6-time winner of the International Bluegrass Association’s mandolinist of the year award, 2-time Grammy nominee, Sierra Hull has had an enviable career by any standard. But the story of how she reached those heights is truly extraordinary, even seeming a bit magical, as she tells Tom Casciato in this revealing PBS News Hour profile.
“Two American Families 1991–2024” has been nominated for a 2025 News & Documentary Emmy Award in the Outstanding Social Issue Documentary category. Winner announced June 26. You can watch the film here.
Singer/songwriter Neko Case joins Tom Casciato on PBS News Hour to discuss her new book, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, including growing up in solitude, her musical influences, her music and what Tom calls her lifelong antidote to loneliness.
The International Documentary Association has named Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes’s “Two American Families 1991-2024” the top TV documentary of 2024. Shot over parts of 34 years and featuring Tom and Kathleen’s longtime colleague, correspondent Bill Moyers, the film follows the fortunes two Milwaukee Families, the Stanleys and the Neumanns, from the time the breadwinners in each are laid off from well-paying union jobs to the present. The New York Times called the film “a masterwork.” It streams on YouTube and at PBS Frontline’s site.
Author and music exec Joe Boyd, who produced acts from Pink Floyd to Nick Drake to Maria Muldaur to R.E.M., joins Tom Casciato on PBS News Hour to discuss his expansive new book, “And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain,” which tells the story of musical artists from Brazil to Pakistan, Jamaica to South Africa, Bulgaria to Nigeria and beyond, without whom the popular music of the West would be unrecognizable.
Nick Lowe, at 75, takes stock of his life and career in a wide-ranging interview covering his musical influences (from his mother to Tennessee Ernie Ford, Nat King King Cole and beyond) to his time producing Elvis Costello (and who was telling who what to do) to the 1980s (which weren’t as fun as they looked) all the up to his latest album with Los Strait Jackets, “Indoor Safari.”
“Two American Families 1991-2024” a new film directed and produced by Tom Casciato & Kathleen Hughes and featuring journalist Bill Moyers, has just premiered on the PBS Frontline series. Filmed over a 34-year period, the film follows two Milwaukee families — one Black, one white — on a journey through America’s low-wage economy after their breadwinners’ layoffs from well-paying factory jobs. The New York Times called the film “a knockout documentary” and continued, “At a time when so much documentary television feels generic, disposable and even straightforwardly pointless, this is both a master work unto itself and a glaring reminder of what is largely absent in television narrative nonfiction.”
The Thousand Roads Podcasts features Tom’s conversations with other documentary filmmakers, along with educators and observers of the scene. Season One focusses on the intersection of documentary film and journalism, and features conversations with Julie Cohen & Betsy West, Dawn Porter, Yoruba Richen & Brad Lichtenstein, Robert Greene, June Cross, Jennifer Tiexiera & Camilla Hall, David Siev, Byron Hurt, Natalie Bullock Brown, Brian Newman, Tia Lessin & Carl Deal, Carrie Lozano, and Caty Borum. Season One was supported by a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Special thanks also to Jax Deluca.
Nashville’s Tommy Prine joins Tom Casciato on PBS Newshour for a great conversation about doubt, tragedy, his father John Prine, and the ultimately triumphant journey that led to Tommy’s debut album, This Far South.
Kentucky blues artist Nat Myers joins Tom Casciato on PBS NewsHour to talk about growing up with the blues, the poetry of Charlie Patton and Tommy McLennan, his debut album “Yellow Peril” and how playing the blues keeps the blues away.