Into the Heart of a Revolution

This week two crazy journalists and audio fanatics joined forces to launch a campaign to get to Egypt and Tunisia this fall. The goal is to hear from the artists, the heart and soul of a culture that is much bigger and more complicated then the sound-byte size version we got from the 24 hour news networks last year.

To better explain the hows and whys of our bold new project, Christopher Lydon joins me to discuss our kickstarter campaign “Arab Artists in a Revolution”.  A dream we are in the process of making a reality, one which we hope you will support by donating to our campaign. (And thanks to those who already have!)

Once again, our kickstarter campaign, click, support, spread the word!

ctrp366 Violence Against Women in the Military

Photo via John LaskerAn alarming number of women are dying non-combat deaths in the US military.  When families try to find out why, they are prevented from getting that information.  The US military doesn’t want to explain the details of how and why many of their female soldiers have died. In some cases they won’t even release the bodies or body parts to grieving loved ones.

John Lasker is an investigative reporter based in the state of Ohio in the US.  He has been writing and researching this issue in an effort to get the details that have been kept from families and the issue of sexual violence against women in the military.

Beyond what John has been investigating, we also talk about how he publishes his articles. Namely his use of a new type of crowd funded journalism web portal, spot.us. We get into the familiar topics of the future of journalism, especially the critical investigative type that has almost vanished from traditional media publications.

Besides the links above to John’s work, he is also the author of the book Tech Noir,  available now as an ebook.