This December, explore the connection between art, spirituality and individualism with WKAR World.
WKAR World is now streaming live at video.wkar.org/livestream
Schedule as of 12/1/2024. Schedule and descriptions subject to change. All times Eastern
DECEMBER 2024
12 | Thu
8:00
Local, USA: UNVEILED: Joyce Tenneson and the Heroine's Journey
As a groundbreaking female photographer pursues her artistic vision, she struggles to navigate diverging roles as mother and artist. UNVEILED explores Tenneson's life as she fights to express her voice while suffering the fallout of a 45-year-old secret. In watching the film, audiences must contemplate the compromises that are inevitably made in seeking to live a full creative life.
13 | Fri
8:00
Gospel: The Gospel Train/The Golden Age of Gospel
The Gospel Train: Explore the dramatic explosion of gospel. Starting in the 40s, southern migrants fused blues and jazz sounds, taking Black religious music into the mainstream to create a genre enduring for generations. The Golden Age of Gospel: Starting in the 40s, GOSPEL's hour 2 explores the Golden Age of Gospel - the dramatic explosion of Black sacred music and the segregated highways of the American South - which took the Lord's music into the mainstream.
15 | Sun
11:00
Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story
Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story traces Dorothy Day's journey from a young communist journalist, to a Catholic convert, to the co-founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and the first "houses of hospitality," which sheltered New York City's homeless during the Great Depression. The documentary uses extensive archival footage from Day's own collection, and features interviews with actor Martin Sheen, public theologian Cornel West, Senator Tim Kaine, biographer Robert Ellsberg, and Day's granddaughters.
17 | Tue
8:00
Secrets of the Dead: The Sunken Basilica
2014, Turkey. A normal survey flight over Lake Iznik unexpectedly reveals the sunken remains a 4th century basilica. The discovery prompts scientists to probe the elusive history and geology behind the demise of the church that was built in ancient Nicaea -- now known as Iznik. When was the basilica destroyed? How did the basilica get swallowed up by Lake Iznik? And what happened to its community? Spanning the globe, this investigation follows a world-renowned team in this underwater excavation. Thanks to exclusive access to the site, including critical aerial and underwater cinematography, and spectacular CGI, we time travel through the centuries, back to the Roman and Byzantine time, and at the foundation of Christianity itself.
18 | Wed
8:00
Free Exercise: America's Story of Religious Liberty
Explore the development of religious freedom in the United States as told first through the eyes of six American faith communities - Quakers, Baptists, Black churches, Catholics, Mormons and Jews - then examining recent challenges.
19 | Thu
8:00
Doc World: With Peter Bradley
When filmmaker Alex Rappoport met Peter Bradley in 2020, the 79-year-old abstract artist hadn't sold many paintings nor had a major show in over four decades...yet he still painted every day in relative obscurity. Over time, they recorded Bradley's life story and artistic process, both deeply inspired by modern Jazz music. As a child, Bradley met and befriended musicians including Miles Davis and Art Blakey, and their influence was indelible.
9:00
Spiritual Audacity: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story
SPIRITUAL AUDACITY: THE ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL STORY chronicles Heschel's life and legacy, offering an engaging profile of one of the 20th century's most prominent Jewish theologians and philosophers. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Heschel a "great prophet" and their social justice views aligned; noted theologian Reinhold Niebuhr also spoke of his friend Heschel as "an authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America."
21 | Sat
11:00
Spiritual Audacity: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story
25 | Wed
8:30
Independent Lens: Mama Bears
Although they grew up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, these moms are now willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to keep their kids safe-even if it challenges their belief systems and rips apart their worlds.
26 | Thu
8:00
Doc World: Ganden: A Joyful Land
Likened by Buddhists to the Vatican City, Ganden is considered the most influential monastery of Tibetan Buddhism. Monks lived in the monastery for more than 500 years before a brutal invasion drove them to India. GANDEN: A JOYFUL LAND is a look at the lives and remembrances of the remaining generation of monks to have studied at the monastery in Tibet where the Dalai Lama's lineage began.
9:30
POV Shorts: Under G-D
Inspired by the lawsuits filed in Florida challenging the state's abortion ban on the basis of religious freedom, Under G-d is a documentary short film about the national Jewish response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization U.S. Supreme Court decision woven through the lived experiences of impacted Jewish women and the various lawsuits currently being launched by rabbis, Jewish organizations and interfaith leaders to challenge the overturning of Roe v. Wade, state by state. Through the lens of maintaining the separation between church and state, these nationwide efforts are predicated on ultimately protecting religious freedom and democracy for all.
27 | Fri
8:00
Chaplains: Part 2
CHAPLAINS continues with a profile of the chaplains team traveling with NASCAR, the tradition of chaplains who serve in the US Senate and House of Representatives, a Rabbi- chaplain working in a Hollywood retirement home, and the newest Muslim chaplain who joined the Detroit Police Department.
9:00
Independent Lens: Three Chaplains
Three Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military face resistance and uncertainty as they uphold the First Amendment and practice their faith. They work to rise to the highest ranks while calling for religious equality.
28 | Sat
8:00
Buddha
Two and a half millennia ago, a new religion was born in northern India, generated from the ideas of a single man, the Buddha, a mysterious Indian sage who famously gained enlightenment while he sat under a large, shapely fig tree.
10:00
Doc World: Ganden: A Joyful Land
Likened by Buddhists to the Vatican City, Ganden is considered the most influential monastery of Tibetan Buddhism. Monks lived in the monastery for more than 500 years before a brutal invasion drove them to India. GANDEN: A JOYFUL LAND is a look at the lives and remembrances of the remaining generation of monks to have studied at the monastery in Tibet where the Dalai Lama's lineage began.
29 | Sun
8:00
Earth's Sacred Wonders: House of the Divine
Meet a Muslim paramedic who helps fasting worshipers during Ramadan in Jerusalem. A Cambodian man risks his life to save his ancestral spirits from the jungle. A Buddhist warrior monk in China faces a test that will change his life forever.
9:00
Earth's Sacred Wonders: Closer to the Divine
Travel to Japan, where a Shinto devotee undertakes a grueling challenge at a sacred waterfall. A young Muslim helps re-plaster a mosque in Mali. At a New York City cathedral, an Episcopal priest brings people and their pets closer to God.
10:00
Earth's Sacred Wonders: Visions of the Divine
Follow a young Yazidi woman as she searches for salvation in Iraq. Meet an orthodox Christian who must deliver a holy flame into the hands of his bishop in Jerusalem. In Nepal, a Buddhist painter battles the elements to honor Buddha's birthday.
11:00
Secrets of Sacred Architecture
For most of America's history, sacred buildings represented our greatest feats of innovative engineering and artistic design. For a time, America's tallest structure and its largest-capacity building were churches, and a Maryland church organ stood as the most complex machine ever built. SECRETS OF SACRED ARCHITECTURE unlocks the elements of design that make these innovative structures so fascinating and unveils the meaning embedded in religious architecture.
30 | Mon
8:00
Holy Silence
HOLY SILENCE, a documentary film from Emmy-nominated director Steven Pressman, takes a fresh look at a topic that has sparked controversy for decades. During the years leading up to World War II, what was the Vatican's reaction to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany? And after the war began, how did the pope respond to the horrors of the Holocaust? In telling that story, HOLY SILENCE focuses on American officials -- from a humble New England priest to the president of the United States -- who were working behind the scenes to influence the Vatican's actions during that dark period in modern history.
31 | Tue
8:00
Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science: The Big & The Small
Part 2, "The Big & The Small," dramatizes the fact that humans are almost exactly the same distance - in terms of "Powers of Ten" - between an atom and a star. But where do we fit in the moral universe? Alan speaks with the Dalai Lama, a rabbi and a bio-ethicist about the nature of consciousness, and the status of future Artificial Intelligences.
9:00
Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science: Homo Techno
Part 3, "Homo Techno," features stories - including that of a paralyzed former gang member who risked his brain to advance medical science - that prompt Lightman to think deeply about how advances in science and technology will impact our future evolution into what will perhaps be a new species: "Homo Techno" - part human and part machine. What essential human qualities will we want to preserve? As both a physicist and an essayist, Lightman is a rare talent. After years on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lightman's first novel, Einstein's Dreams, became an international best-seller. Co-written and directed by award-winning public television science producer Geoff Haines-Stiles (Carl Sagan's COSMOS, NOVA's "Is Anybody Out there," and Childhood), SEARCHING is filmed in Ultra HD format worldwide, and features state-of-the-art astronomical computer graphics along with a wide range of innovative story-telling techniques.
Ways to watch WKAR WORLD
Streaming live at video.wkar.org/livestream
Watch on these channels:
- Over the Air: Ch 23.2
- Michigan State University Cable TV: Ch 020
- Xfinity (East Lansing): Ch 904
- Xfinity (East Lansing): Ch 027
- Xfinity (East Lansing): Ch 288
- Xfinity (East Lansing): Ch 1165
- Xfinity (Lansing): Ch 020
- Xfinity (Lansing): Ch 288
- Xfinity (Lansing): Ch 904
- Xfinity (Lansing): Ch 1165
- WOW Greater Lansing (Bellevue): Ch 030
- WOW Greater Lansing (Bellevue): Ch 157
- Broadcast TV - LANSING, EAST LANSING, JACKSON: Ch 23.2