800 Newpaper Front Pages

“Today’s Front Pages: Map View” is the Newseum’s new map-based browsing app — click open page one of 800+ worldwide newspapers:

HV099- Polk Street Stories

Hearing Voices from NPR®
099 Polk Street Stories: San Francisco USA
Host: Joey Plaster of Transom
Airs week of: 2012-01-04 (Originally: 2010-09-22)

“Polk Street Stories” (52:00 mp3):

An oral history of San Francisco’s premiere queer neighborhood, told by those who’ve called it home:

Public Historian Joey Plaster spent a year gathering 70+ interviews from people experiencing Polk Street’s transition from a working class queer neighborhood to an upscale entertainment district. Polk Street’s scene predates the modern gay rights movement. It was a world unto itself, ten blocks of low rent hotels, bars and liquor stores, all sandwiched in between the gritty Tenderloin, City Hall, and the ritzy Nob Hill: a home invented by people who had no other home.

For decades, the street had been a national destination for queer youth and transgender women, many of them fleeing abusive or unwelcoming homes. But by the mid-1990s, the last of the working class bars that formed the backbone of the Polk community were being replaced by a new bloc of mid-income businesses and residents.

Long-term Polk residents were incredibly emotional about these changes. Many considered the neighborhood to be their first real home. Now they saw their family’s gathering places evaporating. The conflict was sometimes dramatic: owners of one gay bar claimed that the new business association forced them off the street. A gay activist group made national news when they plastered the street with “wanted” posters featuring a photo of the new association’s president.

These intense reactions suggested a rich history, but I found that it had not been recorded. I feared it would be lost with the scene. I had prior experience as an oral historian. This was my first effort to find overlap with radio, which I’ve long felt is the best medium for broadcasting intimate, personal stories from “marginal” populations.
—Joey Plaster

This hour is a Transom radio special (PRX), produced with Jay Allison and Viki Merrick. It’s part of GLBT History Polk Street: Lives in Transition exhibition.

Photo © Thomas Hawk.

Upular (Virtual 3D)

Could this Aussie kid be any more talented? An airy-er vers of Pogo’s ‘Upular’:

‘Upular’ (Virtual 3D) by PogoMix

Stereo headphones required. Earphones work best.

A virtual 3D recording of my track ‘Upular’ playing through a pair of club speakers as you walk around the venue. Someone requested this and I thought it was a good idea. Enjoy.

Video vers: Upular (Pixar Remix) from Nick Bertke on Vimeo.

via Comma-Q.

Move

“MOVE” by director Rick Mereki:

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, eat, learn

Rick Mereki:: Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover
Commissioned by STA Travel Australia
Music:” “Play On” composed & performed by Kelsey James (myspace | iTunes)

More info at Vimeo (and on YouTube.)

via ToriTown.

Voices from Tahrir

A preview of our upcoming HV hour, “Voices from Tahrir” — a collaboration with Human Rights Watch. This public radio documentary features eyewitness accounts and recordings of the January uprisings (January 25 – February 11 2011) — the one-year anniversary approches:

“Voices from Tahrir- preview” (9:51 mp3):

Peter Segal: Cash-for-Tote-Bags Scandal…

And other 2012 news hypotheticals from XKCD regarding the NPR Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! host:

Fulton’s Frogs

The ZBS Foundation has long been at the forefront of the dramatic radio arts. Their podcast is a great survey of their audio excursions, mixing flights of fancy with real sound effects.

Check Podcast #8, “Weird Frogs” (7:55 mp3):

“Meatball Fulton plays really weird frogs he recorded in the Amazon, Bali, Lombok, Mexico, and the Brazilian Pantanal.”

There’s more “Singing Frogs of the Pantanal” in this story produced by ZBS for us and Living on Earth (3:54 mp3):

HV026- Prime Candidates

Hearing Voices from NPR®
026 Prime Candidates: Portraits of Past Presidential Primaries
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2011-12-28 (Originally: 2008-08-27)

“Prime Candidates” (52:00 mp3):

The plight of pols on the campaign trail:

From the 1980 primary: politicians who fancy themselves president tromp thru the mill town of Claremont, New Hampshire. Produced for NPR by Larry Massett and Art Silverman, with Betty Rogers.

From the 2000 primary: The media spin myths out of misquotes; produced by Alex Blumberg and Ira Glass for the “Primary” episode of This American Life.

From the 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall: Douglas Fleishut and the Language Removal Service concoct the world’s first wordless political debate in their “California Recall Project.”

From the 2008 primary: Losers in the March “Super Tuesday” vote re-appear, w/ music by Robert Wyatt and Bruce Springsteen, from Peter Bochan‘s series Presidential Shortcuts.

Photo: Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller administering the oath of office to Benjamin Harrison on the east portico of the U. S. Capitol, March 4, 1889; from the Library of Congress “I Do Solemnly Swear…”: Presidential Inaugurations.