Show for March 20, 2011. No Regrets: Biographer Carolyn Burke on Edith Piaf
Carolyn Burke’s previous two biographies—of the poet Mina Loy and photographer Lee Miller—documented the lives of trailblazing and under-recognized women artists. Her third effort, just released, takes on a much better-known subject. No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf sheds new light on the singer and her songs, looking past the Piaf legend to sketch a fuller portrait of France’s indispensable chanteuse. It may be impossible to really say what makes a great artist great, but Carolyn and I do our best in this interview, while listening to some examples from the Piaf canon. Subjects include Piaf’s guttersnipe beginnings, the French penchant for misérabilisme, her wartime exploits, her physical decline and final, improbable comeback.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Here’s a video of Piaf singing La Foule (The Crowd), one of Carolyn’s favorites, and mine, too:
Show for Feb. 20, 2011. The Past Isn’t Even Past: Kinan and Luis Valdez
Luis Valdez, playwright and founder of El Teatro Campesino, and his son Kinan, also a writer, actor and theater director, discuss Luis’s play Mummified Deer. The play is currently being directed by Kinan for the Theater Arts Department at U.C. Santa Cruz. It’s a story of family secrets, the return of the repressed—including a bloody and little-known chapter of Mexican history—and the complexities of identity. Luis and Kinan also talk about their own family history, their lives in the theater and Luis’s aesthetic of rascuachismo (listen to the interview for the translation).
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
More on Mummified Deer performances at UC Santa Cruz.
Visit El Teatro Campesino’s website.
Bonus info: during the interview, Kinan Valdez mentioned the influence of the carpa tradition. Read about it here.
Show for Feb 6, 2010: Comedian and Storyteller Kumail Nanjiani
Kumail Nanjiani’s stand-up performances and his one-man show (“Unpronounceable”) have earned him great reviews and a widening fan base. His success is especially impressive given his relatively recent plunge into comedy. He wasn’t exposed to US-style stand-up before he moved here from Pakistan at the age of 18, and he didn’t try it himself until a few years later. We talked about life and laughs in Pakistan and the US, learning American English from the movies, pushing back against South Asian stereotypes, his creative work ethic (he tries to write new material every day) and more.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Jan 30, 2011: Comedian and Podcaster Marc Maron
Marc Maron was at a low point in his life in late 2009 when he took up a new sideline: interviewing fellow comedians in a podcast he calls What the Fuck. Marc’s funny, raw and often revelatory heart-to-hearts with the likes of Louie C.K., Judd Apatow, Carlos Mencia, Robin Williams, Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman and many others have made WTF one of the most listened-to podcasts on the web—and won him glowing write-ups in Rolling Stone and the NY Times. Marc and I talked about the impact of WTF on his life, his sometimes uneasy relationships with other comics, his on-mic persona and the differences between conventional radio (Marc was a host on Air America) and the freer world of podcasting.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Jan 2, 2011. Comedy from the Inside: Paul Provenza
Comedian and humor maven Paul Provenza returns to the 7th Ave Project. We discuss the recent history of comedy and Paul’s Showtime series The Green Room, in which he and fellow comics engage in freewheeling conversation, riff off of each other and occasionally argue (in a very entertaining way). The Green Room enters its second season in 2011. Here’s the website. And here’s a link to our previous show with Paul and photographer Dan Dion, discussing their book Satiristas.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen to the interview, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Nov. 28, 2010: Todd Gitlin—Israel, America and the Idea of Chosenness
Historian and cultural critic Todd Gitlin examines the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel and concludes that it goes deeper than geopolitics. He says the two countries have been shaped by a shared sense of heavenly purpose, a messianic belief that God is on their side. We discuss his new book The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel and the Ordeals of Divine Election, co-written by Liel Leibovitz.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Nov 21, 2010. Linguist Guy Deutscher: Language Ain’t What it Used to Be (And Never Was)
Guy Deutscher discusses the restless, ever-shifting nature of human languages. Have languages gotten more complex or simpler over the centuries? Does improper usage threaten the integrity of language? How do grammatical systems arise? How much of our linguistic mastery is innate, and how much is acquired through experience?
In this conversation, we focused on the arguments Guy presents in his 2005 book The Unfolding of Language. We’re hoping to take up his most recent book Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different In Other Languages in a future show. It’s been getting a lot of notice lately, thanks in part to this New York Times article.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Oct. 31, 2010: Journalistic Ethics In Focus
NPR recently fired news analyst Juan Williams after his controversial comments about Muslims on Fox News’ O’ Reilly Factor. The sturm und drang that followed cast the incident as a political clash—pitting right-wing Fox against lefty NPR, and straight-talking Williams against the forces of political correctness. But NPR says the matter comes down to principles of journalistic responsibility, which draw a hard line between reportage/analysis (appropriate for newspeople) and editorializing (a no-no).
In this edition of the show, we examine journalistic ethics in light of the Williams affair, asking whether news organizations need to better enforce traditional rules or if it’s time to lighten up. Guests include Alicia Shepard, NPR ombudsman; Kevin Smith, ethics chair of the Society of Professional Journalists; Tom Goldstein, professor of journalism at U.C. Berkeley; James Rainey, On the Media columnist for the Los Angeles Times; and Judy Muller of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
- Watch the O’ Reilly Factor segment in which Juan Williams made his remarks. (Shorter videos are available on YouTube, but this longer one on the Fox News site provides more context.) Williams fires back at NPR after his dismissal.
- Read the NPR ethics code.
- Read the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics.
Show for Oct. 10, 2010. Laura Kipnis: Scandals and Why We Love Them
What fuels society’s endless appetite for scandals? And what do public humiliations, meltdowns and flameouts reveal about their participants and the rest of us? The ever-trenchant social critic Laura Kipnis discusses her latest book, How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior. Those adventures include a lovelorn astronaut, an unhinged judge, a conniving confidant and a confabulating memoirist. What’s not to love?
Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
Oct 3, 2010: Firesign Forever
Beginning in the late ’60s, the four members of the Firesign Theatre produced a string of brilliant comedy albums that tapped into the zeitgeist, and helped define it. Surreal, subversive, psychedelic, postmodern: all the usual terms used to describe their sonic tableaus are accurate, up to a point. But I prefer Whitmanesque, or maybe Whitmaniacal, which suggests the sweep of their American census-taking. So what if the Firesigners heard hokum where Walt heard democracy singing? Their clamoring BS artists, barkers and bozos are at least as true to our time as Whitman’s doughty blacksmiths and ploughmen were to his.
As the fab four ready themselves for a reunion tour, I talked to two of them—Phil Austin and Phil Proctor—about their upcoming performances, their classic recordings, their methods and madness.
We featured parts of this interview on our Oct. 3 pledge drive show, but here it is in its entirety. Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
Oct. 3, 2010: NPR’s Michele Norris and The Grace of Silence
Co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered Michele Norris contemplates America’s racial past by way of family history in her new memoir The Grace of Silence. In this interview she reflects on the things her parents did and didn’t tell her about their lives as African Americans, the importance of oral history and her feelings about her own work as a radio journalist.
We featured parts of this interview on our Oct. 3 pledge drive show, but here’s the whole thing. Click the “play” arrow above to listen, or download the MP3 here.
Show for Aug 29, 2010. What’s In a Face?
Three people discuss their experience of facial disfigurement. Writer David Roche developed a severe facial deformity when young and learned to live with it. Gina Butchin grew up disfigured, then got a new face in her late 30s. Actress Louise Ashby lost her face in a car accident, and eventually got it back after many years of surgery. They talk about self-image, the judgments of others and the meaning of beauty—inner and outer. Originally broadcast October, 2009.
Click the arrow above to listen to the show. If you don’t have Flash player or have other playback problems, click this link for the MP3.
