Home of the Brave
128 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1.1K ratingsHome of the Brave: new and old stories from "This American Life" contributor Scott Carrier.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Alan Chin Is Back From Ukraine
March 21, 2022 18:42 - 26.7 MBA photo-journalist's account of the first days of the war in Ukraine.
End of Season Two
February 08, 2021 14:50 - 1.46 MBI'm going to take a break for awhile, at least until the pandemic is over. Thanks very much for your support and letters. I will be back with more stories soon.
A Photographer's Account of the Insurrection
January 11, 2021 21:07 - 26.5 MBAlan Chin describes what it was like at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.
How Much Time Has Gone By: Part Two
December 31, 2020 14:36 - 25.3 MBPart Two of a trip across the country two months before the 2020 election.
How Much Time Has Gone By: Part One
December 06, 2020 21:44 - 35.9 MBInterviews from a road trip across the country.
Culture War: War Zone
October 15, 2020 16:30 - 2.74 MBThe seventh and final report from a long trip across the country before the 2020 Presidential Election.
Culture War: Home of the Blues
October 05, 2020 16:37 - 10.6 MBThe sixth report from a long trip across the country.
Culture War: St. Louis
September 28, 2020 00:03 - 7.02 MBThe fifth report from a long trip across the country.
Culture War: Creeped Out
September 22, 2020 01:05 - 14.5 MBThe fourth report from a long trip across the country.
Culture War: Standing Rock
September 18, 2020 18:11 - 11.3 MBThird report from a long road trip across the country.
Culture War: Trump Country
September 14, 2020 02:24 - 21 MBSecond report from a long trip across the country.
Culture War: Introduction
September 08, 2020 15:27 - 7.42 MBA new series of reports from a long trip across the country.
The Round River
August 09, 2020 21:16 - 12 MBI went fishing in some beautiful mountains I first visited in 1968 when I was a Boy Scout. When I was older, we took our kids there so they could see it as well. It’s still very beautiful, but things have changed due to global warming.
Time To Get My News From A River
July 05, 2020 19:48 - 7.8 MBMy thinking is off, my approach is wrong...time to go fishing.
Coming To Ground
June 04, 2020 17:31 - 24.8 MBI recorded these interviews with my family two weeks ago, before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis. Now they seem unimportant, like from another era. Except that in my family it’s the younger folk who have been mostly fucked by the virus pandemic, and it’s been young people, mostly, who’ve been out on the streets protesting. I hope their efforts lead to real change in our society. Donate
Coming to Ground: Introduction
May 22, 2020 17:03 - 5.43 MBFollowing the news is like watching a competition for the worst case scenario and I’ve grown weary of all the blaming and shaming. Now we can’t trust anyone, not even ourselves. But at some point we’re going to have to come together in order to survive. I’m working on a story where I interview people in my family about how they’re coping with the pandemic. Not everyone is doing well, and it’s pretty emotional for me, so I need to take some more time putting it together. In the meantime,...
The Neighborhood
May 01, 2020 16:47 - 22.2 MBIt seems more of us are paying attention to our neighborhoods lately, so perhaps this is a good time to replay this story, produced in 1988. I still live in the same neighborhood, but it feels different now. It’s like there was a tall tree in my front yard but now the tree is gone and only a stump remains. I am stumped. I used to depend on trust—standing or sitting close to strangers and holding a microphone less than a foot from their faces. Now that’s not going to happen again for a while...
Echo People by Trent Harris
April 10, 2020 01:33 - 11.2 MBMy friend Trent Harris has a problem caused by the coronavirus. It’s not a big problem compared to a lot of other things that have come up recently, like the possible collapse of the economy and thousands of people dying. Trent’s problem is more like a temporary embarrassment. Basically, his reputation is on the line. Donate Swackhamma tells Harvey a secret. Echo People Episode One on You Tube. Echo People Episode Two on You Tube. Trent Harris’ website is called the Echo Cave. Her...
Our Show by Erica Heilman
March 28, 2020 19:10 - 21.1 MBShana from Achterarder, Scotland. My friend Erica Heilman has a podcast called Rumblestrip. She drives around Vermont and talks to people about their lives. Last week she was sitting at home, like everybody, trying to figure out what to do, and she decided to ask her listeners to send her audio recordings of what and how they’re doing under self isolation. A lot of people responded, quickly, and within a couple days Erica posted the first episode of a series she’s calling Our Show. If yo...
The Dry Wall
March 17, 2020 17:58 - 9.43 MBThis story was originally broadcast on All Things Considered in 1993. The ground was shifting under my feet back then and I had to figure out what to do. Now it’s shifting again, this time everybody’s in it together. There are things we can do, stories to tell, that can make us feel better. Thanks for listening and supporting this show. Donate
Anti-War Stories: Adrienne Kinne and Douglas Peacock
February 26, 2020 22:16 - 24.1 MBAdrienne Kinne just after basic training in 1994. Adrienne Kinne, 2020 I should confess that I have a personal interest in listening to veterans talk about how they recover from war. I was never in the military, but I spent some time overseas as a war correspondent for Esquire, Harper’s, and Mother Jones magazines. I was never in a battle or close to a bomb going off. I saw the aftermath—bodies on the ground, neighborhoods turned to rubble, people silent and in shock. The main thing I hav...
Anti-War Stories: Elliot Woods
February 12, 2020 23:33 - 25.6 MBElliot Woods as a soldier in Iraq, 2004 Today I have a conversation with Elliot Woods, a veteran who is also a very fine writer. He served a year as a combat engineer in northern Iraq. Then he came home and went to school at the University of Virginia, graduating with a degree in English literature. He thought about staying in school and becoming a professor, but he decided he wanted to go back to war, this time as a journalist. Check out Elliot’s website. Donate Elliot Woods as a jou...
Anti-War Stories: Elliott Woods
February 12, 2020 23:33 - 25.6 MBElliott Woods as a soldier in Iraq, 2004 Today I have a conversation with Elliott Woods, a veteran who is also a very fine writer. He served a year as a combat engineer in northern Iraq. Then he came home and went to school at the University of Virginia, graduating with a degree in English literature. He thought about staying in school and becoming a professor, but he decided he wanted to go back to war, this time as a journalist. Check out Elliott’s website. Donate Elliott Woods as...
Anti-War Stories: Garett Reppenhagen
February 02, 2020 17:49 - 23.2 MBGarett Reppenhagen in Iraq, 2004 I believe that sometime in the future, sooner or later, people in the United States will admit and accept that we have lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and demand that our troops be brought back home. Now we are in denial, which is dangerous because when you’re in denial you keep making the same mistake over and over again. I believe we need to talk about what we’ve done, the mistakes we’ve made, the crimes we’ve committed in order to move from denial ...
Interview in Amsterdam
January 17, 2020 19:00 - 47.3 MBLast spring I was invited to speak at the Oorzaken Audio Festival in Amsterdam. I remember seeing leaves come out on the trees along the canals and tulips blooming on the bridges. The first night I was there i was interviewed on stage at the Torpedo Theater by the hosts of the Podcastclub, a Dutch podcast hosted by Lieven Heeremans and Misha Melita. This time I’m the one answering the questions. Donate
The Wordshaker
January 03, 2020 17:13 - 4.37 MBHis real name is Alissandru Francesco Caldiero, born into the old world on the island of Sicily, he came to the U.S. on a boat when he was nine years old, sailing past the Statue of Liberty. When I first met him, nearly 30 years later, he was screaming a Dada poem at a sandstone wall in southern Utah—repeating the same line, “This is not it,” over and over, faster and faster in a near epileptic seizure. In that moment our lives became intertwined. I think of this story as a song, a lament ...
Re-Play: The Rebel Yell
December 20, 2019 17:31 - 11.8 MBI’ve been in Armenia teaching a podcasting workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department. I think it went well, overall, and the students were exceptional. Perhaps I will write about it someday, but not now. I’ve come back to impeachment week before Christmas, a double whammy to go with my jet lag. So I’m going to re-play The Rebel Yell, a story about the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City, first podcast on this program in April of 2015. Music by the Icelandic group Mum (We H...
Encountering the Other, Part Three
November 22, 2019 20:18 - 24.7 MBMy operating hypothesis is that our cultural divide is a function of our oligarchic government. If a relatively few super-rich people control our wealth and power then it would be in their interest to keep the masses angry and blaming each other, fighting amongst themselves. In this way Donald Trump is a tool of the oligarchy, dividing us by twitters—so efficient and profitable and addicting—he incites fear of the other. So, if this is true, the most effective method of fighting oligarchi...
Encountering the Other, Part Two
October 26, 2019 01:51 - 19.1 MBI was driving around rural western Colorado, near the border with Utah, near where Jack Kerouac saw a vision of God in the clouds that looked like Pooh Bear. I was looking for people I was a little afraid of—Republicans, Trump supporters—and there on the side of the highway were three signs that made me think I was in the right place. Music: Main Theme, Soundtrack for To Kill A Mockingbird by Elmer Bernstein Donate
Encountering the Other
October 03, 2019 21:21 - 25.4 MBIt’s not easy for me to walk up to people and ask if they want to be interviewed for my podcast. I’m afraid they will think I’m a fool, or an idiot, or be suspicious of the whole thing—fake news, etc. But on this trip, more often than not, it was other people who came up to me. Pretty much everybody wanted to talk about the cultural divide. Donate
Fund Drive
September 13, 2019 00:29 - 27.6 MBYellowstone Lake, August 2019 This show is a request for funding, a responsibility for which I am ill-suited. I’m not interested in marketing and promotion. I’m opposed to advertising. I’m against monetizing my product. I don’t want my stories to go viral, I want them to go fungal like the underground network of mycorrhizal fibers that connect the roots of trees and plants in a forest, sharing food and information, a natural internet of physical connections on a cellular level. I’d rathe...
The Life and Times of Solidod
August 23, 2019 20:17 - 45 MBSolidod in Bozeman, Montana, 2012. Photo by Jake Warga. Larry met Solidod by chance, or happenstance. He happened to be in Florida on vacation and he happened to be walking through an apartment complex in Vero Beach looking for another guy and he ended up meeting Solidod. She invited him into her apartment and then she told him her life story and they became friends. Shortly after that, Larry and Solidod went into a recording studio and made this story for Hearing Voices. Solidod in the r...
The Strait of Hormuz
August 10, 2019 18:41 - 20.5 MBI wanted to see the place where a war between the United States and Iran may begin. It turned out people over there couldn’t talk to me on tape because they live in countries without a tradition of free speech and they all feel they are being watched, and I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. So this is a travelogue, a story about what it’s like to be there. The psychedelic Persian Gulf surf music is by Hayvanlar Alemi (he’s actually from Turkey). Here’s the link to his website. Do...
Alan Chin--Photographer
July 09, 2019 20:55 - 26.6 MBAlan Chin talks about his experience covering wars since 9/11.
Let's Talk About Not Going To War
June 23, 2019 18:00 - 16.8 MBFor the solstice, the sun tunnels in the West Desert of Utah. Stories about going to war come from the top down, from media corporations that manufacture consent for war among the people. Stories about not going to war move from the bottom up, starting in conversations between family and friends, people speaking out for no money but just because they feel obligated to speak. In this approach there’s a shift in context where fear is taken out of the narrative—we are not being attacked, mayb...
Dreamers by Joe Frank
May 31, 2019 00:07 - 13.9 MBMaybe like the Phoenix rising from the ashes following a drawing by M.S. Escher.
Getting Into Cars With Strangers
May 07, 2019 21:30 - 49 MBInterviews with taxi and ride share drivers from New Orleans to Jacksonville.
Some Spring Time Stories
April 16, 2019 20:47 - 30.3 MBI just got back from speaking at two radio conferences in Europe. I saw the leaves come out on the trees along the canals in Amsterdam. I woke up in Ireland next to a pasture with four wooly alpacas, one just a baby. I spent days talking about how podcasting works from the bottom up, forming a lattice of connections that reach around the skin of the earth. This is better than the top-down fear-mongering of the corporate media. I said these things with confidence, because of you. I get lette...
The Pacific Northwest Trail
March 14, 2019 15:28 - 24 MBThis is a story I produced last summer for The New Yorker Radio Hour. It’s about a controversy over one of the newest long-distance hiking trails in the United States. It was a difficult story to cover and explain, but I had excellent help from the NYRH producers and editors. I’d like to work for them again. Donate Ron Strickland, father of the Pacific Northwest Trail. The PNT crosses the Kootenai River Valley, north of Sandpoint, Idaho.
Warriors Zulu Nation Honduras
February 19, 2019 04:46 - 17.9 MBA day inside the gang-ridden community of Chamelecon, Honduras. Donate The ceiba tree in the park where the rap battle took place. Chamelecon, Honduras. The playing field under the tree. Rapper 23 is “Yosie,” who reads history for inspiration.
Honduras Part One: A New Caravan
January 20, 2019 19:03 - 5.41 MBAn introduction to a series about social conditions in Honduras
Tijuana
December 22, 2018 19:54 - 17.9 MBRuth Pena and her daughter, from El Salvador, at the beach in Tijuana. That’s the border wall in the background. Donate The outfield at the ball park in Tijuana. Near second base at the ball park in Tijuana. Scar from eight bullets on the thigh of one of the Honduran men. Leaving the ball park. Standing in line for breakfast outside the ball park. Inside one of the Evangelical refuges in the hills surrounding Tijuana. Outside one of the Evangelical refuges in the hills surroundi...
Across the Desert
December 12, 2018 18:16 - 12.8 MBA sticker on one of the steel columns of the border wall south of Las Cruces, NM. Donate Another sticker on the wall,south of Las Cruces. Katie Davis and Molly Molloy at the wall south of Las Cruces.
Casa del Migrante
December 04, 2018 19:47 - 10.1 MBJuana and Estela talk about why they left their homes in Guatemala to seek asylum in the United States.
No Solution
November 14, 2018 18:57 - 15.7 MBImmigrants crossing the border near Agua Prieta, Sonora, 2005. Photo by Julian Cardona. Welcome to Season Two of Home of the Brave. This is the first of a series about the US/Mexico border and the present immigration situation. For background, I replay an interview with Charles Bowden recorded just a couple hundred yards from the barbed wire fence separating the two countries in the spring of 2005. Donate Migrants from Mexico crossing into the United States at the Buenos Aires Nation...
End of Season One: A Walk On the Beach
May 08, 2018 15:01 - 24.2 MBI need to take a break so let's call this the end of season one. And I'd like to play the second story I produced for the show, an interview with Alex Chadwick. Thank you very much for your support. I'm going to turn off the subscription service (Pay Pal), but you can still donate and buy tee-shirts, tote bags, and patches. I hope to be back soon. Music: Slow Bicycle by Mum.
Rumble Strip: It's a Podcast
April 27, 2018 18:23 - 12.5 MBErica Heilman produces Rumble Strip from her home in Calais, Vermont. I like it because I never know what she's going to do next. This is a satire about modern life in America. Donate
Lick the Crickets by Larry Massett
April 18, 2018 16:17 - 25.3 MBCollage by Charles Hope From following the news lately I feel like I don't know who to believe or who to trust, like I don't know what's going on or why and things are only going to get worse and there's nothing I can do about it. In times like this maybe surrealistic poetry and Dada make more sense than realism. Donate Collage by Charles Hope
Bear's Ears, Part Six: Industrial Tourism
March 31, 2018 19:16 - 12.8 MBWhich is worse--a campground or an oil well? Donate