NSR promotes world healing by broadcasting inspirational and educational voices of peace and social justice using the language of personal story, music, and spirituality.

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Our guest-hosts today are Peterson Toscano & Elise Silvestra of Citizen's Climate Radio, bringing together voices exploring how emotional honesty, sound, and art can open pathways from climate despair to collective action. Guests include Kate Schapira, a writer and educator from Rhode Island who has run the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth, inviting people to share their fears and hopes about the climate crisis since 2014.

President Trump has been wreaking havoc in so many corners of our country, including the disruption caused by his executive order to dismantle all DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) programs throughout the country. Harvard has been the most prominent school to refuse the order, causing joy & celebration among many. Today we're talking with John Bach about Harvard's policies and ethics from his perspective as a Harvard chaplain. As a Quaker, John's credentials are experiential instead of academic or educational, including his work with the Civil Rights movement, his time in prison as a draft refuser, and his work as a house painter.

Most of the time it is the top officials in an organization who are interviewed to learn about & understand the group, but today we're exploring The Sierra Club from the ground up. Paul Wagner has been very active with The Sierra Club for over forty years, connecting at the local, Chippewa Valley level, within the state of Wisconsin, and also nationally. Paul walks us through the club, its way of functioning, and the kind of work it accomplishes, including through its volunteer vacations, service trips with an Earth-connecting core.

I first interviewed Tim Case early in 2024, after the release of his Great Big Moon EP, a reemergence of his music after more than a decade on the back-burner, but then he turned right around and released his new album, House of Mirrors, just recently.

We've had Annie Patterson as a guest many times on NSR programs, but today we're going full-spectrum on Annie. She's known by many as a folk singer and the co-creator of the group singing songbooks, Rise Up Singing and Rise Again, but she also performs a variety of music genres like swing, blues, soul, gospel and more with groups like Dear Ella and Girls from Mars, and others. We're headed to Amherst, MA, to visit with the full-spectrum Annie Patterson.

Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Methodist, Quaker

We've got a very different experience for you today and it's called shape-note singing, or sometimes sacred harp singing. Our guest, Jim Page (or James Page when in print) gives us a rich taste-test of this venerable tradition of American religious singing for laypersons. I've only been around shape-note singing a couple times, and I have to admit that what you'll hear today is only a faint echo of the music experienced in person. Jim, by the way, has written his own shape-note songs, included in the 2 music books he's written which you can find via this site by searching James Page. Though he won't be sharing any of his own songs today, you can contact Jim to learn more.

In this month’s Citizens’ Climate Radio episode, host Peterson Toscano and the CCR teams introduce a fresh approach to climate change storytelling by exploring personal stories as metaphors. While these stories are not explicitly about climate change, they reveal truths and perspectives that resonate with our climate work. Join us to discover how personal narratives can enhance and diversify our stories about climate change. You will also learn expert storytelling tips to apply when telling stories about climate change. 

In this episode of Citizens’ Climate Radio, hosts Horace Mo and Erica Valdez bring together diverse voices to discuss current efforts to address climate change. Horace Mo speaks with Ann E. Burg, a celebrated author known for compelling historical novels for young readers, about her newly published novel, “Force of Nature–A Novel of Rachel Carson,“ which opens a new door for readers to experience the life of Carson, a well-known environmental pioneer in the U.S., by reading her field notes and Ann’s innovative writing.

In this month’s Citizens’ Climate Radio episode, Rob Hopkins, one of the founders of the Transition Town movement, shows us how playful imagination can lead to real-world solutions, and you will discover how a life-sized whale made of plastic bags brought a community together to pass groundbreaking legislation. Artist Carrie Ziegler shares her extraordinary project that mobilized hundreds of schoolchildren to make a powerful statement about plastic pollution. In the Nerd Corner, Dana Nuccitelli tackles the big question: is a carbon price still effective in a post-Inflation Reduction Act world?