Hearing Voices - Radio Stories / Business

Batumi Blues 12:12 Larry Massett

A tale of disappearing train ticket offices, life-limited electric fans and the eccentricities of existence in the post-Soviet republic of Georgia. Alex returns home to Batumi, a port on the Black Sea by the Turkish border. The city has always been an outpost, the farthest reach of different empires from Roman times on. In the Soviet era, up until 1991, it prospered with booming oil refineries and tangerine groves. But now,Alex feels, his old hometown is decaying, like some provincial capital in the Middle Ages after the fall of Rome. [transcript]

Broadcast: Oct 17 2003 on PRI/MPR Savvy Traveler Subjects: Business, International, Travel

Lewis & Clark: Miles City Bucking Horse Sale 3:55 Barrett Golding

The Lewis & Clark Trail: 200 Years Later: Bucking broncs and bulls, an auction, a rodeo, and a way of life for rider Doug Davis of Hot Springs, Montana. [transcript]

Broadcast: Oct 17 2003 on NPR Living on EarthSeries: Lewis & Clark Trail: 200 Years Later Subjects: Business, Sports

Housekeepers’s POV 5:18 Jake Warga

Fran Peters, Director of Housekeeping, Paramount Hotel- Seattle: "I mean it takes a lot of labor to pick up a sofa, take it through a sliding glass door, and throw it over a balcony into a swimming pool." Rock star’s rooms, toilet-seat sanity seals, and that hotel sheet smell.

Broadcast: Sep 26 2003 on PRI/MPR Savvy Traveler Subjects: Labor, Business, Travel

Shanghai-ed In Portland 7:15 Dmae Roberts

A descent into the "Shanghai Tunnels" underneath Portland, Oregon, where "shanghai-ed" men were held before being forced to work on ships for no pay. Shangahai-ing started in 1850 and fizzled out by 1941, the start of World War II. "Now, the first thing the shanghai-ers would do when they grabbed you, was take your shoes, because they broke glass and spread it throughout the underground, so if you escaped, you couldn’t run too fast or too far." [transcript]

Broadcast: Aug 15 2003 on PRI/MPR Savvy Traveler Subjects: Business, Travel, Historical

Grant & Sue 28:09 Scott Carrier

The story of the most hated environmentalists in Boulder Utah -- people who are actually burned in effigy -- and how, after seven years, they come to agree with the other side on more things than not.

Broadcast: Jul 25 2003 on PRI/WBEZ This American Life Subjects: Environment, Business

Lewis & Clark: Bar Pilots 3:25 Barrett Golding

When Foreign ships enter U.S. waters, they are required to have an American pilot on board. In Astoria, Oregon, the Columbia River Bar Pilots Association brings the pilots out to the boats. Each body of water, each bend of the river, brings a new environmental issue, one that often gets no national attention, but is the focus of intense local debate. Captain Phil O’Shaughnessy and first mate John Leiter discuss the deep and shallow arguments for dredging the mouth of the river. [transcript]

Broadcast: Jun 13 2003 on NPR Living on EarthSeries: Lewis & Clark Trail: 200 Years Later Subjects: Business, Travel, Environment

Golfball Diver 2:14 Jeff Rice

Paul Neibuhr is a professional golf ball diver. The retired school teacher dons a full wet suit and air tank, and gropes along the muddy bottoms of golf course water hazards, pulling up golf balls, golf clubs, even guns. (Music: "Plink, Plank, Plunk!" Leroy Anderson).

Broadcast: Mar 1 2002 on APM Marketplace Subjects: Sports, Business

1930s Florida Folklife 22:20 Barrett Golding

1930s WPA recordists (among them, author Zora Neale Hurston) hauled a portable disc-recorder across Florida, from the Cross City turpentine camps near to the Clara White Mission soup kitchen in Jacksonville, gathering the musics of the region. A document of the depression era African-American life and culture. The Library of Congress archival recordings, from the American Folklife Center’s Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, are narrated by recording-expedition leader Stetson Kennedy. [transcript]

Broadcast: Feb 1 2002 on NPR All Things Considered Subjects: Music, Business, Cultural, Labor