Excerpt: "For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is behind bars. For black men between the ages of 20 and 34, that figure is one in nine. Our incarceration rate dwarfs that of every other nation, but our overall crime rate is average for Western countries."
Program: Talking History
Great new Radio Lab about race. Does race even exist?
Producer: Radio Lab
Playtime: 1 hour
If there was any doubt about the power that old fashioned radio still holds in the digital age, consider this NYTimes article about its use by the Taliban.
Soundprint Story about how Baltimore is trying to keep toxic storm runoff from polluting Chesapeake Bay.
Part "The Wire," part Environmental Hydrology.
[Realplayer required].
Producer: Katie Gott
Program: Soundprint
Playtime: 28 minutes 30 seconds
Great piece with clips of every inaugural address since Calvin Coolidge. This is from a show (Day to Day) that NPR has canceled.
Producer: Barrett Golding
Program: Day to Day
Playtime: 8 minutes 57 seconds
Date: January, 2009
Contrary to her popular image as a meek old lady, Rosa Parks was much more intentional than accidental - someone who "never believed in nonviolence" and was a gun toting radical.
Program: On the Media
Playtime: 6 minutes 42 seconds
Date: January, 2009
The New Yorker's Ben McGrath talks about how the financial collapse relates to the end of the world as we know it...and he feels fine.
Program: New Yorker
Playtime: 10 minutes 20 seconds
Date: January, 2009
At the end of last year, transcripts from more Nixon administration audio recordings were released by the National Security Archive. One of the more entertaining tidbits is a phone conversation between Henry Kissinger and Allen Ginsberg in which Ginsberg proposes that they meet to talk about how to end the Vietnam War. Kissinger seems surprisingly open to the idea. But then, kind of out of nowhere Ginsberg makes a strange suggestion.
G: It would be even more funny to do it on television.
K: What?
G: It would be even more useful if we could do it naked on television.
K: (Laughter )
...don't think that meeting ever took place.
The National Security Archive has posted audio of some of Kissinger conversations HERE but, sadly, not this one.
This is a haunting profile of the troubled city of Juarez, Mexico - just across the U.S. border. Done by the great Scott Carrier, Salt Lake City resident and long time This American Life contributor. There is no better voice in Public Radio than Carrier's. That is unless you count the cowboy in this story.
Producer: Scott Carrier
Program: Hearing Voices
Playtime: 52 minutes
Date: January, 2009
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) this morning told radio host Bill Press that she thinks that so-called "Fairness Doctrine" -- or something akin to it -- should be brought back to the airwaves.
The Fairness Doctrine refers to an FCC policy, eliminated under Ronald Reagan, that requires broadcasters who use publicly owned airwaves to present both sides of controversial issues. It was used during the civil rights era to keep radio in the Deep South from using their stations to oppose civil rights.
The basic concept is that the airwaves are a finite resource, owned by the public and, therefore, should not be used to promoted a biased point of view. But some conservatives fear that the revival of the doctrine is an attack on conservative talk radio which came of age after the doctrine was abolished.
Program: The Bill Press Show
NPR reports that Army suicides in January were the highest since they started counting (1980).
Program: All Things Considered
Check out the audio interview of the NY times's CATHERINE RAMPELL that accompanies the article.
Here is a website called Tracked in America that tells (with audio from various experts and historians) the history of U.S. Government surveillance going back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act - long before the Nixon or Bush administrations were spying on American journalists and citizens.
But Lawrence Wright (one of those spied-on journalists) was asked on On The Media last week about the Obama administration saying they want more transparency. He said he had recently made a Freedom of Information Act requests that was denied. Wright said he "just do[es]n't think that the government is moving in the direction that the president has indicated." That is - they are not being more open and transparent.
Soundprint brings a tribute to and history of the spiritual "Go Tell it on the Mountain."
Producer: Jean Dalrymple
Program: Soundprint
Playtime: 28 minutes 31 seconds
A reporter from the Washington Post used his only question to the President of the United States -- at his first ever press conference -- to ask about a sports player named A-Rod.
Maybe if people didn't take steroids use so seriously, the players would realize the public doesn't take the sport so seriously, and then they might not think it was worth it to take steroids just be good at a sport that people don't take very seriously.
From Rueters: An audio slideshow on a church service entitled "A Hybrid Hope" at the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit, Michigan December 7, 2008.
Producer: Carlos Barria
Leonard Lopate talks to John Tallbott, the guy who predicted the housing crash. He now says things will get worse. He also says players in the financial system -- not the government or consumers -- are at fault. There has been lots on the economy but this guy has a unique perspective. Dire.
"This is a dead cat. This is not bouncing [back]."
Program: Leonard Lopate
Date: February, 2009
Slideshow tribute to a team that exists soley to be a "deliberately ineffective opposition as a foil for the Globetrotters' comedy routines." They have beaten the Globetrotters but once - in 1971.
Ever wonder why politicians these days always talk about helping the Middle Class but not about helping the poor? FDR sought to lift Americans out of poverty. LBJ had a War on Poverty. So what happened? NPR Daniel Schorr considers the question in this commentary.
Program: All Things Considered
Playtime: 2 minutes 31 seconds
Main story is about a radical activist who starts spying on his fellow activists for the FBI.
Story of a woman who pretended to be a man and fought in the civil war.
And this piece about modern gender reassignment - The Evolution of Y - makes a nice companion.
Some history of the public works projects of FDR's New Deal.
PRI doc about people on the mean streets who, in spite of that, manage to achieve. I just love the title.
The American Folklife Center has online collections of American historical recordings like this one - the Omaha Indian funeral song recorded on a wax cylinder in the late 1800's.
"The Omaha had only one funeral song, addressed directly to the spirit of the dead and intended to cheer the spirit on its journey."
This is from a great (relatively new) monthly show from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities called Back Story (with the American History Guys). This is a really interesting history of alcohol in the U.S. The three historians posit that the origins of big government can be found not in the new deal but in prohibition. The war on drugs and the legislation of morality first came around during prohibition. But back then, it was considered progressive.
It's nice to hear a southern accent on public radio that is a host and not a subject. Also interesting in that they take calls. The callers, in fact are so coherent it makes me wonder how they are screened.
Playtime: 53 minutes
This is audio of part of an interview Planet Money's Adam Davidson did with TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren. It features Warren and Davidson going at it pretty heatedly about what Warren's role should be. The interview subsequently illicited this apology (at about 1:50) in which someone hinted that Davidson's interview was sexist ( he wouldn't have spoken with Tim Geithner like that) and then this scolding by NPR's Ombudsman. All of which made the interview all that much more interesting and people. I am sure it is the most even listened to Podcast from Planet money.
This is from a recent episode of Third Coast Festival's Re:Sound. The third segmant is about how Mormons - who believe Native American Indians are a lost tribe of Israel - took 20,000 Indian children from their reservations and brainwashed them - and how some of them might have been happy to go along with it.
[Story starts a little before 15:00]
Date: May, 2009
Race, Politics, Native American, History, Education, American Issues
Harvard author speaks about how demographic changes have caused parenting skills to decline and expert advice to proliferate - a "culture of parental advice" that leaves parents feeling inadequate.
Did you know there was coup planned by wealthy fascists in 1930's America? Did you know that Grandpa Prescott Bush was allegedly involved? Check out this 2007 BBC doc.
It was a time in which the U.S. was in a serious, prolonged recession. The president was intervening in the U.S economy in ways that the right wing did not approve of. The White House was trying to empower the poor and working class. Right Wing fanatics were hinting at revolution and civil war.
Chilling story from Bill Moyers Journal about "right-wing" talk radio.
American Issues, Bad News, Immigration, Politics, Radio, Right Wing Politics
Studio 360 rebroadcast about the iconic Campbell's Soup paintings.
New Yorker audio interview with Kelefa Sanneh, who profiled the bombastic, enigmatic talk show host Micheal Savage for the magizine. This piece is unique for the New Yorker in that it uses multiple clips from Savage's radio show.
9-11 call about famously arrested Harvard Professor Henery Lous Gates Jr. The police dispatch is here too.
NASA recently released some previously... un-public(?) audio from the Apollo 11 mission.
About the U.S. Government policy prosecuting terrorist before they strike or... punishing people before they are guilty er... stopping the gonna-be-guilty while they are still innocent... talking people into doing bad things then arresting them for considering doing them. Let's call it "entrapment."
But seriously, the subject of this story is hard to feel sorry for.
From the website:
"After an historic, generation-long prison expansion, American prisons are now releasing more than 600,000 inmates each year. The punishment doesn't end at the prison gates. On the outside, ex-prisoners face tattered connections to family and more closed doors. They also pose a challenge for the places they go home to"
He did it as a high school project. His teacher gave him a B- ...until the president called. It's a 2 minute story with four minutes of music after it. Weird.
Washington Post Slide Audio Slide show on the late Edward Moore (Ted) Kennedy.
NYTimes audio slide show about Paul Fusco's "RFK Funeral Train" project. Fusco was a photog for Look Magazine on board the train carrying Robert Kennedy from L.A. to D.C. Found as part of Benjamin Chesterton's "Mulitmedia of the Month" series on Resolve: "A collaborative online community that brings together photographers and photo industry professionals of every kind to find ways to keep photography relevant, respected, and profitable."
42 years ago this week (August 30 1967) Thurgood Marshal became the first African American on the Supreme Court, opening the door for three women and two more minorities subsequently. American Radio works did this documentary in 2004 called "Thurgood Marshall Before the Court."
Another multimedia piece that skews the lines between visual and audio mediums. New York Times report on the 2006 tracing the Pentegon's reaction to the 2006 "General's Revolt" in which retired generals started calling for Rumsfeld's ouster.
I still see it as audio documentary because of the de-emphasized of the visual and the independent cohesion of the piece's audio (i.e., it makes sense if you just listen and don't watch).
This series from the Center for Documentary Studies was apparently released this past spring but is a perfect listen for the fall harvest season. Five American family farms profiled including a traditional Hopi farm family.
Link to Hearing Voices' post of the Radio Lab rebroadcast of a Hearing Voices piece that played on Living on Earth in 2005.
City X by Johnathan Mitchell.
The familiar story of a small Midwestern city, its mall, and the most common cause of city death - heart disease.
Connor Walsh alerts us to this BBC doc about the mother of President Barack Obama. Ann Dunham is described as a globe trotting "peacnik." She studied archaeology and anthropology of agricultural blacksmiths. She got grants from the Ford Foundation and loans from the World Bank and worked to help rural people get loans to start small businesses.
Playtime: 22 minutes 26 seconds
Date: September, 2009
A monologue from Prague on what happens when you go home to find police all around your house…
- Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 3 minutes 52 seconds
Date: October, 2009
The BBC's weekly environmental programme, One Planet, goes on an American road-trip. The Englishmen see big cars, generous people, and the inventor of lithium-ion batteries. All on the road to Copenhagen.
- Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 27 minutes 2 seconds
Date: November, 2009
Technology, Science, Interview, Environment, Education, American Issues
Oleg Kalugin was a KGB agent in Washington DC. And he really lived the life.
- Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 11 minutes 30 seconds
UPDATED February 2010.
A deeply engaging and disturbing feature on "survivors" – individuals who have survived solitary confinement in American prisons.
Photo by Terry Foss, from claireschoenmedia.com
Claire Schoen did a shorter version of this piece for Day to Day (a show NPR canceled earlier this year). It has 9 former prisoners describing their experiences with solitary confinement. Listen here.
Producer: Claire Schoen
Playtime: 28 minutes 58 seconds
Transom.org offers up a stunning monologue. Matthew is engaging, moving, and dynamic. Includes some sexual references.
– Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 18 minutes 45 seconds
NPR's All Things Considered just turned 39. Hard to imagine but it's first day it featured a 24 minute documentary of a war protest. Click the link to listen.
May 4 1970 the National Guard opened fired on anti-war protesters at Kent State in Ohio. The Kent State Radio Station WKSU just launched kentstate1970.org a May 4 1970 audio archive.
Two years ago newly enhanced audio recordings from the occurance seemed to show an order to fire. KBOO, WKSU, and NPR had the story then.
If you are interested in a career with the Army National Guard click this link!