Roundup

Missing A Masterpiece? Call FBI's Art Crime Team [audio 5 min 6 sec]

Before Robert Wittman came along, the FBI treated stolen art in the same way it treated any ordinary property crime. But Wittman, a former FBI agent, saw art crime as different from a car theft or a bank robbery; it wasn't perpetrated by your average thief, and it wasn't sold to your run-of-the-mill fence or pawnbroker. "It has got a different group of people involved in it," Wittman says. "You have to have some knowledge of what has been taken in order to determine w

Reza: Bearing Witness To War And Peace [audio 10 min 7 sec]

Reza Deghati is considered among the world's great photojournalists. He has traveled the globe for nearly 30 years, bearing witness to wars, unrest, great leaders and the courage of ordinary people trapped by history. He has won countless awards, working for publications such as National Geographic, Newsweek and Time. Reza's latest book, Reza War and Peace: A Photographer's Journey, is a retrospective of that work, drawing on his own tale of exile and giving voice to t

Archeologist Zahi Hawass Unlocks the Secrets of Egypt [video 28 minutes 43 seconds]

Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass discusses his work using "science to reconstruct history" in uncovering the mysteries of the pyramids, identifying mummies, and excavating the Valley of the Kings.

From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Navy [podcast]

Chair of The New England Quarterly Board of Directors, Bill Fowler and David Naumec, author of "From Mashantucket to Appomattox: The Native American Veterans of Connecticut's Volunteer Regiments and the Union Army," was published in the December 2008 issue of the journal. The conversation was recorded at the MIT Press on December 12, 2008.

A Colonial Dame: My brief, inspiring career as a historical re-enactor [video 4 min 39 sec]

The reigning fantasy in many girlhoods is that of becoming a princess, presiding over a palace, dressing in satin, wielding a scepter. I always imagined myself as a settler, sitting by a cozy fireside, dressing in homespun, wielding knitting needles. So the tiny one-room, wood-beamed farmhouse at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a living history site set in 1771, with its dirt floor, hearth, table, spinning wheel, and sleeping loft, sent me back both to this country's beginnings and my own—it was

Belafonte Puts Rev. King's Notes Up For Auction [audio 3 min 56 sec]

Three unusual documents associated with the Rev. Martin Luther King are up for auction at Sotheby's in New York City. Most of King's papers are now in the hands of King's alma mater, Morehouse College. A couple of years ago, the city of Atlanta bought those papers — more than 10,000 documents. But the actor and singer Harry Belafonte had several other documents in his possession, and he recently decided to auction them and donate the money to "help the disenfranc

The 60th anniversary of the UN declaration of human rights [video 3 min 30 sec]

As the UDHR turns 60, Amnesty supporters and staff talk about what human rights mean to them.

Opera Lovers Celebrate 150 Years of Puccini [audio 7 min 53 sec]

This December marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of legendary Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini. DW-RADIO takes a look at the man who's come to be synonymous with opera.

Thomas Jefferson's Plan to Fix the Economy [video 1 min 58 sec]

National Book Award winner Annette Gordon-Reed on why Jeffersonian hated banks.

A Civil Rights March To Inauguration Day Begins [audio 5 min 59 sec]

Between now and the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, we'll be exploring the civil rights milestones that marked the path to the White House. NPR News Analyst Juan Williams, who has written and commented extensively on civil rights, joins host Liane Hansen for the first of a series of conversations.

For Japanese Soldier, The War Went On [audio 6 min 9 sec]

For Japanese Soldier, The War Went On — Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese surrendered four years later, but Japanese soldiers captured by the Russians in Manchuria were held as prisoners for more than five years after World War II. More than 500,000 Japanese soldiers were taken to Soviet penal camps and forced into slave labor. Independent producer Robert Rand tells the tale of one of the surviving Japanese soldiers.

Frost And Nixon, Clashing For The Cameras [audio 4 min 1 sec]

There was something centrally disreputable about the Frost-Nixon interviews back in 1977. The former president had resigned in disgrace after the Watergate scandal, but because he received a pardon from his successor in the Oval Office, he never stood trial or admitted wrongdoing — until three years later, when he broke his public silence on Watergate in interviews with British talk-show host David Frost.

Darwin Voyage to Rio Retraced [video 2 min 34 sec]

Stunned by slavery and "the glories of the vegetation of the tropics," Charles Darwin explored Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state in 1832-a voyage now being retraced with the help of one of his great-great-grandsons.

The Human Button [radio show 40 min]

Historian Prof Peter Hennessy speaks to the people who have operated Britain's nuclear deterrent over the years and today, including military commanders, politicians and former Vulcan bomber crew members. He visits Northwood, the headquarters from which the order to fire would come today, and Corsham, the secret nuclear bunker which, in the 1960s, would have been the location for an alternative government in the event of all-out war.

Venice Underwater [video 32 sec]

Flood waters in the Italian city rose to the highest since 1986.

Ariel, Wa.: Whatever Happened To D.B .Cooper? [audio 3 min 56 sec]

There were celebrations over the weekend in rural Ariel, Wash., to recall the country's most famous unsolved hijacking. Thirty-seven years ago, a man known as D.B. Cooper seized a jetliner, received a ransom and parachuted out somewhere over southwest Washington. He disappeared along with most of the $200,000 in cash.

Mexico's 1968 Massacre: What Really Happened? [audio 22 min 48 sec]

In the summer of 1968, Mexico was experiencing the birth of a new student movement. But that movement was short-lived. On Oct. 2, 1968, 10 days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops shot into a crowd of unarmed students. Thousands of demonstrators fled in panic as tanks bulldozed over Tlatelolco Plaza.

Pressing the nuclear button [video 2 min 55 sec]

In a corner of Wiltshire - deep underneath the Cotswolds - is a network of tunnels and rooms that would have housed the British government in the 1960s in the event of a nuclear attack. The dark and dusty underground complex near Corsham has remained relatively untouched since the height of the Cold War. But if the crucial moment had come - would ministers have pressed the UK's nuclear button? Here, historian Professor Peter Hennessy tours the Corsham bu

LINCOLN, EMANCIPATION, AND THE RIGHTS OF BLACK AMERICANS [34min 5sec]

Professor Eric Foner argues that the idea of sending African American slaves to colonize Africa (an idea which Abraham Lincoln at times embraced) was part of the larger idea of emancipation for American slaves, but it did not allow its supporters to consider how freed slaves might become part of American society. It was Lincoln’s consideration of this very issue, Foner says, that distinguishes him from other advocates of emancipation.

Origins of the Thanksgiving Holiday [video 2 min 3 sec]

Thanksgiving, a day of feasting, football and floats. It's also a day that wouldn't exsist if not for the author of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb.' Sarah Josepha Hale was a 19th century writer who believed that America needed an annual holiday for all Americans to collectively give thanks.