Take Note

Abdalaziz “Aziz” Alhamza is the co-founder and spokesperson for Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group of civilian journalists who worked to expose the crimes of ISIS in Raqqa, Syria.

We talked with Aziz about how life in Raqqa changed when ISIS came to power, why he continued this work despite increasing danger and what life is like in Raqqa today.

David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, and a former speechwriter for George W. Bush.  He's a conservative, a Republican, and a fierce critic of President Trump.  His latest book is "Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic," which is out in paperback on October 9th.  In the book, Frum talks about the factors that led to the rise of Donald Trump, and other leaders like him around the globe.

Frum spoke with WPSU while visiting Penn State for a talk at Penn State Law.

The opioid epidemic has been described as the worst public health crisis in Pennsylvania.

Jason Snyder has both professional and personal experience with the battle against addiction. He is currently the regional director of outpatient services in Eastern Pennsylvania for Pinnacle Treatment Centers. Snyder previously served in the Wolf administration, where he oversaw the Governor’s Centers of Excellence.

This interview is a part of the statewide Battling Opioids project.

After losing her sister to suicide in 2011, Marisa Vicere founded the Jana Marie Foundation in her sister’s honor.

The State College-based non-profit aims to educate and empower young people in the Centre County region and to build awareness about mental well-being and suicide prevention.

Vicere talked with WPSU during National Suicide Prevention Month about the foundation and her sister. 

Poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf and photojournalist Steven Rubin spent five years documenting Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania. The project became their new book, "Shale Play." 

We talked to them about what they’ve witnessed and how they decided to blend poetry and photography.

Jim and Evelyn Piazza ignited a national conversation about the dangers of hazing on college campuses after the death of their son Timothy in 2017.

The 19-year-old died from injuries sustained during alcohol hazing at the Penn State chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

The couple has turned their tragedy into action, starting a foundation in their son’s honor, advocating for stricter legislation and penalties for hazing, and calling for increased oversight and rule enforcement for fraternities and sororities.  

This interview originally aired on Feb. 9, 2018. Since then, the book won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction.  

"Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America" is a book that looks at how African American leaders–with the best intentions–made choices that eventually helped create mass incarceration.

Emmy Award-winning actor Jeff Daniels is known for his roles in movies like "Terms of Endearment," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," and "Dumb and Dumber" and for TV shows like "The News Room," "Godless," and "The Looming Tower."

He’s starred in a number of theatrical productions, both on and off Broadway, and was nominated for Tony Awards for his roles in "Blackbird" and "God of Carnage." Daniels founded The Purple Rose Theatre Company in his hometown of Chelsea, Michigan.

He’s also a prolific songwriter and musician. 

Dr. Roger Williams is the author of “Evan Pugh’s Penn State:  America’s Model Agricultural College.” It is the first book-length treatment of this mid-nineteenth century scientist-president who forged the nation’s first successful higher education institution dedicated to scientific agriculture -- what is now Penn State.

Williams served as Associate Vice President and Executive Director of the Penn State Alumni Association, the world’s largest, from 2003 to 2015 and as Affiliate Associate Professor in Penn State’s Higher Education Program.

“LEGO Grad Student” is an anonymous blogger who creates LEGO scenes paired with humorous, but dark, captions that depict the difficulty of graduate school. In one, a spiky-haired LEGO figure has a distressing meeting with his adviser; in another he sneaks into an event for the free food; and in most he goes through some form of existential crisis.

LEGO Grad Student’s work clearly resonates with others. He has seventy-five thousand followers on Facebook alone.

Charlene Teters is an artist, activist and educator whose artwork challenges the stereotypical portrayals of American Indians in American popular culture. She holds multiple degrees, including a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois, where her activism against the use of Native Americans as sports mascots first began. Teters is a member of the Spokane Nation and is the academic dean at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. WPSU’s Cheraine Stanford talked with her about her work. 

Brian Southwell is director of science in the public sphere at RTI International. We spoke with Southwell about communicating science, whether fact checking works and the idea behind his weekly radio show and podcast, “The Measure of Everyday Life.”  

This episode of Take Note is part of "State of Emergency: Searching for solutions to Pennsylvania’s opioids epidemic." State of Emergency is a combined effort of newsrooms across the state to draw attention to programs, therapies and strategies that are actually showing promise in the fight against this public health crisis.

Don Voigt is a retired a research associate for Penn State’s Ice and Climate Exploration group. During his career, he logged 18 seasons in Antarctica, seven in Greenland and two in Alaska. We’ll talk with him about his research with the Penn State Ice and Climate Exploration, his experiences at the ends of the earth, and his advice for aspiring scientists.  

Boaz Dvir is an American-Israeli award-winning filmmaker. His upcoming documentary, “Cojot,” tells the unknown story of Michel Cojot, a French man who played a pivotal role in a 1976 hostage rescue mission.

Previously, Dvir was a journalist and editor based in Florida. He now teaches documentary filmmaking and multimedia storytelling at Penn State’s College of Communications. WPSU's Min Xian talked to him about finding all the pieces to tell a story and the importance of passing down memories of the Holocaust.

From the first time Fred Rogers, known to his fans across generations as Mister Rogers, walked through that famous door and into our living rooms on February 19, 1968, his warmth, his kindness, and ability to talk to children on their level was television magic.

By changing from his dress shoes into sneakers and donning one of his many cardigan sweaters–each knitted by his mother–welcoming us as he fed the fish, Mister Rogers made us feel that he was talking directly to us when we were children. 

In State College in the late 1950s, she was a rarity: a progressive, a business owner, and a woman.

Mimi Barash Coppersmith celebrates her 85th birthday with a newly published memoir, "Eat First, Cry Later: The Life Lessons Of A First-Generation College Graduate, Penn State Alumna and a Female CEO." It recounts 48 life lessons drawn from an exceptional life brimming with triumphs and tragedies. She talked with Patty Satalia for WPSU's Take Note. 

Karen Washington is a community activist and the co-owner of Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York. She’s been working to improve city living and promote urban farming since 1985.

WPSU's Lindsey Whissel Fenton talked with her about the importance of access to fresh, quality food, about some of the challenges facing 21st century farmers, and about getting community projects off the ground.

What we consume is directly linked to our health and it's been that way for a long time. Consider the phrase, "You are what you eat." Or think about the term: "Junk Food."

But what about your media diet? Can TV actually be good for you? Dr. Robin Nabi of UC Santa Barbara thinks so.

WPSU's Bill Hallman talked to her about that and her 20 year career studying emotion.

At the 1968 Olympics, gold medalist Tommie Smith took the podium and raised his fist in what became one of the most iconic sports moments of all time. Wyomie Tyus dedicated her '68 gold medal to Smith. Sociologist Harry Edwards helped organize the protests. WPSU's Lindsey Whissel Fenton talked with Smith, Tyus, and Dr. Edwards about the lasting impact of the 1968 Olympic games.

In a TED Talk at Penn State in 2010, sociology professor Sam Richards put forward a challenge of empathy. He showed the audience a picture of two captured Iraqi insurgents and asked them to put themselves in these men’s shoes – to think about their lives, their families and why they were fighting.

Not long after, on the other side of the world in Iraq, Basim Razzo saw that video and got in touch with Dr. Richards. Razzo has since been a frequent speaker at Richards’ classes – via Skype – and now Richards’ students have raised the money to bring Razzo to Penn State.   

Academic freedom and free speech have been in the spotlight. Penn State faculty members Michelle Rodino - Colocino, interim president of the American Association of University Professors, Penn State Chapter; Michael Bérubé, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature; and Cynthia Young, head of the department of African American Studies, talked with WPSU's Anne Danahy about academic freedom in and out of the classroom.

Wade Davis is a former professional football player turned writer, public speaker, and educator. Davis, who publicly came out as gay in 2012, is the NFL’s first LGBT inclusion consultant.

He also works with other professional sports leagues and Fortune 500 companies to build more inclusive corporate cultures and address issues related to sexism, racism, and homophobia. As part of his work, he urges viewers to reconsider their definitions of "masculinity." 

John Urschel is a PhD candidate in applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of several peer-reviewed papers.

Urschel is also a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens and the Penn State Nittany Lions. He graduated from Penn State with a bachelors and master’s degree in mathematics all with a 4.0 grade point average.

He was also awarded the William V. Campbell Trophy in 2013, which honors the top college football scholar-athlete in the nation. In 2017, he was named one of Forbes’s 30 Under 30 in science.

What does aging mean to you?  It probably depends on how old you are.  That is exactly what Penn State Laureate Andy Belser had in mind when he created his award-winning video installation: "FaceAge.” It is a three-screen experience that guides viewers through "cross-generational encounters." The filmed interactions between millennials and aging adults are captivating and compassionate and they have a way of making the viewer think more deeply about what it means to get old.

Danielle Dormer is a mother and Army veteran in long term recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. She uses her experience to help Penn State students, serving as the Assistant Program Coordinator for the Collegiate Recovery Community. She is also earning her Masters of Education in Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling at Penn State, where she completed her undergraduate degree in 2017 earning a 4.0 GPA and the Outstanding Adult Student Award. She spoke with WPSU's Cheraine Stanford for Take Note. 

Author Lisa Ko's debut novel, "The Leavers," won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. The novel explores issues relating to immigration and identity after Polly Guo, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to work one morning and never returns home. Her 11-year-old son, Deming, is placed in foster care and eventually adopted by a white family that changes his name to Daniel.

Ky Dickens’ 2017 documentary “Zero Weeks” explores the paid leave crisis in the U.S. Dickens debuted the film at the “White House Summit on the United States of Women” hosted by Oprah and Michelle Obama. She spoke with WPSU’s Lindsey Whissel Fenton about the film, which screened recently in State College.

Bullying is an issue in K-12 schools across the country. Live on Facebook and armed with questions submitted ahead of time by parents, we talked with a school official and a researcher tackling the issue here in central Pennsylvania.

Bob O’Donnell is superintendent of the State College Area School District and Dr. Karen Bierman is director of the Child Study Center at Penn State and a professor whose 35 years of research focus on prevention programs that promote self-regulation and positive peer relations. 

You can watch the full Facebook Live interview here: 

This interview originally aired on May 6, 2016.