HOUR ONE
The McCallen Building was the first LEED certified structure built in Boston. To environmentalists, the green building methods are forward-thinking and socially responsible but the construction workers who actually put the place together didn’t see the point at first. The new film The Greening of Southie documents the ascent of The McCallen Building, explains LEED certification and illuminates their specific building techniques. The film is narrated by the building owner, architects, project managers…and most notably, the formerly skeptical construction workers. Filmmakers Curt Ellis & Ian Cheney join Bob to discuss their new documentary and the green building movement in general. Ellis & Cheney first spoke with Bob last year about King Corn, their eye-opening expose of the corn industry.
For the latest installment in our ongoing series This I Believe,Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from Educator and folklorist J. Frank Dobie. He wrote numerous books and articles about vanishing ways of life on the ranches of his native Texas. Dobie taught in the English department at the University of Texas for many years, and was a lecturer on U.S. history at Cambridge during World War II.
HOUR TWO
It’s been more than forty years since many Americans were shipped to and died in the jungles of Vietnam. For this Memorial Day weekend, we pay tribute to our service men and women with an encore presentation of our award-winning show Stories from Third Med: Surviving a Jungle ER. The documentary includes stories of the Navy’s Third Medical Battalion, which served alongside the Third Marine Division. They were based near the DMZ, closest to the enemy in North Vietnam. Four decades later, the doctors and corpsmen recount the horror (and humor) they can never forget, and reflect on the forces that drive men to war in the first place.