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If Frank and Audrey Peterman have their way, many more of their fellow black Americans will visit our national parks. They take host Majora Carter to Yosemite, where she crawls through a hundred-foot cave and meets Yosemite’s only permanent black park ranger.

Pioneering researcher and "queen of the forest canopy" Nalini Nadkarni, shows host Majora Carter the wonders of the Olympic rain forest — from the treetops! And the two visit a correctional facility where Nalini’s innovative Moss Project employs a team of prisoners turned botanists.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are sending our veterans home with wounds and obstacles not always clearly visible to the rest of the country. These two current wars also illuminate how veterans of previous eras are still trying to come home years after returning from war. In this episode, State of the Re:Union explores how veterans are serving each other after they come back home from serving the country.

Immediately following the midterm elections, Chideya and guests will analyze the resulting new political map. They'll look for connections and trends, drawing on everything from the 2010 Census to themes in pop culture. Chideya and her team will also discuss what may lie ahead for politicians and private citizens alike.

Chideya and team go to Arizona to look at immigration and jobs, and check in with new voters to see if they’re getting involved. With the passage of the state’s controversial immigration bill in April, Arizona is at the center of the nation’s immigration debate. From Phoenix to border regions of the Tohono O’odham Nation and Yuma, Chideya talks with people about their hopes, fears, and anxiety.

Chideya and team go to Florida to talk about the ways the American Dream is colliding with reality, and what it means in the voting booth. Chideya speaks with Colonel Allen West, a black Tea Party candidate; residents of a historic black community, where the land has been contaminated by industrial toxins, who say business and politicians have abandoned them; Muslim-Americans in Gainesville; and victors and victims of the foreclosure crisis.

Snap Judgment searches for that perfect place, just around the bend, our Shangri-La. For those lucky few who have found their utopia, they also discover it's surrounded by enemies clamoring to tear it down.

Before the universe knocks you upside the head, it usually gives you a sign. Snap Judgment tells stories of people who pay heed to those signs...or not.

Your brain doesn't quite know what's going on. But your body knows that something's up. Your breathing gets shallow, your palms start to sweat. Do you run--or watch things play out? In this episode, Snap Judgment does both.

We know you're busy. Real busy. Doing all that "stuff." And after you do the stuff, they want you to document the stuff. Then you better file the stuff. But then, you get the midnight phone call. In a moment, everything changes. Turns out, all that stuff doesn't matter. 'Cause it's "Drop Everything" time.

The whole range of human experience isn't just catalogued in a library - it actually takes place inside. Roam the stacks with Snap Judgment, and we'll teach you to hypnotize your friends, jump start your career and stop fanatics from burning your books.

This week on Snap Judgment, host Glynn Washington drops stories of people who are their own worst enemy. Push through the hallways of a psychiatric ward, obsess over a late night talk radio host and then get ready to run for your life.

Kids need good teachers. It's something people know in their gut, but it's only recently that researchers have begun developing ways to measure the quality of teachers. What they're learning is shaking up schools and leading education reformers to call for radical changes in the way teachers are trained and evaluated - and the way they are hired and fired too. This documentary will take us to some of the nation's poorest schools to understand why teacher quality is fast becoming the next frontier in the fight to equalize educational opportunity in the United States.

"War on Poverty" will blend contemporary storytelling with rich archival audio to examine the modern face of poverty, and to ask why LBJ's dream of a Great Society is still beyond reach.

In this second part of Shifting Gears, host Craig Fahle talks with The Story's Dick Gordon about the South as the new home of the US auto industry, with all of its complex social, labor and financial questions. Then we visit Julie Kredens from Louisville Public Media for a tale of two vehicle plants and how their fortunes have hit the pockets of auto workers nearby. Finally, a glimpse into the future and where auto designers think consumers want to go.

In this first part of Shifting Gears, host Craig Fehle examines the challenge of retraining a work force that built the US car industry. Could the midwest become one of the centers of the emerging electric auto industry; we'll check in with Bill Anderson at KCUR who has the story of one emerging truck company near Kansas City; and then it's to Washington, DC to examine how the changing political lineup on Capitol Hill is already affecting the fortunes of the auto industry.