GroundTruth

Crossing the Divide is a collaboration with WGBH that brought together a team of five reporters from red states and blue states to travel across the country in a van, exploring issues that divide us and stories that unite us.

In this episode, Unheard in Appalachia, we take you through beautiful, mountainous Eastern Kentucky, where local economies are struggling, coal jobs continue to disappear, and people are frustrated by decades of failed government programs that have done little to help with problems connected to poverty, hazardous work conditions and poor nutrition. During our reporting road trip across America, we heard from those who feel unheard.

Somalia is often called a land of poets, a place where everything from teenage romance to legal disputes has been recorded and passed down through poems. As conflict and drought have driven hundreds of

Amal Hussein and Hamdi Mohamed have a lot in common. Both were born in Kenya, where their parents had fled as refugees, and both came to Boston when they were just a few years old. They’re both 23 years old, they’re both poets — and equally important for this story — both their grandmothers are poets. This video shows a style of Somali poetry called gabay that both their grandmothers perform. As you can hear, the poem is as musical as it is lyrical.

But there’s one crucial difference in the two women’s stories. Hamdi grew up with her ayeeyo (grandmother) in the house, whispering poems in her ears. Amal has only known her ayeeyo on the phone — she stayed behind in Somalia when the rest of the family fled. Nevertheless, it is the distant words and stories of her

In honor of Memorial Day, we’re looking back at World War 1, the Great War. It’s been a century since the world powers gathered in Paris to hammer out terms for peace. No Germans were present. In fact, they were not invited to participate in the deliberations. But their worst fears were realized in the punishing terms of the treaty: Germany would pay dearly for its role in the war.

There was great expectation that this would be the War to End all Wars. But the Treaty of Versailles came to be known as the peace to end all peace. This treaty forged a new global order of alliances that attempted to guard against a repeat of such a catastrophic war. But the treaty failed, and some believe exacerbated the grievances, laying the groundwork for an even deadlier, second world war. This episode, we look at the circumstances that led to the Great War, and how those circumstances are similar to today.

The Dead Sea lies at the lowest elevation on earth. And in the arid valley that stretches to the salt lake's western shore sits Ein Gedi, a nature preserve and oasis that ranges from lush, spring fed gardens, to parched craggy rock, dotted with palm trees. Here, among this barren but beautiful landscape, a massive stage is perched amid the dusty rocks, complete with giant video screens and dazzling light displays. It looks more like a docked spaceship than a concert venue. What is normally a peaceful desert scene is now blanketed by the rumbling of a tour bus convoy, and a bank of electricity generators droning in the background.

In the second chapter of this series, we go inside the Christian Zionist community in Jerusalem and the settlements in the West Bank. Micah Danney, our GroundTruth Fellow and guide for this episode, was a unique choice for this reporting assignment. He grew up steeped in Christianity. His father was a mainline Protestant preacher in Nyack, New York. As a teenager, he had gotten into some trouble. But he also really knew his scripture. Both of these parts of his past, his struggle with the law, and his familiarity with scripture, would prove to be critical in gaining access to this community.

Micah’s journey began with a laying of hands upon him, and ends with his being cast from the garden, quite literally.

(Listen for a cameo appearance from Pat Boone!)

Twenty years ago, a movement known as Christian Zionism was on the furthest fringes in the land of Israel.

Back then, mainstream theologians — Christian and Jewish alike — dismissed Christian Zionism as a dangerous interpretation of biblical prophecies; the ideology was flawed at best, at its worst, inherently anti-Semitic.

Today, Christian Zionism has gone mainstream, with explosive growth in both fundraising and political power. Its journey is evident in today’s headlines in Israel-Palestine. When the United States announced a relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, many observers believed it was the Trump administration’s way of answering directly not only to the Israeli right but also to the American Christian evangelical base that supports Trump. Christian Zionists view the embassy move as a milestone on a prophetic timeline that aligns with an apocalyptic interpretation of scripture.

Similarly, Christian Zionists are squarely behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and celebrating his re-election this week. Last month, they applauded the Trump Administration’s backing Israeli sovereignty

The efforts of the Christian Zionists often work against the Palestinian Christian communities which see themselves as part of a 2,000-year continuum in the land where the Christian faith began.

After four years of fighting, 20 million soldiers and civilians dead, and three collapsed empires, World War One ended and a new world order emerged. But the armistice held only temporarily and the promise to end all wars was repeatedly broken over the last 100 years. Charlie Sennott has been tracing how this war is the source of so many modern conflicts, many of them he’s covered as a correspondent over the last three decades. We look at the circumstances that led to that war, and how those circumstances are eerily similar to today.

A year after the city of Mosul was liberated from ISIS rule, kids across Iraq are not alright. The most vulnerable are often overlooked: orphans, the wounded, the kidnapped and returned, and those who fought for ISIS — whether by force or by choice. Boys are most at risk for future violence and recruitment to extremist groups.

Before Hurricane Maria, the Zika crisis was already pushing Puerto Rico’s health care system to the limit. Then the storm came and crippled it completely — no more testing pregnant mothers for Zika, and no more tracking babies born to Zika-infected mothers. A year later, things are still not back to normal. And it’s becoming clear that many babies that seem fine may not be.

When Bill and Frank Watson were kids, their grandfather told them a ghost story. Decades later, the brothers discovered the source of that story in their grandfather’s old railroad company documents. It raised questions about what happened to 57 Irish migrant workers in Pennsylvania in 1832, and it sent the Watson brothers on a search for a mass grave.