WHYY Radio Sunday Specials

The best specials and series to inform, entertain and keep you company.

Listen Sundays at 8 p.m. on WHYY radio.

January 6, 2019
Haiti Untold
Haiti Untold takes a deep dive into this Caribbean country, exploring issues of inequality through stories of the people who live in the urban ghettos, the up-market enclaves, and the forgotten countryside.

January 13, 2019
Still Rising: First Generation College Students a Decade Later
Mario Martinez and Katy Sorto were the first in their families to go to college. They started at community college in 2008 hoping to earn degrees, but the odds were against them. Both are from low-income families, they ended up in remedial classes, and they knew almost no one who had been to college. This APM Reports documentary tells their remarkable stories 10 years later and provides a rare window on the personal experience of trying to move up through education. Learn more »

January 20, 2019
I Will Not Fear: Melba Beals of the Little Rock Nine
In 1957, Melba Patillo Beals, was one of nine African-American high school students chosen to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. She became a journalist, professor, author, and at the age of 52 adopted twin sons. In her book, I Will Not Fear: My Story of a Lifetime of Building Faith Under Fire, she tells her life story and how the faith she received from her grandmother grew and became her source of strength and inspiration. In the interview, she takes us back to LIttle Rock in 1957. She recounts the hostility of the white mob, the overt and violent racism she encountered, and the ‘angels’ who helped her along the way. Learn more »

January 27, 2019
Songs from the Depths of Hell – Alexander Kulisiewicz
Aleksander Kulisiewicz spent six years in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, imprisoned soon after the Nazi invasion and their attempted destruction of Poland. In the camp, he found a unique role both as a composer and living tape recorder of the world of the unfree and the damned. Aleksander was known to have an extremely good memory, so prisoners – many of whom knew they were to be killed – would ask him to remember their songs. Kulisiewicz survived a death march at the war’s end and recovered to become the foremost chronicler, in song, of the world of the Concentration Camps. Oral historian Alan Dein explores his life and musical legacy.