Spark Media

10/31/2025

Hallie Twomey is joining Dr. Sue Egan this Sunday on Su***de grief support / The Healing Narratives of Su***de Grief Podcast.

Healing Narratives is such a moving podcast about hope and healing, and we know this is going to be an impactful conversation.

The episode drops this Sunday! We’re tuning in. We hope you will, too!

10/30/2025

The Writer’s Center welcomes Kim Roberts, David Nicholson, and David Taylor for a conversation and practical creative exercises on how to research in your writing. This event will also include examples of local resources. About the Event How can real-world research foster your creative work and th...

10/29/2025

Every year, the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement celebrates and acknowledges students, faculty, staff, and community leaders working together to make an impact in our communities.Our eighth annual Engage for Change Awards on Wednesday, September 24, 2025 featured a keynote address by Taylor Scott...

10/28/2025

It’s National Arts & Humanities Month!

Especially now, we need to protect and honor the amazing arts and humanities organizations around the country and the impactful work they do in their communities.

This month, we’ve been thanking the arts and humanities groups that have supported our programming.

Today, we want to give a shoutout to our friends at National Endowment for the Humanities, Florida Humanities, Virginia Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities, California Humanities, and Humanities Nebraska for supporting our podcast The People's Recorder.

The People’s Recorder is a podcast about the Federal Writers’ Project and its relevance today. But more importantly, it asks the questions: how is history recorded? And who gets to decide?

The podcast has gone on to win a Silver at the Signal Awards and was nominated for an Ambie, and we are so excited about the stories we have lined up for the future.

Thank you to these state humanities groups and the NEH for helping us get this podcast off the ground, and thank you to all the organizations that do so much to inspire the next generation through the arts and humanities.

If you want to check out The People’s Recorder, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube at www.youtube.com/

We're also available now on Patreon. Get exclusive access to upcoming bonus episodes, extended interviews and more by subscribing at www.patreon.com/peoplesrecorder

10/24/2025

It’s National Arts & Humanities Month!

Especially now, we need to protect and honor the amazing arts and humanities organizations around the country and the impactful work they do in their communities.

This month, we’ve been thanking the arts and humanities groups that have supported our programs, and today we want to give a shoutout to our friends at Maryland Humanities, who supported our Celebration of Excellence event at the Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy in Baltimore.

Inspired by the documentary Partners of the Heart, we organized this event to help continue Vivien Thomas’ legacy and provide opportunities to today’s youth that were not available to Thomas when he was a teenager. The special event included a screening of the film, followed by a round table career discussion with Thomas Family members, physicians of color and internship coordinators from Johns Hopkins Medicine, historians and the filmmakers.

Thank you, Maryland Humanities, for making this special event possible, and thank you to all the groups that do so much to inspire the next generation through the arts and humanities.

If you want to check out Partners of the Heart, it’s available now on Peacock TV and Tubi.

10/23/2025

NEW EPISODE of The People’s Recorder has just dropped!

Tune in for an important update on the podcast, our status now in the wake of recent funding cuts, and also exciting plans we have coming up over the next few months.

That includes a sneak preview of "Gospel of Fear," a trilogy of episodes about Congressman Martin Dies, the playbook he used to attack the WPA and the Federal Writers’ Project, and how we’re still feeling the impact of that playbook today.

Join our new Patreon channel to help stories like this keep coming and out in the world where they belong. Become a patron for only $5/month and receive access to exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, AMA events and more. Learn more at www.patreon.com/peoplesrecorder

Listen to The People’s Recorder wherever you get your podcasts or directly on YouTube here at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEFJDu4X9kI

10/22/2025

10/22/2025

It’s National Arts & Humanities Month!

Especially now, we need to protect and honor the amazing arts and humanities organizations around the country and the impactful work they do in their communities.

Over the next week, we’ll be thanking the arts and humanities groups that have supported our programs – today we would like to give a special shoutout to our friends at Alabama Humanities Alliance for supporting our documentary First Lady of the Revolution / Primera Dama de la Revolución.

First Lady tells the remarkable story of Henrietta Boggs, a young Southern belle from Montgomery, Alabama whose marriage to José ‘Don Pepe’ Figueres led to a decade-long journey through activism, political upheaval, and civil war, and eventually to her becoming the First Lady of Costa Rica.

Alabama Humanities was as inspired by Henrietta’s story as we were and was a critical supporter in getting the film started. The documentary went on to win awards at Sidewalk Film Festival and Fairhope Film Festival and was broadcast on Reel South on PBS.

Thank you again to Alabama Humanities – and to all the groups that do so much to tell America’s story through the arts and humanities.

And if you want to watch First Lady of the Revolution, you can check it out now on Xumo TV, YouTube, Vimeo on Demand, and Amazon.com.

10/20/2025

It’s !

Especially now, we need to protect and honor the amazing arts and humanities organizations around the country and the impactful work they do in their communities.

This week, we’ll be thanking the arts and humanities groups that have supported our programs – starting with our documentary Partners of the Heart, which was narrated by Morgan Freeman and broadcast on American Experience | PBS.

Partners was our first feature documentary, and we wouldn’t have been able to make it without the support of National Endowment for the Humanities, Maryland Humanities, Humanities Tennessee, Humanities DC, and the Mississippi Humanities Council. We were also so honored to have been named as one of the NEH50 – a list of the 50 most culturally significant projects funded by the NEH.

Thank you to all of those organizations – and to all the groups that do so much to tell America’s story through the arts and humanities.

And if you want to watch Partner of the Heart, you can check it out now on Peacock TV and Tubi!

10/17/2025

And they’ve arrived!

We were thrilled to donate production and research materials from our documentary Partners of the Heart to Vanderbilt University Libraries, including dozens of original interviews with trailblazing physicians, authors, historians and members of both the Thomas and Blalock Families.

Vanderbilt is where Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas first met and began their pioneering partnership that broke barriers and changed the course of medical history. The road in front of Vanderbilt’s Medical Center has been renamed Vivien Thomas Way in Thomas' honor.

(Plus, the docs’s amazing narrator, Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, was born in Tennessee, so it really does seem like a perfect fit!)

We are proud to donate these materials to the excellent archivists at Vanderbilt, where we hope they will be a useful resource for researchers and students for years to come!

10/16/2025

10/15/2025