Mary Byrne
If you asked longtime public radio producer David Freudberg and Belmont resident who his most memorable interview subject has been, it isn’t the Dalai Lama, Muhammed Ali, or Betty Ford’s name you’d hear— although those are just a few of the big names he’s found himself in the company of.
Instead, it would be the name Mattie Stepanek.
Stepanek, who died at the age of 13 due to complications of dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy (a rare form of muscular dystrophy), was an accomplished poet and an award-winning peace ambassador, according to a foundation in his name.
He published several New York Times bestsellers by the time he died, and was a children’s health and disability advocate. He made television appearances nationally, and he addressed the National Press Association.
He was 11 years old when Freudberg interviewed him about his work as a poet and his philosophy on life.
“It was just hard to come up with a show that touched me more than that,” he said.
Stepanek’s story is just one of the hundreds Freudberg has told over his 52 years in public radio, a career that began when he was just 16. Over the years, he covered local and national stories for public radio stations. He even scored an interview with the 29-year-old Joseph Biden, who had just been elected to the U.S. Senate.
In 1997, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting approved a proposal to fund the Humankind project.
“The original vision was, ‘How do we live our ideals as human beings?’” he said. “That’s always been kind of a passion of mine, something that has worked its way into most of my productions over the years. I hold strong ideals, and I also am acutely aware of how much I fall short of realizing them. and that gap fascinates me — people who try and have strong aspirations, but it’s also a process, and we frequently struggle to do it.”
Through Humankind, he has met the likes of Dorothy Day, Mister Rogers, Walter Cronkite, Congressman John Lewis, and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the professional boxer who was falsely accused of multiple murders and not exonerated until 19 years after being imprisoned. He’s also met with lesser-known individuals making a difference all over the world.
“Anybody who I’ve really been inspired by has been the subject of one of our profiles on Humankind or an earlier show,” he said.
Operating out of a studio on Leonard Street, Human Media of Belmont, which houses Humankind, is a small, independent production house specializing in programs heard on NPR and PRX member stations across the country. Humankind has been presented in partnership with WGBH Boston since 1974, and it is also available as a podcast.
When it comes to what he’s most interested in covering, Freudberg highlighted the topic of integrative medicine, or the integration of traditional medical intervention and alternative medicine.
“I’m very interested in [covering] war and peace, and what efforts can we make to prevent war,” he added. “And what is the human cost of war? You look at the world now — what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on in Ukraine — this is still an urgent need.”
But how does he choose which stories to pursue?
“The main criterion is: Will pursuing a given project help our listeners? Will it be helpful to people?,” he said. “I’m not as fascinated with sensationalism or celebrity culture, so much as [the question]: Can I provide something that— if we shine a light on it — will be useful and helpful to our listeners in a way where they can really get closer to realizing their ideals.”
According to Freudberg, the program’s current motto is: In times of change and challenge, how do we hold onto our humanity?
Currently, he’s working on a story about the embedding of social service workers, or clinicians, in local police departments.
“This largely gained traction in the wake of the George Floyd murder, which was, I guess, a wake-up call to some parts of the American society that we need to sensitize law enforcement to the needs of the community,” Freudberg said.
The story involves interviews with local law enforcement agencies, as well as a trip out west to Seattle, where he will meet and interview first responders.
Although he has no full-time staff, Freudberg works with a multi-Grammy winning recording engineer, as well as a bookkeeper, and a recent college graduate who is helping him to catalog the metadata for the Library of Congress, which acquired the Humankind collection last year.
Freudberg said it’s not lost on him the doors that have opened for him, thanks to Human Media’s partnership with WGBH.
“I have access to virtually anybody I want to meet,” he said. “That’s been such an honor. I don’t take it for granted at all.”
Sometimes, people give him an hour of their time; others might give him a full day.
“I really get to find out a lot about what they’re thinking and what they’re experiencing and then get to share that with listeners,” he said. “That is a remarkable thing, and I realize it’s a gift I’ve received.”
The Humankind series can be accessed online at humanmedia.org.