Give Everybody Everything: The Financial Life of Bernadette Mayer
The Organist
The life of a poet is rich with meaning and beauty. But the financial life of a poet is decidedly less rich. The poet Bernadette Mayer is a case study in how literary influence does not translate into income. She dedicated herself to art knowing it...
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The Narrative Line
The Organist
We’re constantly telling ourselves stories — who we are, where we’re going, what comes next. But what happens when the story you’re telling yourself turns out not to be true? Or, more fundamentally, what if the narrative form you’re...
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Consider the Grackles
The Organist
Touring a punk act pushes the limits of physical endurance — driving all day, sweating on stage, eating badly, sleeping worse. What keeps a band going for 14 years without a major commercial success? And what would possess someone old enough...
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Death in Twin Peaks
The Organist
Twin Peaks was never just a TV show: it was an obsession and an apparition. In its 2017 incarnation, the real-life deaths of several cast members hang spectrally over the proceedings. Legendary critic Howard Hampton meditates on how the show’s...
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A Call in the Night
The Organist
Your phone rings at 3:30 in the morning. You answer the call, and a person who's just been woken up with a call from you is on the end of the line. The call is being recorded. Both of your lives are changed forever. In this episode we explore the...
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Angelyne
The Organist
For decades, Angelyne pouted down from Hollywood billboards, looking like a New-Wave Jayne Mansfield: a dense cloud of bleached blonde hair and abundant cleavage barely contained by furry pink bikini tops. No one was sure what to make of the...
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The Dogfather
The Organist
Today’s episode is about dogs.
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The New World
The Organist
Where do speech balloons come from? How does time move from panel to panel? This week we explore the techniques of comic-book storytelling through Chris Reynolds’s graphic series, newly anthologized as The New World. Join us as we travel deep into...
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Low Fidelity
The Organist
What sounds don’t we hear when we listen? What sounds are discarded in digital processing, whether it’s through hearing aids or mp3s? This week we travel to Scottish lighthouses, professional sound-testing facilities, and animal slaughterhouses...
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Between Speaking and Singing
The Organist
Will spoken language become obsolete? What if, in the future, a simple conversation between two adults becomes a rarity, like an obscure musical piece that involves months of rehearsing and vocal training to be able to perform?
info_outlineThis week we bring you voices from heaven, hell, and everywhere in between. In documentary films, the authoritative “Voice of God” style of narration presents a seemingly omniscient, impartial, deep-voiced male narrator. No one has had more practice with the role than Peter Coyote, best known as the narrator of Ken Burns’ documentaries (The West, The Roosevelts, The National Parks). Here, Coyote gives a master class on the major differences in meaning that arise from tiny shifts in register, pulling a story out of melodrama into an illusion of objectivity.
Ellie Kemper (star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) shares a mysterious sound that’s stayed with her for twenty-three years, and describes a high-school musical performance that changed her life.
Penelope Spheeris is best known as the director of Wayne’s World, but while filming the legendary documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, about homeless L.A. punks, she met her long-time boyfriend SIN, who performs dissonant guitar rock as psychological therapy to exorcise the demons in his mind: “It’s like listening to hell.”
And our host describes his changing relationship to voices and narration as he adapts to his own degenerative blindness.
Finally, we’ll inaugurate a new recurring segment, “The iTunes Library of Babel,” in which we present short excerpts from an infinite Borgesian library of podcasts.
Produced by Myke Dodge Weiskopf, Jenny Ament, Ross Simonini, and Andrew Leland. Library of Babel excerpts produced by Fil Corbitt and Owen Poindexter.