Hearing Voices from NPR®
022 Mushroom Cloud: Tales of the Atomic Age
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-08-01 (Originally: 2008-07-30)
Documents of our changing perceptions of weapons of mass destruction:
Bomber pilots and bombing victims, and and Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay in “Enola Alone” by Antenna Theater, mixed by Earwax.
Political speeches and popular songs chart our changing attitudes towards weapons of mass destruction in the “Atomic Age.” Residents recall the Nevada and Utah nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s in their “Downwinder Diaries,” produced by Claes Andreasson.
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti has “Wild Dreams of a New Beginning,” an excerpt from “One of These days (or Nights)” produced for radio by Erik Bauersfeld (Bay Area Radio Drama), with sound design by Jim McKee (Earwax), and original music by Wieslaw Pogorzelski.
Americans across the country answer Scott Carrier‘s question: “What Are You Afraid Of?”
The story of the Big Bang, with a beat, “Page One” by Lemon Jelly.
And selections from “Atomic Platters: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security” compiled by CONELRAD.com (including Slim Galliard’s “Atomic Cocktail” (1945), versions of “Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb” by Lowell Blanchard & The Valley Trio (1949) and by The Pilgrim Travelers, and 1950-60s Civil Defense public service announcements.
And the Tony Schwartz-inspired verite documentary of the town he lived in and loved, “New York City: 24 Hours in Public Places” (thanks to Transom.org).
Hearing Voices from NPR®
020 The Old Country: Back to the Homeland
Host: Neenah Ellis of If I Live to Be 100
Airs week of: 2009-07-29 (Originally: 2008-07-16)
Hearing Voices from NPR®
019 Life on the Mississippi: River Towns
Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2010-06-02 (Originally: 2008-07-09)
“Life on the Mississippi” (1984 / 52:00) Larry Massett
Hannibal, Missouri, birthplace of Mark Twain; a day on a tugboat; St. Louis showboats; and changing the course of mighty rivers. We spend the whole hour on this 1984 downstream trip through the history and mystery of the Big Muddy, with Larry Massett and Scott Carrier.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
018 Flags and Fireworks: For Fourth of July
Host: Larry Massett of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2012-06-27 (Originally: 2008-07-02)
Hearing Voices from NPR®
017 No Place Like Home: Shifts in Time and Towns
Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-07-08 (Originally: 2008-06-25)
The places we live and the people who live there; a desert, a city, two small towns, and another country:
Scott Carrier has a cultural history of the Great Salt Lake’s “West Desert,” a land of polygymists, bombing ranges, and toxic waste incinerators. There’s chlorine gas in the air, anthrax stored underground, and people who call the place home.
Sarah Vowell‘s childhood move from rural Oklahoma to small-town Montana was, for her, a change from the middle ages to a modern metropolis.
And two Stories from the Heart of the Land: NYC native Natalie Edwards hates grass, bugs, dirt, and trees, but attempts a walk thru Brooklyn’s Prospect Park; and Carmen Delzell tells why she moved to and has stayed in Mexico.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
016 Bugs and Birds: Sounds of Summer
Host: Jeff Rice of Western Soundscape Archive
Airs week of: 2009-06-24 (Originally: 2008-06-18)
Recordist Lang Elliot‘s CD Prairie Spring captures a “soundscape of prairie meadows and potholes in spring and early summer.”
An extinct woodpecker revives an Arkansas town; it’s “The Lord God Bird” by Long Haul Productions, with an original song composed for ther story by Sufjan Stevens.
Brian Eno’s music mimics some “Flies,” from the 2006 compilation Plague Songs.
Folk are buggin’, gettin bittin, swatting and swearing at “Mosquitos,” by M’Iou Zahner Ollswang (from the 1985 collection Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio.)
Lang Elliot soaks up the sounds of “Sora Dawn” — “a pothole marsh at dawn with bittern, wrens, rails, and more (Prairie Spring).
Dr. Rex Cocroft, of the University of Missouri, attaches a phonograph needle to a blade of grass, plugged it into a tape recorder, to go “acoustic prospecting” for little-known suburban lawn sounds like “Leafhoppers,” rarely hard by humans.
Ken Nordine declares this “A Good Year for Spiders” (A Transparent Mask).
Entomologist Ian Robertson,, of Boise State University, does the “Gnat Dance” with host Jeff Rice and an outdoor chorale performance for insects.
And special thanks to Dr. Hayward Spangler of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson for braving bugs between his teeth while “Listening to Ants.”
Hearing Voices from NPR®
015 Father Figures: For Father’s Day
Host: Jay Allison of Transom.org
Airs week of: 2012-06-13 (Originally: 2008-06-11)
Father Figures (54:00 mp3):
From Animals and Other Stories we hear “Reflections of Fathers,” aka, Bugs & Dads (producers: Jay Allison & Christina Egloff, music: Ben Verdery & Rie Schmidt).
Comic strip artist Lynda Barry wishes her divorced dad a “Happy Father’s Day.”
A doctor tells his daughter about her granddad in “StoryCorps– Dr. William Weaver.”
“Grilling Me Softly” is how host Jay Allison describes his daughter’s questions about his love life.
Dan Robb’s family remembers the day “Dad’s Moving Out” (from Jay Allison’s Life Stories).
“Doc Merrick” and daughter Viki go through some girl problems.
David Greenberger tells David Cobb’s story “Because of Dad” (music performed by Bangalore, composed by Phil Kaplan).
Deirdre Sullivan’s father advises “Always Go to the Funeral” (from This I Believe).
Hearing Voices from NPR®
014 Fans and Bands:
Groupies, Gravediggers & Rock n’ Roll Singers
Host: Ian Svenonius of Weird War
Airs week of:Â 2009-5-13 (Originally: 2008-04-06)
Features a tribute to Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 -Â June 2, 2008):
Host Ian Svenonius, of the band Weird War, introduces “The Groupies,” an album of 1969 interviews by producer Alan Lorber (Iris Music Group, Alan Lorber Orchestra).
We visit with the pilgrims at Pere LaChaise cemetery, come to see “Jim Morrison’s Grave” (a sound-portrait by Mark Neumann of Documentary Works and Barrett Golding).
Hearing Voices from NPR®
013 Crossing Borders: From Mexico to US
Host: Marcos Martinez of KUNM-Alberquerque
Airs week of: 2012-01-18 (Originally: 2008-05-28)
In “Sasabe,” a Sonora, Mexico border town, Scott Carrier talks to immigrants on their hazardous, illegal desert crossing, and to the border patrol waiting for them in Sasabe, Arizona.
Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his books Vatos and The Devil’s Highway, about death in the desert.
“And I walked…”, by Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler, is a sound-portrait of Mexicans who risk their lives to find better-paying jobs in the United States.
Immigrants walk around the corner of a restaurant named Pollo Feliz (Happy Chicken) on Sasabe downtown. Charcoal roasted chicken is offered as main dish to people also known as “pollos”, on an area where deaths related to heat exposure are frequent among immigrants.
A boy drives a Ford Expedition on the streets of the border town of Sasabe, Sonora. Polleros in the town make as much as 6500 dollars per day smuggling people into the United States, resulting in a town where the tops of the houses are crowned with satellite TV dishes and kids are seen driving brand new Ford F-150s and SUVs.
Putting bars over the bed of an old pick-up in Las Ladrilleras, on Sasabe outskirts. The fee for the final ride from this place to the gates for crossing costs 20 dollars, and polleros (people smugglers) try to maximize the capacity of their vehicles.
From Las Ladrilleras to East Sasabe.
Three mothers and their children make a stop before crossing the desert. They are part of a group of 27 immigrants departing from East Sasabe on June 5th this year to Arizona.
With their destination at sight, a group of 27 people leave East Sasabe. The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refugee and Arivaca, AZ are on the American side.
A group of ten immigrants who succeeded on crossing the border illegally (one out of frame) use pay phones to call their relatives in the United States at the Greyhound bus station in Tucson before boarding their bus to Phoenix and Los Angeles. To avoid detection the pollero advise them: “Don’t make a big group. Spread.”
Reporter Scott Carrier recovers from the effects of hot weather on his body while doing a story on illegal immigration for NPR show Day to Day. Scott reported from Sasabe, Sonora and Arivaca AZ.
Hearing Voices from NPR®
012 For the Fallen: For Memorial Day
Host: Major Robert Schaefer of US Army Special Forces
Airs week of: 2012-05-23 (Originally: 2008-05-21)
And we attend the daily “Last Post” ceremony by Belgian veterans honoring the WWI British soldiers who died defending a small town in western Belgium (produced by Marjorie Van Halteren).
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
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.”
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)
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“.
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 stories about radio, then stories about radio stories:
“Dueling XMTRs! #3: VOIRI vs. the World” (2003 / 1:01 excerpt) ShortWaveMusic
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.
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
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
004 Comedy with a Beat—
Comic Bits with Music Beats
Host— David Ossman of Firesign Theatre
Airs week of— 2009-04-08 (Originally: 2008-03-26)
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)
Hearing Voices from NPR®
, with music by Paul Wertico and Jim Hines.
Rabbi Samuel Cohon of 
Audio excursions from the early eighties; four traveling stories from public radio’s past, hosted by the independent producers who made them:
