When you sit down at your holiday table, thank a bee. A third of the food on your plate is made possible by these pollinators, whose numbers are being decimated by disease and colony collapse disorder. But the bees have a champion in Marla Spivak, a University of Minnesota researcher and MacArthur "Genius" who thinks like a bee. Marla will show host Majora Carter (no newbie herself - Majora is an urban beekeeper) the secrets she's beginning to uncover about how bees can help us humans to be more resilient and to build healthier communities.

In a city where one in four households contain a government employee, the crippling state budget deficit, police layoffs, fire engine brown-outs and park closures could easily signal only the bleakest of futures. But for the oldest city on the West Coast, persistence is key. It’s a place where people are figuring out ways—from clothing swaps to home shares—to deal with the hard new economic reality.

Student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt, unemployment for those with bachelor’s degrees is at an all-time high, and entrepreneurs like the founders of Facebook and Microsoft prove that extraordinary success is possible without it. But recent studies show that college is economically beneficial even to those whose jobs don’t require it. The debaters are Peter Thiel, Charles Murray, Vivek Wadhwa, and Henrey Bienen. 

From Rockefeller's Standard Oil to GE's first industrial park, Cleveland was a city made by entrepreneurs. But since the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, it's been trying to shake the moniker of "the mistake on the lake". Today Cleveland is being embraced by a new generation of entrepreneurs who are using their business sense to try and revitalize neighborhoods, clean up the environment and improve education.  

Christian McBride, a jazz bassist, is put to the test by his idol, Freddie Hubbard; a down and out comic considers ending it all until the universe sends him an unlikely sign; and New York writer Adam Gopnik details his daughter’s cosmopolitan imaginary friend. 

In the face of a double-dip recession and an unprecedented long-term unemployment rate, President Obama unveiled the American Jobs Act before Congress. His plan? Lower the unemployment rate and stimulate the economy with $447 billion in employer tax breaks, jobless reintegration, state aid, and infrastructure projects, to be paid for with taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Will this plan bring a fast, effective boost to the job market, or will higher taxes punish job creators and sink us further into debt? The debaters are Cecilia Rouse, Mark Zandi, Richard Epstein, and Daniel Mitchell. 

A young woman is told to keep her heritage a secret...by her mother; a reckless partier gets shipwrecked and has to sober up enough to save the day; and an author contends with her unsupportive mother on her deathbed. 

Wyoming is the least populated state in the US. In this sparsely populated landscape where private property and self sufficiency are prized, community is built on the (somewhat unwelcome) expectation that distant neighbors might need to rely on one another one day. When people come together here, they have to have good reason to. This episode will bring listeners to the towns of Laramie, Cheyenne and the surrounding landscape in Southern Wyoming, looking at how the things that happen in the small towns and countryside of rural America can change the country as a whole.

The Bronx has long been a symbol of America's failings. It's still the poorest urban congressional district in the nation, and for many who live in New York's other boroughs, the Bronx is usually a place to avoid. But despite the area's troubles, some have stayed and put down roots, intent on surviving and making their borough better. This episode looks at the hold-outs and the dreamers who've committed their lives to building community in the Bronx. 

A high school quarterback leaves Montana as a promising son and returns years later to reveal a shocking secret; a boy from Sierra Leone describes his transformation from innocent child to cold-hearted soldier; a teenage girl discovers how to control her errant parrot; and a construction worker discovers the up-side of his girlfriend’s one-year prison sentence.

Hear the incredible story of Aimee Mullins, the superstar athlete who runs on prosthetic legs. We'll also hear from an artist who steps way outside her comfort zone, a story about grief, and a classic holiday mishap.

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area, Mississippi Gulf Coast residents were forced to come together to deal with the aftermath. Just as they were starting to get back on their feet, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in millions of barrels of oil being dumped into the water just off their shores. These events have made environmentalists out of a lot of Gulf Coast residents who would never have considered themselves as such. We tell an hour of stories about how the fight for the natural world is bringing Gulf Coast residents together, sometimes with unlikely partners—and how, in some instances, that fight is turning out to be exactly what a community needed to survive.

Dubbed the “Magic City” for its stunning growth rate and rapid proliferation of high-rise skyscrapers, Miami is also the 3^rd poorest city in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2004 numbers. If you own a store in South Beach, your customers are equally likely to be billionaires as they are homeless. And on top of that, they’re very likely to have started life somewhere else. Miami is an incredibly international city—and so is impacted more than most cities by world events, such as the Haitian earthquake or the political situation in Cuba. In this place of class, racial and cultural juxtapositions, SOTRU has an hour of stories of Miamians reaching out from their enclaves to create community across those lines. 

A hiker is pinned underneath a refrigerator-sized boulder deep in the wilderness, a speechwriter describes his most challenging assignment ("Make Al Gore funny"), and a young art student battles her demons in the pursuit of love. Hosted by the founder of The Moth, George Dawes Green.

A hair stylist recalls accompanying his father on hunting expeditions in Alabama, a young journalist carefully sets the stage to make her first time memorable, and best-selling novelist Walter Mosley cares for his ailing mother. Hosted by noted comic and storyteller Mike Birbiglia, and Jay Allison.

Refugees, swindlers, visionaries, entrepreneurs chasing fast money—these are the historic roots of Oakland, California.  The city has long been home for people building new lives and imagining even better ones.  But dreams that have been deferred also haunt this place, in its empty post-boom skyscrapers, its infamous homicide rates and deep budget cuts.  In the face of entrenched problems, Oakland answers back with diverse, revolutionary solutions.  In this episode, SOTRU looks at the costs and rewards for people dreaming big in Oakland.    

A couple of decades ago, Utica, New York, was dying; a popular bumper sticker in the ‘90s read “Last One Out of Utica, Please Turn Out the Lights.” Once a bustling textile city perched on the edge of the Erie Canal, Utica lost its mills in the mid-20^th century and has been losing population ever since. But something has changed in recent years. With a surprising influx of refugees to this part of snowy, upstate New York—the newcomers have given Utica hope for second chance. SOTRU looks at the way in which Utica has opened its doors to the world’s needy, and how that’s bringing fresh energy to a city in dire need of it.

The most popular college major in America these days is business. Some students think it doesn't pay to study philosophy or history. But advocates of liberal-arts programs advocates say their graduates are still among the most likely to become leaders, and that a healthy democracy depends on citizens with a broad and deep education. In this program, American RadioWorks' Stephen Smith examines how a form of higher learning unique to the United States is responding to the demands of the 21st century.