Series/Archives
Hearing Voices- Weekly Hours
HV134- Close to Death
HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Scott Carrier · Josh Darsa · Carmen Delzell · Barrett Golding · Jake Warga
Hearing Voices from NPR®
134 Close to Death: At Life’s End
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-03-21
“Close to Death” (52:00 mp3):
People near the process of death and dying:
It takes four seconds to hit the water from the Golden Gate Bridge. A year ago the producer’s friend Phil took that fatal jump. They met several years before that when Phil’s brother committed suicide (transcript).
Herman Porter, a blind man, slipped unseen beneath a moving subway train: 90 tons of steel and electricity. (Hear Alex Chadwick’s eulogize for NPR’s pioneering producer: “Josh Darsa Obituary“.)
Writer Carmen Delzell visit her grandmother, who broke her hip — not uncommon, says the doctor, for an 89-year-old.
Scott Carrier talks to the family, the ex-husband, the mortuary, the doctors, even the grave digger, in piecing together the memory of a life. Prodcued for New American Radio. (Scott’s most recent book is Prisoner of Zion.)
Messages on my the producer’s mother’s tape machine, found after his father’s death; original music by Skyward
HV103- Political Party
HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Scott Carrier · Barrett Golding · Jonathan Menjivar · Dmae Roberts · rx
Hearing Voices from NPR®
103 Political Party: For Election Season
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-03-14 (Originally: 2010-10-27)
“Political Party” (52:00 mp3):
Let’s rev-up this election process with a cross-county Political Party:
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson publicly debates FOX News host Sean Hannity. The spectacle took place inside a chasm called Us versus Them. Produced in 2007 for This American Life; music: Rickie Lee Jones, “Nobody Knows My Name” from Sermon On Exposition Boulevard.
Politics can be frustrating. It can make you scream — which made one Presidential candidate became famous for. Here’s Howard Dean’s scream put to music (more mixes at James Lileks’ Bleatophony).
From the 1980s archives, we present this pre-teen perspective on our government’s founding document.
HV133- Destination Unknown
HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Scott Carrier · Tom Lopez · Benjamen Walker · ZBS
Hearing Voices from NPR®
133 Destination Unknown: Getting Nowhere, Slow
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-03-07
“Destination Unknown” (52:00 mp3):
Are We There Yet?:
Zeno’s paradox hits the highway, asking How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?.
“Remedial Theory” (2004 /13:30) Benjamen WalkerGreat novels induce empathy for others’ experiences. So how is it a man now on trial for crimes against humanity is an avid fiction reader of fiction? Might he simply be reading the wrong books? We take a trip to The Hague to hand-deliver the ‘right’ books to Slobodan Milosevic. Produced with Michael Kavanagh of The Next Big Thing and HV’s Larry Massett. Ben Walker hosts WFMU’s Too Much Information, where “the sober hangover after the digital party has run out of memes, apps and schemes” (TMI playlists / archives). He also produces The Big Ideas podcast for The Guardian.
“Where you boys going? The swamp… you’re not from around here, are you?” Off Dust My Broom.
Scott’s first radio piece: he and his microphone hitch from his home in Salt Lake City to the doorstep of NPR, recording the people he meets along the way (mixed by NPR’s Dawn Warneke). Scott’s most recent book is Prisoner of Zion.)
Donna, a supermarket checkout clerk, dreams of faraway places, in the ZBS radio soap, Saratoga Springs.
Form the collaboration called Wide Open Spaces . Internet Archive has the entire performance: “People Like Us, Matmos and Wobbly Live at San Francisco Art Institute on 2002-10-05.”
Wobbly, People Like Us and Matmos circled their wagons in the lecture hall of the San Francisco Art Institute. Having mutually agreed upon a country-and-western theme, Vicki Bennett (PLU), Jon Leidecker (Wobbly), and Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt (Matmos) pored over their archives of honky-tonk classics, chopping and dicing Nashville’s finest almost beyond recognition, and collectively re-stitched the mangled shreds in crazed digital quilting bee.
“Changed Priorities” sign photo (cc) courtesy Christine.
HV003- Her Stories
HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Meryn Cadell · Kitchen Sisters · Dmae Roberts · Sonia Sanchez · Susan Stone · Jake Warga · ZBS
Hearing Voices from NPR®
003 Her Stories: For Women’s History Month
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-02-29 (Originally: 2008-03-19)
“Her Stories” (52:00 mp3):
The Kitchen Sisters go to “Tupperware®” parties.
A supermarket checker checks out her life, in ZBS‘s radio soap Saratoga Springs.
Jenifir returns “Home From Africa” with all 13 Symptoms of Chronic Peace Corps Withdrawal, produced by Jake Warga.
Host Dmae Roberts has a collage of and about “Sisters.”
In a new syntax of whispers and words Susan Stone tells the story of “Ruby” and her husbands.
And Sonia Sanchez (produced by Steve Rowland of Shakespeare Is), Tracie Morris, Jill Battson and Meryn Cadell perform short poems.
Music from Tara Key’s Ear & Echo.
HV100- Stories of Transformation
Hearing Voices from NPR®
100 Stories of Transformation: Character and Change
Host: Jay Allison of Transom
Airs week of: 2012-02-22 (Originally: 2010-09-29)
“Stories of Transformation” (52:00 mp3):
Two audio diaries of people documenting their own personal transformation, a Transom Radio special:
Miles has the wrong body. He was born a woman, Megan. After 15 years of serious depression and confusion about his place in the world, at age 28, he decided to make a change. He chose the name Miles and began his slow, difficult transition into manhood. All along the way, he carried an audio recorder with him. This is his story. Produced for Transom (available at PRX); edited by Jay Allison.
For most of his high school career, Louis robbed people: for money, and for thrills. He never got caught. Then, in his senior year, he decided to stop. Louis talks to friends and family, and to himself, about why he was a criminal, and why he needs to change. Produced for Transom (also at PRX) and the 826NYC writing center.
HV132- Musicality of Speech
Hearing Voices from NPR®
132 Musicality of Speech: Spoken Melody
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-02-15
This program contains copyrighted material not licensed for web-streaming, so we cannot offer an mp3 of this week’s episode.
A history of what composer Steve Reich calls speech-melodies:
“Come Out” (1966 / 3:00 excerpt) Steve Reich
“It’s Gonna Rain” was composed in San Francisco in January 1965. The voice belongs to a young black Pentecostal preacher who called himself Brother Walter. I recorded him along with the pigeons and traffic one Sunday afternoon in Union Square in downtown San Francisco. Later at home I started playing with tape loops of his voice and, by accident, discovered the process of letting two identical loops go gradually out of phase with each other.
In the first part of the piece the two loops are lined up in unison, gradually move completely out of phase with each other, and then slowly move back to unison. In the second part two much longer loops gradually begin to go out of phase with each other. This two-voice relationship is then doubled to four with two voices going out of phase with the other two. Finally the process moves to eight voices and the effect is a kind of controlled chaos, which may be appropriate to the subject matter – the end of the world.
“It’s Gonna Rain” is the first piece ever to use the process of gradually shifting phase relations between two or more identical repeating patterns. The second was “Come Out.” Composed in 1966, it was originally part of a benefit presented at Town Hall in New York City for the retrial, with lawyers of their own choosing, of the six boys arrested for murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. The voice is that of Daniel Hamm, now acquitted and then 19, describing a beating he took in Harlem’s 28th precinct station. The police were about to take the boys out to be “cleaned up” and were only taking those that were visibly bleeding. Since Hamm had no actual open bleeding he proceeded to squeeze open a bruise on his leg so that he would be taken to the hospital.
“I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them.” More…
HV050- Love’s Labors
HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Scott Carrier · Amy Dickinson · David Greenberger · Kitchen Sisters · Kevin Kling · UbuWeb · Nancy Updike
Hearing Voices from NPR®
050 Love’s Labors: For Valentine’s Day
Host: Amy Dickinson of Chicago Tribune “Ask Amy”
Airs week of: 2012-02-08 (Originally: 2009-02-11)
Love’s Labors (52:00 mp3):
Affairs of the heart, and the intricacies of intimacy:
Lovelorn letters to an advice columnist, our Host, “Ask Amy.”
A “Valentine” from Kevin Kling (from his Stories from the Shallow End CD).
The Girls Glee Club of New Palestine High School, Indiana singing the theme from “Midnight Cowboy” (off the out-of-print Poly High – School Bands Play The Classics).
Women’s tales of true but tainted love, what Nancy Updike calls “Cringe Love”, from This American Life.
One of the “6 terrific teen-age tunes sung by Barbie and Ken (and you can sing along, too!),” a 45-rpm record from Mattel Toymakers (mp3 at UBU.com’s 365 Days Project- May 31).
HV052- Circus Blood
Hearing Voices from NPR®
052 Circus Blood: Under the Big Top
Host: John Dankosky of Connecticut Public Radio
Airs week of: 2012-02-01 (Originally: 2009-02-25)
Circus Blood (52:00 mp3):
A world-class troupe of audio daredevils and media magicians:
Host John Dankosky takes us to the circus in “Hershey Park Arena, Hershey Pennsylvania. I was 10 years old, and very, very worried.”
SF Chronicle journalist Jon Carroll interviews his daughter Shana as she hang upside down on her “Trapeze”, ready to fly away; from the Life Stories series by Jay Allison. (Shana started swinging with the Pickle Family Circus, about which her dad co-authored a book. She now flies for Les Sept Doigts de la Main.)
Joe Frank loves the lady “Lion Tamer,” an excerpt from his hour “The Dictator- Part 2” (show details).
Adam Rosen mixes a medley of the many versions of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Tokens, The Nylons, Miriam Makeba, Robert John, and Manu Dibango).
