Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
Leading up to each Viewpoints Radio program, every story is carefully selected and thoroughly researched to provide candid insight from the nation’s foremost experts. Through skillful copywriting and masterful studio production, the one-of-a-kind show covers timely topics aired to millions of listeners each week.
In an era dominated by keyboards, it is easy to think handwriting is a skill of the past. But are we shortchanging our brains by abandoning this ability? Our guests this week explore the critical cognitive benefits of handwriting and discuss how the physical act of writing by hand significantly boosts literacy, memory retention, and idea generation.
Location sharing can feel like a simple safety net, but we look at what happens when “peace of mind” turns into constant, obsessive monitoring. From parents tracking young adult children to couples sharing this real-time info, we explore how this technology can protect, pressure or slowly erode trust depending on how it’s used.
We look at how prison meals shape punishment, dignity and health while incarcerated, and how what’s served on a tray can affect a prisoner’s life long after release.
Inside one Texas hospital, a pattern emerges: too few staff, unsafe conditions and profit over people. What’s happening here points to a broader crisis - nurses across the U.S. being pushed to the brink and leaving their workplace or the profession itself. We cover the story of one nurse and how this affects patient care and outcomes.
For generations, the starter home was the first real step into the American dream. Now, with prices climbing, inventory shrinking and builders incentivized to go bigger, we look at how that first rung of homeownership has moved out of reach for many first-time buyers.
For nearly a century, the diamond trade has carved up the coastlines of South Africa and Namibia, turning remote communities into mining towns and workers into the engine of a luxury industry most will never benefit from. We look at the human and environmental cost behind natural diamonds, from dangerous labor and low pay to what’s left behind after the …
The world of youth sports can be incredibly taxing. Strenuous practices, hefty investments and increasingly selective teams can add up to parents pushing their kids to the brink. We speak with Rich Cohen, a longtime hockey dad, about the modern pressures of competitive sports and why some parents seem to end up caring more about winning than their child …
Imagine being born into slavery in the South. You don’t have a dime to your name, don’t have any education and all you know are the surrounding fields of the plantation you worked on for years or decades. What would you do after the abolishment of slavery? How would you start over? Historian Richard Cahan joins us this week to share a few of the firsthand …
Driverless cars are no longer a futuristic experiment but are already picking up passengers in cities across the country. We look at how the fast expanding rideshare company Waymo works| why some people trust it more than human drivers and the questions that remain as autonomous vehicles become part of everyday life.
After the sudden death of her daughter, journalist Danielle Crittenden found herself questioning nearly everything she thought she knew about grief. We explore what loss and grief look like when it doesn’t follow any sort of timeline.
Political comedy used to feel like a shared national pressure valve, but it feels far more fractured now. This story looks at how satire is changing in Trump’s second term and why the freedom to mock people in power still matters beyond the punchline.
Plastic may feel like a problem of personal habits, but this story pulls the lens back to the industry that keeps making more of it. Journalist Beth Gardiner explains how disposable plastic became one of Big Oil’s biggest future bets and why so much of the cost lands far from the companies that profit from it.
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