Category: HV/Archives

Burma Cyclone- Election

Here’s Chance’s more accurate Cyclone report w/ the other story, not being told: the Burmese elections. No one would run this, so we’ll post it, “Irawaddy Delta Blues” (5:10 mp3):
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HV on NCPR

The massive audio empire that is North Country Public Radio has added the HV series to its roster of fine programming. You can now hear HV hours weekly, Saturdays at 4pm, on NCPR‘s 7 station transmitters and 25 translators blanketing Northern New York.

WEMC, WDUQ, WPTC

A few other fine pubradio stations have added HV’s weekly hours to their lineup. WEMC-FM 91.7 in Harrisonburg VA now runs our series Sundays at 9pm. WPTC-FM 88.1 in Williamsport PA has us on a couple times weekly: Saturday 5am & Sunday at noon. And Pittsburgh’s WDUQ-FM 90.5 starts airing HV in July.

Our station list has all the HV times, places, and frequencies, now broadcasting on 41 stations and 38 translators.

HV011- Road Trip

Hearing Voices from NPR®
011 Road Trip: Travelers’ Tales
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-5-27 (Originally: 2008-05-14)

“Road Trip” (54:00 mp3):

Host Larry Massett spends a “Long Day on the Road” with ex-KGB in the Republic of Georgia.

Scott Carrier starts in Salt Lake and ends on the Atlantic in this cross-country “Hitchhike.”

Lemon Jelly adds beats to the life of a “Ramblin’ Man.”

Writer/singer Willie Vlautin with his band band Richmond Fontaine sends musical postcards from the flight of “Walter On the Lam.”

And Mark Allen tells a tale of a tryst with a “Kinko’s Crackhead.”

A CDO Sub-Primer

[Mr. Massett explains why the media explanations of the mortgage crisis explain nothing.]

When the US credit markets began to blow up last year, every newspaper in the country served up two explanations for the mess: “sub-prime mortgage” and “collaterized debt obligation,” or “CDO.”

A sub-prime mortgage sounds bad on the face of it, so no problem there. But CDO has no obvious meaning. Only a few days ago I watched an NPR journalist try to figure it out from the words themselves (“let’s see, ‘collateralized’ refers to ‘collateral,’ so there must be a thing like a house or a car someplace, and ‘debt’ means, well, debt, and an ‘obligation’ means, um, you have to do something, right?”) The usual fudge is to drape the riddle with adjectives like “opaque,” “complex,” and “hard to understand,” as if these were explanatory principles. The phrase “complex and opaque financial instruments known as CDO’s” doesn’t tell you anything, really, but at least it sounds bad. Dern near as bad as a sub-prime mortgage. Moving right along, in other news…

The trouble is CDO’s were never meant for the average investor, or the average journalist. They are Wall Street inventions designed for the big players, investment banks like Citi or Merill or Bear Sterns. To understand them you have to think like an investment bank. This is no harder than thinking like a Martian. More…

HV010- All Mom Radio

Hearing Voices from NPR®
010 All Mom Radio: For Mother’s Day
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-05-09 (Originally: 2008-05-07)

All Mom Radio (53:00 mp3):

For Mother’s Day, maternal tales from producers around the country:

“Travels with Mom” follows Larry Massett and his mother to the Tybee Island, Georgia of today and of the 1920’s, as recalled by Mrs. Massett.

Writer Beverly Donofrio joins her mom for “Thursday Night Bingo,” produced by Dave Isay of Sound Portraits.

In Nancy Updike‘s “Mubarak and Margy,” a gay man returns home to care for his mom, and to the “cure” his family plans for his homosexuality.

And comedian Amy Borkowsky shares her hilarious phone “Messages from Mom.”

HV009- Shoah

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
009 Shoah— For Holocaust Remembrance Day
Host— Rabbi Samuel Cohon of Temple Emanuel, Tucson
Airdates— 4/30/2008 – 5/7/2008

Shoah (53:00 mp3):

Rabbi Samuel Cohon of Too Jewish Radio, presents stories of survivors, for Holocaust Remembrance Day:

In “Descended from the Holocaust” Dr. Alan Berkenwald records his trip with his parents to the Holocaust Museum — it was first time they talked openly about their experience in the concentration camps; this audio diary is of Jay Allison’s Life Stories.

“Yom Hashoah 1994” is Shoah services in Billings MT and Cleveland OH, survivor interviews, and the story of the Billings communities united “Not in Our Town” response that stopped a series of anti-Jewish crimes. The Rhino Records documentary project “Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust” is drawn from interviews with 180 survivors.

Also survivors sing Hebrew, for the first time in years, in a live May 1945 BBC report by Patrick Gordon Walker from the just liberated “Belsen Concentration Camp.”

NPR-HV Top iTunes Cast

Somehow our NPR: Hearing Voices Podcast, which debuted last week, has hit #42 on iTunes® Top Podcasts. Right over the NBC Nightly News. Not far from Ask a Ninja and NPR Story of the Day. ‘Course the commanding Oprah and Ira hours hold the #1 and #2 spots, many rows above us, but ‘least we’re on the same list.

Nepali Bob Dylan

I love it while traveling when an HV story comes on the radio. That happened a slew of times this past week (Mtn Gorrillas of Rwanda, Passover poem, Peace Rabbi). The first one I caught crossing the NV desert on NPR Day to Day. It’s another from Jack Chance, international man of trad music mystery…

The Kingdom of Nepal became a democracy this week, holding it’s first elections for representatives who will write the new constitution and are likely to abolish the monarchy. Chance speaks with a young musician in Kathmandu, Rubin Gandharba, whose songs (played on the Nepali sarangi) became a rallying cry for the Nepali Democracy Movement. The call Ruben the “Nepali Bob Dylan” (2:57 mp3):

Human Rights Rabbi, Israel

A day-in-the-life of Rabbi Arik Ascherman with Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem. He interacts with Arabs and Jews, and intercedes when he can during Palestinian home demolitions. He looks for common ground amongst the the rubble and rocks, the M-16s and tanks, and the two religions that started as one. (Photos by Jake Warga.)

Aired on PRI The World; by producer Jake Warga, “Rabbi for Human Rights, Israel” (6:57 mp3):

Dayenu (for Passover)

The traditional, 1000-year-old song Dayenu is a part of the Jewish Passover (April 19-27 2008). This piece is an audio essay, a poem of sorts, on the song, the holy day, and what, if anything, the tales of Egyptian first-borns and parted Red Seas have to do with us today. Original music by Frank London, founder of the Klezmatics. Aired on APM Weekend America; by producer Judith Sloan of Crossing the BLVD, “Dayenu (for Passover)” (6:15 mp3):

HV Series Podcast

NPR has started hosting our HV series podcast (iTunes subscription). And right now it’s being featured on both the front of NPR Podcasts page and the iTunes Podcast Directory

Mountain Gorillas

This week on NPR ATC, HV’s Jake Warga had a story on the recovering mountain gorilla population in Rwanda. Seems the genocide decimated populations of more than just people. “Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda” (8:19 mp3):

HV008- About Aging

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
008 About Aging—
I Thought You’d Never Ask
Host— David Greenberger of Duplex Planet
Airdates— 2009-04-22 (Originally: 2008-04-23)

“About Aging” (53:00 mp3):

Host David Greenberger of Duplex Planet presents glorious moments and observations from people in the last years of their lives:

Dave Alvin discusses the song he wrote about his dying father, “Man in the Bed,” from the Western Folklife Center’s What’s in a Song? series.

Comedians Bob & Ray are “The Whirleys”.

From StoryCorps comes a remembrance from Richard Craig of his days as a dance host on cruise ships.

In Sound Portraits “The Ground We Live On” journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc faces mortality in recordings she made during her father’s last months alive.

And host David Greenberger shares some stories told him over the years by the elderly, including “Growing Old in East LA“.

HV007- The Earth Sings

Hearing Voices from NPR®
007 The Earth Sings: For Earth Day
Host: Dmae Roberts of Stories1st.org
Airs week of: 2012-04-18 (Originally: 2008-04-16)

The Earth Sings (53:00 mp3):

Host Dmae Roberts of of Stories1st.org, for Earth Day, presents Sounds for and from Mother Earth:

The Quiet American takes an audio trek through Nepal”s “Annapurna” Circuit.

Host Dmae Roberts records Maori music and culture. We hear Pulse of the Planet’s “Extraordinary Sounds From the Natural World.”

And from Gregg McVicar and the Earthsongs series: Sioux Soprano Bonnie Jo Hunt layers opera over insects (on Robbie Robertson’s Music for the Native Americans), and the band Pamyua mimics creature calls.

What NPR Was

NPR has changed. As evidence I offer this early 80s promo produced by Jesse Boogs for NPR. This imagistic radio dramatic audio artistic style said NPR then. Now, not so much; “Morning Edition promo” (1:00 mp3):

HV006- Radio Dial

Hearing Voices from NPR®
006 Radio Dial: Signals from the Sky
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-05-26 (Originally: 2008-04-09)

“Radio Dial” (52:00 mp3):

Radio stories about radio, then stories about radio stories:

These “Dueling Transmitters” are an atmospheric found-sound un-manipulated mix of Spanish ham-radio operators, slow Morse code, data squalls, and the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. From the Shortwavemusic blog post “The Effects of Radiation.”

An FM radio station in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, is called Urbana. It’s hip, bilingual, plays music from all over the world, and is famous in Uruguay for its 30-second sound portraits featuring the voices of famous people mixed over avante-garde music.

The Cuban a-capella ensemble approximates a radio dial with their vocal chords. From the group Vocal Sampling’s (site | space) CD Una Forma Mas.

Shortwave/music mixes by LA sound artist Myke Dodge Weiskopf, off his 30: a Retrospective 1976-2006

The government’s all-time all-the-time radio station goes commercial, voiced by former WWV announcer John Doyle.

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Chesty Delivers

Chesty has shoes, no anchovies; Cate Blanchett emotes; 20 times the President’s penis; and smart-ass Sanskrit, Episode Ten of Chesty Morgan’s Forbidden Love! (8:57 mp3):

HV005- Backroads

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
005 Backroads — For Station Pledge Drives
Hosts— The Kicthen Sisters, Scott Carrier, John Rieger, Larry Massett
Airdates— 2008.04.02-09

Backroads (54:00 mp3):

Audio excursions from the early eighties; four traveling stories from public radio’s past, hosted by the independent producers who made them:

Scott Carrier attends a native service of “Navajo Pentacostalists.”

The Kitchen Sisters ride with the “Road Ranger,” an American auto-mechanic hero.

John Rieger samples small-town life “Fifty Miles Out of Gerlach.”

And Larry Massett takes a nitrous-oxide fueled “Trip To the Dentist.”

Music from Jeff Arntsen of Racket Ship.

Square Meal

Two old friends Cedric Chambers and John Gallagher have been caring for each other into old age. After John’s wife passed away and his children moved across the country, John turned to Cedric when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Together they face the end of his life. Produced by Jen Nathan for the SALT. Broadcast today on NPR Day to Day, “A Square Meal, Regardless” (7:20 mp3):