seek a separate peace, leaving only the Russian army on the eastern front. On December 16 the Germans unleashed an offensive that would become the most brutal battle of the European war: the Battle of the Bulge. Nineteen thousand Americans were killed, about the same number were taken prisoner. We hear from four Amer...

In May 2012, Soundwalk Collective traveled into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon to document the ancient chanting rituals of the Ayahuasquero, the Master Shaman and practitioner of plant medicine. The shaman consumes a potent brew made from the Ayahuasca, a sacred vine of the Amazonian jungle, the "vine of the souls". The brew induces a powerful psychedelic experience that causes visual and auditory hallucinations. This hour we present a radio essay by anthropologist Jeremy Narby, a impressionistic ...

A tribute to the composer on his 100th birthday: We listen in on a 1942 John Cage radio play, "The City Wears a Slouch Hat." We have a vox-pop asking "Who's John Cage?"; an audio illustration by Jay Allison of a "John Cage and Merce Cunningham" collaboration; an excerpt from the film "John Cage: Ecoute (Listen)"; and, from the series Echoes, "Thoughts in Sound: John Cage- Imaginary Landscapes." Laurie Anderson and Ken Nordine offer homages to the composer. And we hear Cage's "In a Landscape,...

Producer Scott Carrier's wife learned early, in her "Swimming Lessons," to skim beautifully across the water. The National Track and Field Hall of Fame commissioned sound-artist Ben Rubin to make audio art from interviews with athletes, who tell themselves "We Believe We Are Invincible." Like many gay men, Mark Allan, didn't appreciate "Football," until the day he watched and learned. Producer Katie Davis kept a "Basketball Diary" as she coached the kids in her downtown DC team, part of her ...

Self-propelled travels: We walk five thousand miles with a Fanatic Reactionary Pedestrian. We pedal thru Yellowstone and Teton Parks. And we trek with the Queen of Bhutan to remote villages, promoting what-they-call Gross National Happiness. ("The Queen's Trek" is an Outer Voices production — they were first foreign journalists allowed to accompany a Bhutanese monarch on the trek, and the first to interview the Queen.)

A tour of our nation's First Nations: NPR's Alex Chadwick rides into the Bitterroot Mountains with Natives and Forest Service workers. We paddle the Pacific Coast with the Canoe Nations of the Northwest. And native poets Henry Real Bird, Joy Harjo, John Trudell and Keith Secola sing us the stories of their homes and ancestors.

In "Enola Alone" Antenna Theater interviews bomber pilots, bombing victims, and Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay. Political speeches and popular songs chart our changing attitudes towards the "Atomic Age." Residents recall the 1950s Nevada and Utah nuclear bomb tests in Claes Andreasson series "Downwinder Diaries." Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti has "Wild Dreams of a New Beginning." Americans across the country answer Scott Carrier's question: "What Are You Afraid Of?" The band Lemo...

Practicing polygamy, finding pockets of Polynesian Mormons, and converting the lost Native-American Israelites: "Saints and Indians," a Homelands Production, on the Latter-Day Saints school for Navaho children — restoring their original place as the lost Kingdom of Isreal. A "Utah Luau" with displaced Hawaiians. And Scott Carrier's sound-portrait of the "Last Days" plural marriage sects of Manti, Utah.