Scene on Radio
A documentary podcast from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University
Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University · Scene on Radio
Show overview
Scene on Radio has been publishing since 2015, and across the 11 years since has built a catalogue of 144 episodes, alongside 4 trailers or bonus episodes. That works out to roughly 90 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a monthly cadence, with the show now in its 7th season.
Episodes typically run thirty-five to sixty minutes — most land between 24 min and 51 min — though episode length varies meaningfully from one episode to the next. It is catalogued as a EN-US-language Society & Culture show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 2 weeks ago, with 17 episodes already out so far this year. The busiest year was 2024, with 22 episodes published.
From the publisher
Scene on Radio is a two-time Peabody-nominated podcast that dares to ask big, hard questions about who we are—really—and how we got this way. Our latest is Season 7, Scene on Radio: Capitalism. Previous series include Seeing White (Season 2), looking at the roots and meaning of white supremacy; MEN (Season 3), on patriarchy and its history; The Land That Never Has Been Yet (Season 4), exploring democracy in the U.S. and why we don’t have more of it; The Repair (Season 5), on the cultural roots of the climate crisis; and Season 6, Echoes of a Coup, the story of the only successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. Produced and hosted by John Biewen, with collaborators, Scene on Radio comes from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. The show is distributed by PRX.
Latest Episodes
View all 144 episodesGuest Episode: The Battle for Free Speech
First America: It Happened Here
First America: Playing Indian
First America: "Merciless Indian Savages"
S8 E8: Making Media Democratic
S8 E7: Can We Blame the Media For THIS?
S8 E6: What Could Have Been
S8 E5: Follow the Money
S8 E4: What About Us
S8 E3: About that Liberal Media
S8 E2: When the News Dies
S8 E1: The Myth of the Echo Chamber
Introducing Scene on Radio: The News
Guest Episode: Drilled: Carbon Cowboys
Guest Episode: Master Plan: The Kingmakers
Guest Episode: More Muslim
Proxy: Nicole Can't Stop Being Aggro
A guest episode from the podcast Proxy: Nicole is an organizer who's good at channeling her anger. The trouble is she can't always downshift -- or even allow herself to feel sad about the problems she's fighting against. That doesn't seem healthy. Maybe it'll help if Nicole can talk with someone who's been there -- years before, in a movement Nicole idolizes. With Proxy host Yowei Shaw. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Historical Maturity and Cowardice: Keeping ScOR #15
Host John Biewen reads an essay from his newsletter, Keeping ScOR. After a visit to his hometown, Mankato, Minnesota -- the subject of the Scene on Radio episode, "Little War on the Prairie" -- John reflects on the changes there and America's latest assault on history. Music by goodnight, Lucas. To read see the Keeping ScOR newsletter archive or subscribe to receive it, go here: https://buttondown.com/KeepingScOR#subscribe-form Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders
We're sharing an episode from another podcast that asks big questions about who we are and how we got here: The Alabama Murders, a new series by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast. Entangled in an affair with a parishioner, a Northwest Alabama minister made a devastating choice. Eventually, the consequences led to the center of a hot national debate about who should be allowed to live, who should die, and how the state should kill them. Malcolm asks: why, in our efforts to alleviate suffering, do we so often make it worse? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Voices of Hiroshima
A rebroadcast of a Scene on Radio episode, eighty years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The word “Hiroshima” may bring to mind a black-and-white image of a mushroom cloud. It’s easy to forget that it’s an actual city with a million people and a popular baseball team. What did the cataclysm of 1945 mean in the place where it happened, to the people who lived through it? John Biewen went to Hiroshima and interviewed A-bomb survivors in 1995. “Voices of Hiroshima” is a production of Minnesota Public Radio, from American Public Media. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices