Joyce Hackel

Senior Radio Producer

The World

Joyce Hackel is a producer at The World who aims to find the right voice for stories that will make you stop and listen.

Joyce Hackel spends much of her day tracking down the right person to tell the nuanced stories that help explain today’s world.  Joyce started writing deadline copies from a DC sweatshop called States News Service. After reporting one story too many about Congressional dysfunction (it was bad even then), she ditched the Capitol Hill press pass and bought a one-way ticket to El Salvador. There, she wrote for The Christian Science Monitor and filed freelance radio pieces from a closet lined with egg cartons.  (She also met a British guy she’d eventually marry, but that’s another story…) Eventually, she became a staff correspondent for Monitor Radio and was dispatched to Africa for four years.  She filed from more than a dozen African countries, reporting on clan warfare in Somalia,  genocide in Rwanda, and Nelson Mandela’s landmark election.  She won a few awards for her Africa radio pieces and headed to the University of Michigan as a journalism fellow.   Since then,  Joyce has been a senior editor at Living on Earth and edited WBUR’s Morning Edition.


Former US ambassador to China warns against alienating allies as China seeks greater global influence

US-China relations

The World’s Host Marco Werman speaks with former US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns about the implications of the shifting geopolitical situation under the current Trump administration.

Gangs seize roads leading to Haiti’s capital as police continue to lose control

Conflict & Justice

‘Thank God, the nightmare is over’: A Syrian returns home to Damascus to witness celebration and struggle

Syria

Ten years after Washington’s historic deal with Havana, Cuba remains adrift

Global Politics

Israel to expand Golan Heights settlements as Syria goes through political transition

Israel-Hamas war

New book is a catalog of ‘living wonders’

Books

A new publication by Atlas Obscura catalogs some of the most remarkable living creatures on our planet. The World’s Host Carol Hills speaks with the book’s authors to learn more.

Airstrike on school in Gaza further diminishes prospects of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas

Conflict & Justice

The World’s Host Marco Werman speaks with Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst with the International Crisis Group, about a weekend airstrike on a school in Gaza that was being used to shelter civilians.

A look at the impact of pollution on rivers and efforts to keep them clean

Summer Olympics 2024

The organizers of the Olympic Games in Paris spent $1.5 billion to clean up the River Seine. The World’s host, Carolyn Beeler, speaks with naturalist and author Sy Montgomery about other efforts to keep rivers clean around the planet.

Counting the civilian death toll in Gaza

Israel-Hamas war

Gathering accurate statistics detailing the ever-mounting toll of civilian deaths in Gaza has been an immense challenge. Now, a new study by the independent British research group Airwars has examined the statistics Gaza’s Health Ministry provided in the war’s first 17 days. Airwars’ head of investigations, Joe Dyke, tells The World’s Marco Werman why he thinks the Health Ministry’s estimates are reliable.

‘Our community is terrified’: A faith leader talks about what it means to be a Palestinian Christian in the US

Israel-Hamas war

Pastor Khader Khalilia is one of the few Palestinian Christian faith leaders in the United States. He talks to The World’s host, Marco Werman, about what it’s been like to lead a church in the US, especially during the past nine months of war in Gaza.