Shows
PBS News Hour - Art BeatSierra Hull reflects on her journey to becoming a mandolin virtuosoTwo-time Grammy nominee Sierra Hull has reached the pinnacle of bluegrass on her chosen instrument, the mandolin. But how she got there is a story like no other. Special Correspondent Tom Casciato has more for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders2025-05-0606 min
PBS News Hour - SegmentsSierra Hull reflects on her journey to becoming a mandolin virtuosoTwo-time Grammy nominee Sierra Hull has reached the pinnacle of bluegrass on her chosen instrument, the mandolin. But how she got there is a story like no other. Special Correspondent Tom Casciato has more for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders2025-05-0606 minPBS News Hour - Art BeatAcclaimed blues musician Nat Myers faces battle with a rare cancerIn 2023, we told you about the debut of Nat Myers, an acclaimed blues musician from Kentucky. American Songwriter said his work "reverberates with the sound of a deep bluesman from the 20s and 30s." Special correspondent Tom Casciato has an update to Myers' personal story for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders2025-04-1505 min
FRONTLINE: Film Audio Track | PBSTwo American Families: 1991-2024It’s a central premise of the American dream: If you’re willing to work hard, you’ll be able to make a living and build a better life for your children.
But what if working hard isn’t enough to get ahead — or even to ensure your family’s basic financial stability?
Two American Families: 1991-2024, a special, two-hour documentary filmed over more than 30 years, is a portrait of perseverance from FRONTLINE, Bill Moyers, and filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes that raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the American economy and the impact on people struggling to make a li...2024-08-081h 56FRONTLINE: Film Audio Track | PBSTwo American Families: 1991-2024It’s a central premise of the American dream: If you’re willing to work hard, you’ll be able to make a living and build a better life for your children.
But what if working hard isn’t enough to get ahead — or even to ensure your family’s basic financial stability?
Two American Families: 1991-2024, a special, two-hour documentary filmed over more than 30 years, is a portrait of perseverance from FRONTLINE, Bill Moyers, and filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes that raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the American economy and the impact on people struggling to make a li...2024-08-081h 56
Making Media Now"Two American Families, 1991-2024": 3 Decades of Struggle & DeterminationJoining host Michael Azevedo on this episode are documentary filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes. Tom and Kathleen join Michael to discuss their latest film for PBS’s Frontline series called "Two American Families, 1991-2024." The film follows two Milwaukee families, one black, one white, over the last thirty-odd years.
Two American Families 1991-2024 premiered on Frontline on July 23 but is still available for streaming via the Frontline website, the PBS App and on YouTube, where at the time of this recording, it has received more than 360k views.
Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-pr...2024-08-0534 min
The FRONTLINE DispatchBill Moyers on Three Decades Documenting 'Two American Families' With Tom Casciato and Kathleen HughesFor more than 30 years, and over the course of five documentaries, correspondent Bill Moyers and filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes have returned to Milwaukee again and again, to follow two families: one Black, the Stanleys, and one white, the Neumanns. The newest installment of the project, released this summer, chronicles the families’ struggle to stay afloat in a changing economy across three decades and six presidential administrations.Moyers, Casciato and Hughes join host Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss how the project began and evolved over time, documenting moments they’ll never forget, what Two American Families says about...2024-08-0242 min
Fresh AirThe Impossible American DreamPBS FRONTLINE documentarians Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes spent 34 years following two working-class families in Milwaukee who lost well-paying manufacturing jobs and then struggled to regain their way of life. The film, hosted by Bill Moyers, is called Two American Families.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy2024-07-1744 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastJune CrossJune Cross is a documentary filmmaker who has Emmy, Peabody, and DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards under her belt. She also founded and directs the doc program at the Columbia University Journalism School. So you could say she's helped bring not only documentary films into the world but also a lot of documentary filmmakers. We talk about her own films, which include the autobiographical Secret Daughter, a film with many twists about her upbringing as the daughter of a white mother and a Black father, and Wilhemina’s War, about a grandmother caring for her HIV-positive granddaughter in South Carolina. We al...2023-12-1333 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastCaty BorumCaty Borum heads the Center for Media and Social Impact at the American University School of Communication, and she's the author of Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change. She studies “creative, independent investigative documentary,” her term for docs that are as thoroughly artistic as they are journalistic. We chat about the techniques and challenges that make these stories and their storytellers unique. More about Caty here.Films mentioned in this episode:Newtown (2016), Dir. Kim SnyderAn Insignificant Man (2016), Dir. Khushboo Ranka and Vinay ShuklaCitizenfour (2014), Dir. Laura Poitras...2023-12-1330 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastBrian NewmanBrian Newman is one of the more trenchant observers on the documentary scene. He’s worn many hats in the industry: as an indie film producer, as the CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, as a programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival, and much more. He currently leads a consultancy called Sub-Genre, doing content, strategy, development, distribution and marketing, for which he writes the Sub-Genre newsletter that a lot of media folks read. He has, as you'll hear in this conversation, some hope for the independent documentary world, even in the face of recent media consolidation, as we talk ab...2023-12-1334 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastCarrie LozanoCarrie Lozano has played a lot of important roles in the documentary field. Until not long ago she headed the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film and Artist Programs. Before that, she designed and directed the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Fund. Her gig right now is heading up ITVS, the Independent Television Service, which, among other things, funds and distributes public TV docs, and brings us the long-running, much-decorated PBS series Independent Lens. All her experience puts her smack in the middle of a lot of the conversations going on in the documentary world about cinema, journalism, and about the...2023-12-1340 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastTia Lessin & Carl DealTia Lessin and Carl Deal are filmmaking partners whose careers have run the gamut from directing their Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning Trouble The Water about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, to producing several of Michael Moore’s films, and more. Tia also directed, with Emma Pildes, 2022’s Emmy Award-winning The Janes, about women providing abortion care in pre-Roe v. Wade Chicago. Tia started out as a labor organizer and an activist. And while Carl has an activist background as well, he also attended Columbia University Journalism School. We talk about how journalism and activism play out in their filmmaking, the...2023-12-1338 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastDavid SievDavid Siev, a first-time feature filmmaker, made a splash in 2022 with his film Bad Axe, which began with his documenting the mundane proceedings of his family’s restaurant in the small town of Bad Axe, Michigan, and wound up a stunning, personal portrait of America in the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020. The film was shortlisted for an Academy Award for its portrayal of the events of 2020. We talk about what it was like to come out of seemingly nowhere to earn that honor, what it meant to him, as well as what it cost him. He also shares hi...2023-12-1328 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastByron HurtByron Hurt wears a lot of hats: filmmaker, journalist, activist, mentor and more. He’s also brave, if his 2022 film Hazing is any indication. Hazing takes on the subculture of humiliation and often violence that people endure when they wish to join certain organizations, including college fraternities and sororities. It’s taboo to talk about hazing if you’ve taken part in it, but Byron, a fraternity member who’s seen it from both sides, does just that. We talk about the challenges he encountered in making Hazing, including something that could have scuttled the film’s release two days befor...2023-12-1342 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastNatalie Bullock BrownThe Documentary Accountability Working Group (DAWG) is making quite an impact in the documentary film world, promoting a framework for values-based documentary ethics and practices. Natalie Bullock Brown is its director, and she’s my guest this time around. We talk about DAWG’s suggestions as to how people agreeing to appear in documentaries ought to be treated, with regard to compensation, psychological services, community outreach and more. There’s some great overlap between this conversation and my podcast conversations with Byron Hurt and Jennifer Tiexiera & Camilla Hall, so please check those out too. Along with her work at...2023-12-1346 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastRobert GreeneRobert Greene is a professor at the University of Missouri's Journalism School, where he runs the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism. But he's better known as a filmmaker whose documentaries are anything but “traditional” journalism. These include two that we talk about in this podcast, Procession, about the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, which was shortlisted for the documentary Oscar in 2021, and the award-winning Bisbee ‘17, about a mass deportation of immigrants that took place in the American Southwest about a century ago. We also discuss his influences, his filmmaking philosophy, and some of his favorite documentaries.Robe...2023-12-1341 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastJennifer Tiexiera & Camilla HallI think it’s safe to say Jennifer Tieixiera and Camilla Hall have created a documentary unlike any other. It's called Subject, and it profiles people whose stories have appeared in some of the most acclaimed documentaries of the last three decades or so, including Hoop Dreams, The Square, The Wolfpack, and The Staircase. But what makes Subject different is that it focuses on what happened to these folks after their participation in documentaries made them famous. It’s a film that asks filmmakers to take a hard look at their own processes and motives, and we discuss not only...2023-12-1340 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastYoruba Richen & Brad LichtensteinWhat’s it like for independent doc filmmakers, accustomed to making all their own decisions, to work with a top-notch doc series like PBS’s Frontline, with its strict journalistic guidelines? That’s the main topic I discuss with award-winning doc filmmakers Yoruba Richen and Brad Lichtenstein, whose terrific 2022 film American Reckoning began as an indie project but eventually turned into a Frontline project.Yoruba Richen and Brad Lichtenstein are well-known both separately as a team, Yoruba for films including 2023’s The Cost of Inheritance, which premiered at DOC NYC, Brad for films including 2022’s Emmy Award-winning When Claud...2023-12-1337 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastDawn PorterAward-winning documentarian Dawn Porter talks about bringing journalistic principles and standards to documentary filmmaking and treating documentary subjects as collaborators and partners rather than “subjects.” We also discuss the need to keep having the difficult conversations needed to keep up with the changing documentary landscape. We also talk about how she got into the business by way of another profession, and discuss one of my favorites of her films, Gideon's Army, which premiered at Sundance and was nominated for both the Independent Spirit Award for Best Doc and an Emmy.Dawn’s 2023 film, The Lady Bird Diaries was ca...2023-12-1338 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastJulie Cohen & Betsy WestJulie Cohen and Betsy West are best known as a team for their Oscar-nominated documentary RBG about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They’re also both former network news journalists. We talk about the differences and similarities between those two worlds (hint: one of them sounds more fun), the films that helped shape their sensibilities, and their films RBG, Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, about the former Congresswoman’s recovery from an assassination attempt, and My Name Is Pauli Murray, about the non-binary lawyer who played a key role in the civil rights movement.Julie Cohen’s 2023 film, Ev...2023-12-1339 min
The Thousand Roads PodcastThousand Roads trailerA new podcast about the intersection of documentary film and journalism, hosted by filmmaker Tom Casciato.Follow us on Instagram! @ThousandRoadsPodSpecial thanks for helping make this series happen: Sara Archambault, Florence Barrau-Adams, Jon Berman, Ben Cuomo (music), Jax Deluca, Pallavi Deshpande, Nancy Gibbs, Kathleen Hughes, Caroline Kracunas, Laura Manley, Alexis Pancrazi, Liz Schwartz, Jeff Seelbach, Lindsay Underwood (logo/graphics)This episode was supported by a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.2023-11-1701 min
Denver Diatribe PodcastEpisode 67: Killing the Cow Town LIVEIn this episode, recorded on February 29, 2012 in front of a live audience at Henderson's Lounge in the Denver FilmCenter, we explore the many ways Denver is depicted in music, literature, and film. Special guests include Cory Casciato and Robert Rutherford from The Onion A.V. Club, DJ Alisha from OpenAir 1340, cartoonist Kenny Bē, Westword music writer Tom Murphy, fantasy-horror author Mario Acevedo, Karla Rodriguez from the Denver Film Society. Music is brought to you by DJ Leeland with special performances by C1 of The Foodchain. BONUS: Visit DenverDiatribe.com for a slideshow of Kenny Be's artwork and the movie m...2012-03-031h 21Podcast – Denver DiatribeEpisode 67: Killing the Cow Town LIVEIn this episode, recorded on February 29, 2012 in front of a live audience at Henderson's Lounge in the Denver FilmCenter, we explore the many ways Denver is depicted in music, literature, and film. Special guests include Cory Casciato and Robert Rutherford from The Onion A.V. Club, DJ Alisha from OpenAir 1340, cartoonist Kenny Bē, Westword music writer Tom Murphy, fantasy-horror author Mario Acevedo, Karla Rodriguez from the Denver Film Society. Music is brought to you by DJ Leeland with special performances by C1 of The Foodchain. BONUS: Visit DenverDiatribe.com for a slideshow of Kenny Be's artwork and the movie m...2012-03-031h 21Denver Diatribe PodcastEpisode 67: Killing the Cow Town LIVEIn this episode, recorded on February 29, 2012 in front of a live audience at Henderson's Lounge in the Denver FilmCenter, we explore the many ways Denver is depicted in music, literature, and film. Special guests include Cory Casciato and Robert Rutherford from The Onion A.V. Club, DJ Alisha from OpenAir 1340, cartoonist Kenny Bē, Westword music writer Tom Murphy, fantasy-horror author Mario Acevedo, Karla Rodriguez from the Denver Film Society. Music is brought to you by DJ Leeland with special performances by C1 of The Foodchain. BONUS: Visit DenverDiatribe.com for a slideshow of Kenny Be's artwork and the movie m...2012-03-0300 min
Bill Moyers Journal (Video) | PBSMoyers Digital ArchiveDavid Lewis, renowned community leader was shot and killed in San Mateo, California on June 9, 2010. In 1992 Lewis, an ex-convict and drug addict, drew on his own experiences to help found Free at Last in East Palo Alto, California. The center helps more than 4,200 people annually and has become a model of community-based treatment. Bill Moyers and producers Kathleen Hughes and Tom Casciato met David Lewis in 1991 during the filming of the documentary Circle of Recovery. Then Lewis was 35 years old and he was just getting on his feet, having spent most of his adult life behind bars in some of...2010-06-2808 min
CityscapeThe Lindsay Years
John Lindsay’s tumultuous two terms as mayor of New York City were marked by strikes, racial divisions and fiscal problems. And more than 40 years later, his legacy remains as mixed as ever. On this week's Cityscape, we look back on the Lindsay era. Our guests include New York Times Urban Affairs Correspondent, Sam Roberts and Tom Casciato, the Executive Producer of a new public television documentary called Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years.
2010-05-0830 minCityscapeThe Lindsay Years
John Lindsay’s tumultuous two terms as mayor of New York City were marked by strikes, racial divisions and fiscal problems. And more than 40 years later, his legacy remains as mixed as ever. On this week's Cityscape, we look back on the Lindsay era. Our guests include New York Times Urban Affairs Correspondent, Sam Roberts and Tom Casciato, the Executive Producer of a new public television documentary called Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years.
2010-05-0830 min