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Playlist: PRX Podcasts

Compiled By: PRX Editors

 Credit:
Curated Playlist

Get out your earbuds.

PRX presents podcasts of all stripes - from those included in Radiotopia to freestyle offerings on all sorts of subjects with creative collaborators.

You can subscribe on iTunes, stations, air them - just be sure to preview before broadcast!

Sidedoor (Series)

Produced by Smithsonian

Sidedoor is a podcast only the Smithsonian can bring you. It tells stories about science, art, history, humanity and where they unexpectedly overlap. From dinosaurs to dining rooms, this podcast connects big ideas to the people who have them.

Most recent piece in this series:

Wild Orchid Mystery

From Smithsonian | Part of the Sidedoor series | 22:47

Side_door_logo_640x640_small You probably know orchids as the big, colorful flowers found in grocery stores and given as housewarming gifts. But those tropical beauties represent only a fraction of the estimated 25,000 orchid species worldwide. While their showy relatives fly off the shelves, North America’s more understated native orchids are disappearing in the wild. Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center are working to protect these orchids and their habitats, but first they need solve a surprisingly difficult problem: how to grow one.

Offshore (Series)

Produced by Honolulu Civil Beat

Stories from Hawaii. Because sometimes being in the middle of nowhere gives you a good perspective on everywhere else.

Most recent piece in this series:

S2 Ep. 6 Creation

From Honolulu Civil Beat | Part of the Offshore series | 35:08

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When we started out our journey to Mauna Kea for Offshore, we were looking at this story as a clash of science versus culture. What we’ve discovered is a whole lot more complex than that. But where does that leave things? 
Is there room on Mauna Kea for both the observatories and Native Hawaiian practitioners? Does one side have to push the other out, or is there room to coexist? 
And if what we’re seeing across the country at places like Oak Flat and Standing Rock is a clash between western values and indigenous values, is there a way for us to find a better balance in the future?

Outside Podcast (Series)

Produced by Outside Magazine

Brought to you by the editors of Outside and PRX, this podcast aims to apply the magazine’s long-standing literary storytelling methods to the audio realm. Each episode is either prompted by a feature from the archives or simply inspired by a theme Outside has explored. The podcast’s first series delves into the science of survival in some of nature’s most extreme environments.

Most recent piece in this series:

The Devil's Highway Part 2

From Outside Magazine | Part of the Outside Podcast series | 28:06

Oustide_podcast_small In the spring 2001, a large group of men set out from Mexico to cross the border into Arizona through some of the harshest desert terrain anywhere. The tragic result helped researchers develop the Death Index, a new model for predicting dehydration fatalities.

Esquire Classic (Series)

Produced by PRX

Hosted by acclaimed journalist David Brancaccio (Marketplace and PBS' NOW), this podcast dissects classic Esquire stories and reveals the cultural currents that make them as urgent and timely today as when they were first published. Guests include Esquire writers, along with noted authors, comedians, and actors who offer unique and personal perspective on some of the most lasting stories ever published.

Most recent piece in this series:

Old

From PRX | Part of the Esquire Classic series | 29:12

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Cover170x170_small We will all get old one day. Mike Sager’s astonishingly intimate portrait of Glenn Sandberg, age ninety-two, is about what it actually feels like to be close to the end. It’s a story about mortality and love and companionship and the things in life that matter most—and how those things we once held as so important fall away. 

Sager, a longtime Esquire writer at large, joins host David Brancaccio to discuss how and why he wrote “Old,” which was published in 1998, and how the story continues to ripple and shape his own views on work, death, and what matters most. 

HerMoney with Jean Chatzky (Series)

Produced by HerMoney with Jean Chatzky

Anyone who tells you women don’t need financial advice specifically for them is wrong. Women, whether they’re the caretakers, the breadwinners, or both, face a unique set of financial challenges. That’s where HerMoney comes in. In her frank, often funny, but always compassionate way, Jean Chatzky takes every audience of women through the steps they need to take today to live comfortably (and worry-free) tomorrow, offering the latest research, expert tips and personal advice. A co-production with PRX.

Most recent piece in this series:

Ep 215: How To Rock Your LinkedIn Profile: The Ultimate Guide For Getting Hired

From HerMoney with Jean Chatzky | Part of the HerMoney with Jean Chatzky series | 46:59

Hermoney-3000x3000-768x768_small How do we spruce up our LinkedIn profiles in order to stand out from the herd? Allison Nunes, workshop ambassador for LinkedIn’s “Rock Your Profile” program shares all her secrets. We cover job alerts, networking, applying for jobs, perfecting your profile, getting recommendations, and so much more. In Mailbag, we talk about online savings accounts, women bonding together in retirement (Golden Girls style), and buying a historic home.

Orbital Path (Series)

Produced by PRX

Orbital Path with Michelle Thaller takes a look at the big questions of the cosmos and what the answers can reveal about our life here on Earth. From podcast powerhouse PRX, with support from the Sloan Foundation.

Most recent piece in this series:

Building 29

From PRX | Part of the Orbital Path series | 31:07

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All things in the cosmos have a lifespan, from the smallest particles to the most ancient suns. Everything has its season. Every season must come to an end.

And this episode marks the end of Orbital Path.

So, for the last transit of our podcast, Dr. Michelle Thaller and producer David Schulman join NASA astrobiologist Dr. Jen Eigenbrode on a site visit to one of Michelle’s very favorite places at Goddard Space Flight Center. It’s building 29, where NASA builds and tests spacecraft in some of the most extreme conditions found anywhere on earth. 

Blank on Blank (Series)

Produced by Blank on Blank

Blank on Blank is building and broadcasting an archive of journalists' lost interviews.

Most recent piece in this series:

Alvin Toffler and Margaret Mead: Future Shock, Innocence and Innovation

From Blank on Blank | Part of the Blank on Blank series | 16:07

Theexperimenterslogo_social_chalkboardgreen_small Alvin Toffler and Margaret Mead: an author and an anthropologist who endeavored to understand the impact of scientific invention. In this episode of our series, The Experimenters, we hear from two visionaries who believed that while we’ve started a technological revolution, we don’t quite know where it’s going to take us. But maybe most interesting of all – we get to hearing these archival interviews from the very future these thinkers were trying to imagine. Mead and Toffler guide us into a view of what the present might have been — or perhaps in some ways actually came to pass.

Transistor (Series)

Produced by PRX

Transistor is a podcast of scientific curiosities and current events, featuring guest hosts, scientists, and story-driven reporters.

Much as the transistor radio was a new technical leap, this Transistor features new women voices and sounds from new science producers. Learn more at transistor.prx.org.

Most recent piece in this series:

Engineering NYC from Below

From PRX | Part of the Transistor series | 10:11

Transistor1400x1400_small Head underground to hear how the first subways were built, and how they are built today.

How To Be Amazing (Series)

Produced by How To Be Amazing

In this in-depth interview show, Michael Ian Black takes listeners into the minds of some of today’s most fascinating celebrities and newsmakers to discuss the process of how they became, well, amazing.

Most recent piece in this series:

#16 Ingrid Michaelson

From How To Be Amazing | Part of the How To Be Amazing series | 01:02:19

Im_headshot_small Ingrid Michaelson is the best-selling recording artist of such hits as "Girls Chase Boys" and "The Way I Am."  While her voice certainly qualifies her as amazing, it's the path she chose to follow as a recording artist that is so interesting.  Michaelson bypassed the established labels so that she could release her music on her own and found success as a recording artist on her own terms.

Israel Story Podcast (Series)

Produced by Israel Story

Israel Story is a bi-weekly podcast, hosted by Mishy Harman and distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. It tells modern tales from an ancient land - the kind of stories you'd share with a friend over a plate of hummus on a Friday afternoon, or with your partner at the end of a long day. These are everyday stories, told by, and about, regular Israelis. The award-winning show is one of the most popular programs in Israel, where it is aired nationally, on prime-time. Available every-other Wednesday.

Most recent piece in this series:

The White Elephant

From Israel Story | Part of the Israel Story Podcast series | 32:00

Centralbusstation In "The White Elephant,” Yochai Maital walks us through the history of Tel Aviv’s ‘New’ Central Bus Station — a derelict eight-story behemoth and modern day Tower of Babel — which mirrors much of modern Israeli history, with its grand vision and messy implementation.

HowSound (Series)

Produced by HowSound

The backstory to great radio storytelling.

Most recent piece in this series:

NAUTILUS podcast from PRX (Series)

Produced by David Schulman

The podcast of NAUTILUS, a different kind of science magazine. Distributed by PRX.

Most recent piece in this series:

"To Save California, Read Dune." With Andrew Leonard

From David Schulman | Part of the NAUTILUS podcast from PRX series | 20:00

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Frank Herbert's science fiction epic "Dune" is set on a desert planet. For the indigenous Fremen of 'Dune," the water in even a single tear is precious. 

Could Herbert's sci-fi world of 1965 offer any lessons for the drought-stricken California of 2015? Andrew Leonard takes  on that question in his provocative piece in the water issue of Nautilus

In this edition of the Nautilus podcast, Leonard talks with host David Schulman about water, fog, fog-catchers, gigantic sandworms — and the prescience of "Dune."  

This sound-rich podcast also features a field visit with environmental scientist Daniel Fernandez, who has established a network of Dune-like fog-catchers along the California coast. And we’ll hear a field recording of a fog-catcher at work in one of the dries places on planet earth, the Atacama desert, in Chile.

Strangers (Series)

Produced by Lea Thau

Since the beginning of time, strangers and strange places have given rise to our wildest dreams and our deepest fears — and to the greatest stories on earth. Hear them here. Real people, true stories.

Most recent piece in this series:

Love Hurts 3 (podcast)

From Lea Thau | Part of the Strangers series | :00

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99% Invisible (Director's Cut) (Series)

Produced by Roman Mars

Trying to comprehend the 99% invisible activity that shapes the design of our world.

Most recent piece in this series:

99% Invisible #326-Welcome To Jurassic Art (Director's Cut)

From Roman Mars | Part of the 99% Invisible (Director's Cut) series | 20:01

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At least for the time being, art is the primary way we experience dinosaurs. We can study bones and fossils, but barring the invention of time travel, we will never see how these animals lived with our own eyes. There are no photos or videos, of course, which means that if we want to picture how they look someone has to draw them.

Photo by Shanker S. (CC BY 2.0)

Bob Bakker became obsessed with dinosaurs at an early age and went on to become one of the most famous paleontologists in the world. He also happens to be a very skilled paleoartist, and over the years his writing and his illustrations have had a huge impact on how we think about and picture these prehistoric animals.

Hulking Masses of Flesh

Dr. Bob Bakker, paleontologist and paleoartist

In the mid twentieth century, when Bakker first started college, American dinosaur science was in a bit of a rut. Dinosaurs were considered big, dumb, cold-blooded reptiles. They were thought of as evolutionary failures destined for extinction. And that view of dinosaurs affected how they were drawn. In most paintings of dinosaurs, the creatures were not moving or interacting with each other — there was no spark of intelligent social life. And their bodies were these hulking masses of flesh.

“The way brontosaurus and diplodocus (the biggest dinosaurs) were illustrated they were like giant, gray vacuum cleaners with very very short legs,” explains Bakker. “They were depicted slowly pulling themselves across the landscape or sitting neck deep in a fetid swamp. And that’s where we were in the early 1960s — dinosaurs were sad, cold blooded, dead ends in the history of life.”

But paleontology was about to go through a spectacular shift.

The Superiority of Dinosaurs

During Bakker’s freshman year at Yale, the geology department took him and some of the other students out on a dig. The trip was led by one of Bob’s professors, a paleontologist named Jon Ostrom. On the dig, they dug up a new species of raptor named Deinonychus.

Exhibit showing Deinonychus attacking Tenontosaurus, Academy of Natural Sciences

After studying the fossils back at Yale, Professor Ostrom began to argue that if you really looked at the anatomy of deinonychus and other dinosaurs they looked less like a lumbering lizards and more like a super athletic birds.

Archaeopteryx compared to the skeleton of a modern pigeon 1916

Bakker was fascinated by this idea. As an undergraduate, he dissected modern animals in an effort to better understand dinosaur musculature. He concluded that the old stereotypes about sluggish, stupid dinosaurs just didn’t hold up.

Bakker and Ostrom weren’t the first people to come to this conclusion. As the mid-19th century there had been scientists and religious thinkers who believed that dinosaurs were intelligent, active, and bird-like. But those ideas weren’t in the textbooks.

Bakker decided to publish a paper in a Yale journal, and his editor suggested he call it The Superiority of Dinosaurs. He loved that title idea.  It embodied the idea that dinosaurs “weren’t evolutionary has-beens. They were top-of-the-line! They beat everybody!”

But convincing people that dinosaurs were actually totally different than they had been depicted for the past sixty years was going to require more than few good academic papers. To really change people’s minds, sometimes you gotta show instead of tell. Bob Bakker was a skilled illustrator as well as a scientist. So when Jon Ostrom wrote his definitive paper on Deinonychus, he asked Bakker to do the illustration. In the picture, the raptor is nearly parallel with the ground, it’s left leg springing forward, it’s right leg curled tightly against it’s torso, preparing for the next stride — it’s beautiful, and terrifying.

Deinonychus in full sprint, as drawn by Robert Bakker ’67

Bakker’s Deinonychus became an iconic drawing. No one had ever seen anything like it. Bakker went on to write academic and popular articles about how impressive dinosaurs had been, and he illustrated them all himself. He drew dinosaurs bounding across the prehistoric landscape like track and field stars with lithe, muscular bodies. And Bakker’s athletic dinosaurs became a model for other paleo artists like Gregory Paul.

Robert Bakker’s athletic dinosaurs became the model for paleoart

Dinosaur Renaissance

Throughout the 1970s, more and more paleontologists got on board with Ostrom and Bakker’s theories — they found new fossils and footprint evidence suggesting that dinosaurs had been warm-blooded, intelligent, and bird-like. This period has become known as the Dinosaur Renaissance, a moment when we totally rethought all of our assumptions about these incredible prehistoric animals. Paleontologists like Darren Naish think art was a huge part of its success: “I think that part of the reason that the dinosaurs of Dinosaur Renaissance the dinosaurs of Ostrom and Bakker … drew in so many scientists in the 60s and 70s was because [the era was] accompanied by brilliant visuals.”

If anyone missed out on this scientific revolution, and still thought that dinosaurs were slow and stupid, that ended in 1993 with the release of the film Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are very… active.

When that movie came out the whole world got to see these fierce, athletic, creatures running through kitchens and eating lawyers off of toilets. Once you’ve seen the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, you can’t unsee them.

John Conway draws dinosaurs for a living, and he believes the film Jurassic Park cemented people’s idea of what a dinosaur is supposed to look like. Conway became interested in paleoart after reading Bob Bakker’s book The Dinosaur Heresies.

In the early part of his career, he drew dinosaurs that looked a lot like Bakker’s — lean and muscular. After a while, however, he says that all of his dinosaurs looked they had been shrink-wrapped. “You know those suction packs … you pack your clothes and you put the vacuum cleaner on it and you suck all the air out? That’s sort of what we’re doing with dinosaurs — we’re sort of putting skin on them and then vacuuming out anything that was in between that skin and the muscles.”

Now paleoartists weren’t just doing that to make their dinosaurs look all cool and buff. They were trying to be accurate. Accurate dinosaur art has to be rooted in real scientific evidence — and the main piece of evidence is often a skeleton. Paleoartists would base the shape of their dinosaurs on an accurate skeleton and then layer on muscles in appropriate places. Soft tissues like fat, however, often don’t survive for for millions of years like bone, and so artists tended to be pretty conservative about how much fat they gave their dinosaurs. The result was that all of these dinosaurs looked like the went to gym three times a day and drank protein shakes for every meal. John Conway says it began to feel as though paleoartists had replaced one orthodoxy with another.

But just because fat didn’t survive for millions of years doesn’t mean that a dinosaur didn’t have it. Animals have fat and they have it all over the place and some places they have really big fat reserves which changes their shape fairly drastically.

To illustrate this point, think about trying to draw a modern animal, like a whale or a camel, just from their fossilized skeleton. It ends up looking really weird. If you draw a bowhead whale just from the skeleton, without a lot fat or blubber, it looks kind of like a giant tadpole with a bulbous head and long snake-like tail. It looks weird because a whale’s shape is defined by fat.

Dinosaurs also had fat, and Conway argues that it would have changed their shape pretty dramatically. “A dinosaur could have camels humps and we wouldn’t know because you can’t tell from a camel’s skeleton that it has humps,” says Conway. “Brontosaurus could have had humps we don’t know!”

Scientists do sometimes find dinosaurs fossils with the soft tissues intact, and when they do it can completely change our image of the animal. The dinosaur psittacosaurus, for example, used to be depicted in a standard, shrink-wrapped kind of way, until paleontologists found this amazing full body fossil where lots of the fat and the skin and the different soft tissues had been perfectly preserved.

Psittacosaurus Fossil

It turns out it was a kind of chubby creature with lots of striping, and long curving quills growing off the top of its tail.

In recent years fossils have been found with fat, and frills, and thick coats of feathers — way more than anyone had predicted. And this made John Conway wonder: if so many of the soft tissues we’ve discovered have been really strange, what about all the dinosaurs that we haven’t found any soft tissues for yet? “There are bizarre possibilities out there that no one’s looking at, and I thought well I’m going to start drawing some of these things.”

Conway began to try something new with his art — he started to speculate. He began drawing pudgy dinosaurs, and dinosaurs with weird skin flaps, and so many feathers they looked like birds. There was always a standard conservative dinosaur at the center of his drawings, but then he would cover it with more speculative elements.

Deinonychus antirrhopus by John Conway

He wasn’t claiming that every dinosaur he was drawing was perfectly accurate, but he wanted to show people that dinosaurs as a group probably had a lot more weird variety than we tend to think. “In order to get the overall picture of dinosaurs right I think you need a healthy dose of speculation in there,” Conway says. That doesn’t mean anything goes. Conway is careful to say that dinosaur art should reflect the latest science—what we know for sure—but we’ll never know everything.

All Yesterdays

John Conway eventually decided to give the world a dose of speculation in the form of a book. He teamed up with Darren Naish and another paleoartist named Memo Koseman, and published a slim little paperback titled All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals.

The book is filled with dinosaurs that look very different from what most people imagine. There’s a triceratops that’s covered in spines, a majungasaurus with skin that camouflages it against the forest floor, and a therizinosaurus that is so covered in feathers it looks like a haystack. And next to each image the artist describes why they drew it that way. The camouflaged dinosaur is drawn that way because the artists reasoned that it’s oddly-proportioned body might have made it vulnerable to predators and in need of a defense strategy.

All Yesterdays also tried to expand our understanding of dinosaur behavior. Usually when we see a fierce tyrannosaurus rex it’s attacking another dinosaur. But the dinosaur probably spent most of its time sleeping, and so that’s how John Conway drew it.

Sleepy stan by John Conway

All Yesterdays was a real hit, and helped spark a little speculative movement within the paleoart community. Darren Naish says it’s more acceptable now to draw a dinosaur based on a hypothesis. For example, horned dinosaurs like triceratops have these large nostrils that have confused paleontologists for years. There have been a few different hypotheses put forward by scientists — one of them is that the dinosaur may have had inflatable nose balloons, almost like a hooded seal.

Triceratops skull with enlarged nostrils

Twenty years ago, if someone were to draw a triceratops with nose balloons, they would have been laughed at. But Naish says that it’s now quite reasonable for an artist to depict the dinosaur that way as long they explain that choice. Of course, that doesn’t mean triceratops definitely had nose balloons!

But by drawing it that way, it’s like the artist is asking us to keep an open mind. Because even though we know a lot about the prehistoric world, the science is always changing. The past is always a moving a target.

CREDITS

PRODUCTION

Producer Emmett Fitzgerald spoke with Bob Bakker, paleontologist and paleoartist; Darren Naish, paleontologist; and John Conway, paleoartist.

Can You Help Me Find My Mom?

From The Truth | 09:04

The Truth features dramatic short stories that combine great writing with authentic-feeling performances and rich sound design. Host and producer Jonathan Mitchell works with a team of screenwriters and actors to create each original episode, revitalizing the craft of audio fiction for a new generation.

Icon_small A girl is lost and can't find her mom. Why won't anyone help her?

Bee Herbstman as MAGGIE
Melanie Hoopes as ROSE
Ed Herbstman as EDDIE
Evan Sudarsky Abadi as BODEGA CLERK
Gregory C. Jones as OFFICER
Blanche Ames as MAGGIE

Written by Diana McCorry, and produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

The Heart: Season One (Series)

Produced by The Heart

The things you whisper. The things you do in the dark...or light. The things you feel but you don’t know how to name. This is a radio show about all of those things. It’s about the triumphs and the terrors of human intimacy, the bliss and banality of being in love and the wild diversity of the human heart.

Most recent piece in this series:

First

From The Heart | Part of the The Heart: Season One series | 31:36

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When we do something for the first time, we enter into a world with new rules. It’s the creation of a new path, a new possibility. We meet this threshold with no knowledge of what will happen, how we or the world will react.


Once the rules of the game change, once we do something that we’ve never done before, the question of how to navigate the new world is what comes next. What do we do after the first kiss? Will it give way to the first holding of hands, the first public display of affection, the first sex, the first week sleeping in someone else’s bed every night? Or will it be the first, but also — the last?


This is a story featuring Drew Denny, a singer, songwriter, filmmaker and artist. You can check out her first feature film here.

The Allusionist (Series)

Produced by The Allusionist

Small adventures in language with Helen Zaltzman. Part of Radiotopia from PRX. http://theallusionist.org

Most recent piece in this series:

The Allusionist 5: Latin Lives!

From The Allusionist | Part of the The Allusionist series | 12:12

Latin_lives_logo_small Every week since September 1989, a radio station in Finland has broadcast a weekly news bulletin...in Latin.

WHY?

Let's find out!

Visit theallusionist.org/latin to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow, and convene at facebook.com/allusionistshow.

The Allusionist is a proud member of Radiotopia.fm for PRX.org.

50: The Boy Band Episode

From The Mortified Podcast | 34:19

The Mortified Podcast is a storytelling series where adults share the embarrassing things they created as kids– diaries, letters, lyrics & beyond– in front of total strangers.

This episode: From those who "Hung Tough" to those who "Wanted It That Way," fan-girls share stories of their biggest boy band obsessions -- with a very special appearance from a boy band icon. As well as cameos by Song Exploder's Hrishikesh Hirway, Answer Me This' Martin Austwick & The Memory Palace's Nate Dimeo.

Mortifiedboybandsrev2_copy_small From those who "Hung Tough" to those who "Wanted It That Way," fan-girls share stories of their biggest boy band obsessions -- with a very special appearance from a boy band icon.  As well as cameos by Song Exploder's Hrishikesh Hirway, Answer Me This' Martin Austwick & The Memory Palace's Nate Dimeo. The Mortified Podcast is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Listen @ getmortified.com/podcast

the memory palace (Series)

Produced by Nate DiMeo

the memory palace is a series of short, surprising history stories from veteran producer, Nate DiMeo. Each episode tells the story of a forgotten moment or figure from the past or asks us to remember the reality behind history's more familiar facts and faces. New episodes posted every ten days or so here, on iTunes, and at thememorypalace.us

Most recent piece in this series:

Peregrinar

From Nate DiMeo | Part of the the memory palace series | 09:14

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Chavez_small "Peregrinar" is about a march led by Cesar Chavez.

Criminal (Series)

Produced by Criminal

Criminal is a podcast about crime. Not so much the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of crime but something a little more complex. Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.

Most recent piece in this series:

Episode 172: Roselle and Michael

From Criminal | Part of the Criminal series | 32:23

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Michael Hingson was on the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He says the first indication that something was wrong was the sound of a muffled explosion. Then the building began to tilt, and he felt the floor drop like an elevator. But Michael Hingson didn’t panic because his guide dog, Roselle, was calm.

Michael Hingson’s book is Thunder Dog.

Listen to other episodes of This is Love at https://thisislovepodcast.com/.

Theory of Everything (Series)

Produced by Benjamen Walker

Theory of Everything plunges listeners into a whirl of journalism, fiction, art, interviews, and the occasional exploding pipe dream. Host Benjamen Walker connects the dots in a hyper-connected world, featuring conversations with philosophers, friends, and the occasional too-good-to-be-real guest.

Most recent piece in this series:

Artifacts (Redux)

From Benjamen Walker | Part of the Theory of Everything series | 22:58

Toe12_small Photographer Robert Burley takes pictures of the end of analog for his book The Disappearance Of Darkness. Christine Frohnert and Christiane Paul explain why it is difficult to care for digital artworks and Social Media theorist Nathan Jurgenson wants us to understand what is truly revolutionary about ephemeral photographs and platforms like Snapchat.

Fugitive Waves (Series)

Produced by The Kitchen Sisters

Fugitive Waves --  Lost recordings and shards of sound, along with new tales of remarkable people from around the world. Stories from the flip side of history.

Most recent piece in this series:

Spotlight on Black-Owned Pet Businesses

From The Kitchen Sisters | Part of the Fugitive Waves series | 36:38

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Inspired by a blackboard sign on the street in Davia’s neighborhood announcing “Spotlight on Black Entrepreneurs,” we enter the creative and growing world of Black-Owned Pet Businesses.

Lick You Silly dog treats, Trill Paws enamel ID tags, The Dog Father of Harlem's Doggie Day Spa, gorgeous rainbow beaded dog dollars from The Kenya CollectionSir Dogwood luxurious modern dog-wear.

“The dog training world—it’s a white dominated space. It’s kind of male dominated, too,” says Taylor Barconey of Smart Bitch Dog Training in New Orleans“On our profile on Instagram we have Black Lives Matter, it’s been there for a year now. Before 2020, we would have not felt comfortable putting that up at risk of losing our business because people would have blacklisted us. But now, we feel like we can finally breathe and be open about things that really matter to us—speaking out against racism and not feeling shy about it.”

Chaz Olajide of Sir Dogwood wasn’t finding communities of pet owners or pet businesses owned by people of color. “I did a deep dive into the statistics —I just wanted to see if maybe I was an outlier, like maybe the reason why I’m not seeing more diversity in these companies is because maybe the demand isn’t out there. Actually, you know, that’s not really the case.”

Brian Taylor, owner of Harlem’s Doggy Day Care lost both his uncle and long time mentor to Covid. During the pandemic his business slumped by 80%. So with some help from his pet parents and supporters he decided to hit the road with The Pup Relief Tour offering grooming services to anyone going through rough times and in need. “All together we had about 63 African American dog groomers that went on tour with us across the country and we groomed over 829 dogs.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Black-owned pet business entrepreneurs. There are tons more across America and you can support their businesses and services. House Dogge in LA — artisanal dog tees, hoodies, toys — committed to helping unwanted, neglected and abused dogs. Dr. Kwane Stewart, an African American veterinarian who walks skid row in downtown LA tending the unhoused dogs of unhoused people. Fresh Paws Grooming in Brooklyn. The animal advocates at Iconic Paws, a customized pet portrait gallery with flare. Pardo Paws in Georgia, an all natural company with a lotion bar in the shape of a dog paw for dogs with dry noses and paws made of cocoa butter, olive oil, coconut oil, beeswax, calendula. Precious Paws Dog Grooming in Bloomfield, New Jersey. 

Little L’s Pet Bakery and Boutique in Brooklyn. Scotch and Tea — stylish and durable dog accessories. Bark and Tumble, a luxury and contemporary brand of hand made dog garments in Britain. Pets in Mind a Holistic Pet Supply Store in Coconut Creek, Florida. Beaux & Paws in Newark, Pet Plate — an online black owned pet food delivery service. Duke the Groomer in Chicago, Ava’s Pet Palace started by Ava Dorsey, age 13. 
  
Most all of these businesses are giving back in some way to their communities working with at-risk youth, taking them in with mentorships and internships that hopefully lead to jobs, and donating generously to shelters and rescues and neighborhood food banks.

The Radio Diaries Podcast (Series)

Produced by Radio Diaries

The extraordinary stories of ordinary life.

Most recent piece in this series:

Walter Backerman, Seltzer Man

From Radio Diaries | Part of the The Radio Diaries Podcast series | 12:27

Waltercorrected_small Back in 1919, Walter Backerman's grandfather delivered seltzer by horse and wagon on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Today, Walter continues to deliver seltzer around the streets of New York. Some customers, like Mildred Blitz, have been on the family route for more than 50 years. When Walter's grandfather drove his cart there were thousands of seltzer men in the city; today Walter is one of the last.

Trace Elements (Series)

Produced by Trace Elements

Two hosts, one adventure. An off-road trip into the science that connects us. With support from PRX and the Sloan Foundation.

Most recent piece in this series:

Mystery At The Lake

From Trace Elements | Part of the Trace Elements series | 14:03

15571440056_f58cbbac80_h_small In the 1970s, a geochemist and a biologist banded together to solve a mystery at Lake Oneida in upstate New York. What they found is changing the way we think about human life, and where the origins of life come from.

Out of the Blocks, Quick Hits (Series)

Produced by Out of the Blocks

a sampler platter of stories from Out of the Blocks

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An Outlier

From Out of the Blocks | Part of the Out of the Blocks, Quick Hits series | 04:40

James_photo_small In this Out of the Blocks excerpt, we feature James Burrows. He’s a musical genius, and he’s autistic. What might James be able to teach us about living harmoniously in the social isolation of this moment?