This year, Boston Public Radio talked with doctors and veterinarians, reporters and politicians, small business owners and labor leaders. We broadcast the swearing-in of the city’s first female and Asian American mayor, and later brought the people to the mayor in Mayor Michelle Wu’s first edition of Ask the Mayor.
Hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagen heard opinions from listeners on topics ranging from family leave to small talk on the T. They talked to guests on Zoom, by phone and — for the first time since the pandemic hit — back in the studio.
From a year of live conversations three hours a day, five days a week, here are Boston Public Radio’s five favorite conversations from 2021.
Perseverance's search for life on Mars could 'answer all our dreams,' says MIT geobiologist
In February, the most advanced rover ever sent to another world completed its 293-million-mile journey and landed on Mars. Tanja Bosak, an MIT geobiologist and return sample scientist on the Perseverance team, talked about what the space mission could mean for understanding our universe.
Dolores Huerta on the pressing fight for labor rights in the COVID era
At the start of the pandemic, people banged pots and pans, posted on social media and hung up signs declaring their support for essential workers. But as service laborers showed up to work in person, many did not receive proper protections from the virus. Civil rights and labor activist Dolores Huerta joined Boston Public Radio to talk about what needs to change to protect workers.
Growing up in Roxbury, documentarian Rudy Hypolite had friends involved in gangs, but never saw media tell their stories the way he knew them. He teamed up with Boston community leader Robert Lewis Jr. on the Emmy-nominated film “This Ain’t Normal,” which follows five young men living in the city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods of Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury.
Discover the whimsical world of snacks with 'Unsnackable' from Folu Akinkuotu
Folu Akinkuotu took listeners beyond the bounds of an average American grocery store, sharing her experiences with meat aspic-flavored potato chips, Hawaiian pizza-flavored smoothies and other unusual snacks. Akinkuotu searches the internet for her newsletter “Unsnackable,” which reviews unusual snacks from across the world.
As Supreme Court debates abortion, Cambridge doctor sees patients at the last clinic in Mississippi
Cambridge-based obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Cheryl Hamlin called in to Boston Public Radio from the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women's Health Organization. The clinic is at the center of a Supreme Court case that has the potential to lead to the end of Roe v. Wade and change abortion access across the country. With the sound of protesters in the background, Hamlin told stories from patients she sees in her monthly travels to the South, where she provides abortions in regions other doctors refuse.
