Humanities Desk

A choral concert earlier this year at the University of Nebraska at Omaha wasn't your typical musical performance. UNO’s concert choir and an A cappella choir from Omaha Central High School, along with a string ensemble, performed Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. It was a sobering, s...

Life changed drastically for Nebraska students when COVID-19 closed schools in March. The stories of seniors from a Sandhills school district that’s small in numbers but large in size are featured in today’s NET News Signature Story. It’s part of the NET Radio and "What If..." radio documentary, “Re...

Christmas is just around the corner and a woman from Meadow Grove, a small village near Norfolk, will be celebrating her 106th birthday on Christmas Day.Lenora Kuchar is the oldest citizen in Meadow Grove. She was born on Dec. 25, 1914, five miles south of Meadow Grove. She said she’s seen and lived...

Christmas will be a little different this year, but residents at one retirement community in western Nebraska want to read their favorite Christmas stories to children no matter what.Rae Whitney, a resident at Northfield Retirement Communities in Scottsbluff, reads the children’s book “The Christmas...

As the U.S. prepares for one of the largest vaccination efforts in history, it's worth looking back sixty years ago, when the country worked to eliminate another deadly virus: polio. One of the most successful campaigns came to life in an Omaha, Nebraska TV studio.In the black and white film shot at...

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state have hit record levels nearly every day this month. As those rising numbers strain the hospital system, one Nebraska man says he’s grateful he got care when he needed it. Dana Wendelin lives in Omaha and usually goes to the gym as many as six days a week. That’...

From its opening in 1884 until its decommissioning in 1934, the Genoa Indian School in Genoa, Nebraska harbored Native American children with the goal of destroying native culture through assimilation.  Now, there's a digital project that seeks to document the experiences of those who attended for f...

Election Day brings long lines to some polling places, but not to the one in Ruby, Nebraska.Take Interstate 80 west from Lincoln about 20 miles, to the Seward exit. Then go north half a mile, and east a mile and a half on gravel. There, nestled between the huge, round, silver grey grain elevators of...

A Wilber, Nebraska has been running for president of the United States since 2007.  He doesn't get many votes, but that hasn't stopped him from building his presidential museum. Les Vilda stands on an empty lot alongside a highway that cuts through the small southeast Nebraska town of Wilber.Drivers...

More than 414,000 Nebraskans have voted so far in the 2020 election, with less than a week before November 3. Many Gen Z Nebraskans are eligible to vote for the first time this year. One in ten eligible voters this year are members of Generation Z, according to the Pew Research Center. Jason Tovar, ...