Wide Angle with Peter Bermudes

One hundred and forty-eight years ago--with the Civil War just ended--the first Memorial Day was observed in the national cemetery after which Arlington is named. Graves were adorned with flowers. Flags were displayed. Speeches praising valor, country and sacrifice were made. And while much has changed in the interim, this...

In 2014, over one and a half million Americans with life-limiting illnesses, and their families, were served by hospice. Although a relatively new concept, the word “hospice” dates back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for weary or ill travelers on a long...

The Black Lives Matter movement, one of the most engaging in recent decades, is nonetheless dogged by a persistent if seemingly innocuous rebuttal: All lives matter. And of course they do. But the experience of African-Americans in this country has been and continues to be so markedly different than that...

Viewers of almost any age are likely familiar with Charlie Brown and one of his standard refrains: “Good grief!” When I first heard it as a young boy, it’s contradictory quality didn’t strike me. But today, even though I’ve searched its etymology and know better, I ponder it: ‘good grief.’...

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, the incarceration rate in this country skyrocketed some 400%, far outpacing any other industrialized democracy. And for some time since, scholars have so thought they understood why that happened it has become almost an unquestioned truth. But are truths always true? Turns out to...

We’ve been hearing statistics like these with growing regularity: the top 1% of Americans controls 42% of the nation’s wealth; the wage gap between CEOs and average workers has grown to 587 to 1; and the top 1% pay state taxes around 5.5%, while the bottom 20% pay almost 11%,...

Few Supreme Court decisions in recent memory have so captured the attention of the American public as Citizens United. To help me explore the road to Citizens United, as well as consider the potential paths leading beyond it, is Timothy Kuhner, associate professor at Georgia State University College of Law....

When Allan Johnson asked his dying father where he wanted his ashes to be placed, his father replied--without hesitation--that it made no difference to him at all. Ultimately troubled by this response, Johnson set off on a 2,000 mile journey across the Upper Midwest to find the place where his...