Comments by Jonathan Goldstein

Comment for "My Last Night of Freedom"

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Review of My Last Night of Freedom

Adam tells of stealing his mother’s car a couple days before being sent away to prison, and his telling is refreshingly matter-of-fact and unsentimental. It’s sort of like listening to a four-minute teen Edward Bunker novel. This is the kind of piece that makes you feel once again what a great medium readio is for personal story-telling. The use of music is unconventional and works really nicely, too; it might even help public radio to reach a younger demographic.

Comment for "Circus Life: The Last Sideshow"

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Review of Circus Life: The Last Sideshow

“It’s just a spiel… I’m an exhibitionistic… a ham, I guess.” So says Howard Huge, circus fat man who tells you that he’s stared at all the time, but at the sideshow he gets to make money at the same time. The last sideshow is a strange sort of defense of sideshow life, and it comes straight from the mouths of the performers. Perhaps improbably, radio is the perfect medium for such a story because it allows the physical attributes of the performers to be both on stage and off stage all at the same time. Helen Borten brings you an age that is in the process of being lost. She presents us with wonderful voices and great stories filled with wisdom and crazy surprises. This is entertaining, thoroughly captivating radio. It’s also a work of real importance.

Comment for "The Fire This Time"

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Review of The Fire This Time

It starts with the really good image of a young black girl saying boo to a car full of white people. It’s the kind of lyrical moment that is so easy to apprehend on the radio. It’s the kind of thing that gives you hope for the difficult proposition of getting poetry to work over the airwaves. In general, I think poetry for the radio works best when there’s more of a conversational quality to it, and less gravitas. With “The Fire This Time,” the smaller, human moments pull you in, and that’s most welcome.

Comment for "5 Song EP" (deleted)

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Review of 5 Song EP (deleted)

After listening to this a couple times, I’m still not sure what it’s about. A dance party? A defense of civil liberties? Ostensibly about life in post 9-11 America and the way events have effected the Asian American community, the connections being drawn feel tenuous and sort of labored. There’s talk of rights being violated, but there aren’t any specific stories… and there’s nothing about Arab-Americans being deported, which feels like a strange omission, given the material being reached for. If a story or two had been told, it would have made a really nice difference, and helped keep things from getting a bit broad.

Comment for "Truck Stop"

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Review of Truck Stop

I can’t help imagining this as more produced, slower-read, and scored, because it has all the elements that make for fine radio story-telling—surprises, relatable characters, choices that lead to change. It’s not that this piece is without it’s charms; it’s just that the performance has a kind of “what the hell, let’s just see where this lands” quality that, I must admit, as a radio producer, I am totally interested by, it still feels a little like the radio equivalent of a sketchbook drawing. It has an intimate, breathless quality, but ultimately, the performance doesn’t help the content… and the writing is good and deserves to be heard just so. I’m not sure where this would go… maybe if some brave station programmer wanted to devote some time to an evening of experimentation and story-telling.

Comment for "Housing for South Africa's poor"

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Review of Housing for South Africa's poor

This is a very newsy piece, filled with facts and no real stories, per se; yet, it still manages moments of real emotion. In describing the housing situation in South Africa, “Housing” measures the affects of the phenomenon on the constructors, officials and the people who live in the newly erected homes. It does not really offer anything critical to say, nor does it offer any particular point-of-view; but it does bring to you a social event occurring a continent away and allows you to feel intimately acquainted with it.

Comment for "Memorial"

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Review of Memorial

Like the very best radio, this piece is both funny and sad. It also manages to be both matter-of fact, and tender…. and so intimate, it’s painful. The writing is just great, too, and Dmae’s reading is shockingly sweet yet also nuanced. At something like five minutes it has more to say about life, death and family than most feature length films. It’s a throat punch to the heart, guaranteed to leave you choked up. Dmae’s mother is everybody’s mother.

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Review of Medical Hypnosis (deleted)

No one knows exactly how it works, but hypnosis, for medical purposes, is on the rise. The AMA recognized its healing potential in 1958 and it began to be taught in medical schools. It’s been used to help cure post stress syndrome and even asthma. This is totally fun radio. Medical Hypnosis takes you all over the place, from experts to stage hypnotists, and they’re all compelling talkers. At one point a stage hypnotist makes a girl from the audience believe he’s Ashton Kushner and you hear her go completely batty. This hypnosis stuff could end up making bottled pheromone seem like Kung Fu aftershave. This piece could lighten up programming dealing with illness and medicine.

Comment for "Turnstyles 004 Hour 1: Gaby Kerpel"

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Review of Turnstyles 004 Hour 1: Gaby Kerpel

My father used to say when we’d be watching movies that all of a sudden turned too artsy or avant garde, “Jonny, they had me and now they lost me.” Turnstyles has not lost me. The music is a little more far out—as in further from the pop center-- than the last episode of I reviewed, but it’s all still pretty much compelling. The mixes are so nice and it continues to be an unalientaing way to learn more about new and experimental music. In this episode Sam Fuqua interviews Argentinean musician Gabby Kerpel and his questions are thoughtful and Kerpel’s music is fascinating, different sounding, and ultimately accessible, just like Turnstyles itself. It’s also upbeat enough to be played on a weekend afternoon.

Comment for "The Traditions of Brown-Forman's Kentucky Bourbon and it's Master Distiller Lincoln Henderson"

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Review of The Traditions of Brown-Forman's Kentucky Bourbon and it's Master Distiller Lincoln Henderson

If you like whiskey, it’s time to pour yourself a jigger, sit back and enjoy…. but not if you’re driving. If you’re driving, look out! Kim Sorise speaks with the Kentucky master distiller, the man who ensures the quality of all the bourbon the state of Kentucky produces. This is well-produced radio that manages to make a pretty esoteric subject interesting. It’s filled with great sound that really makes you feel like you’re witnessing a process. Lincoln Henderson, master distiller, takes the business of distilling bourbon and manages to make it sound like a metaphor for so much more in American life. It’s about dedication to quality and the old way of doing things. It’s a tribute to having passion for what you do (“It’s the rare case where I regret coming into work,” he says.), and only considering costs after everything else is done. It’s a great business model, and one that seems to work well. This could fit in with any kind of programming that deals with day-to-day life in America, business or The South.

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Review of Summer Series (deleted)

Sounprint starts off with such nice conversational radio writing. You are fluidly guided from where ever you are into the world of the hotdog joint. I defy anyone—vegetarians, too-- to listen to this piece and not want to run out of the house in a mad search for hotdogs. Depending on where you’re coming from, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. I think, though, that ultimately, this piece might have been more effective at a shorter length. Too many metaphors for what Kasper Dogs is (“It’s like a ship,” “it’s like the Oakland Flat Iron building, ” etc.) makes the subject feel a little too broad, and it starts to sound a bit like an infomercial. Just the same, it’s a feel-good celebration of a neighborhood phenomenon and it has a couple lovely moments, among which is a little kid hanging around waiting for a free dog, and finally getting it. Next up is Rodeo, a panoramic sketch of, and a kind of primer on, life at the rodeo. Rodeo is very sentimental and filled with really nice sound and quotes (“Oh that smarts”… “git yerself out”… “It’s man in the devil in that arena.” If you don’t know anything about the rodeo, I don’t think you’ll be terrifically surprised by what you hear, but just the same, this is a pretty vibrant portrait of a cultural scene.

Comment for "What's Left is Not Who We Are"

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Review of What's Left is Not Who We Are

Helen Webb is a sea captain in Santa Barbara who takes people out on the sea to scatter the ashes of their loved ones. She tells the story of her first day on the job, and it’s totally charming in a morbid sort of way. She also ruminates on her mother’s death and how she sees her own funeral happening one day. For such a dark subject, Mauro keeps things pretty buoyant. It’s a side of life that isn’t discussed all that much, and it makes for nice radio. This could go with other stories about the death trade, or just profiles of people who do unusual jobs.

Comment for "Hard to Say"

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Review of Hard to Say

I defy anyone to listen to this piece without getting at least a small lump in their throat. It’s so crammed with beautiful images and poetic insight there’s hardly a second of flaccid tape. It invokes a whole sentimental, “old-fashioned” world where a kiss on the cheek still put you “on cloud nine” and people dance to big band in the kitchen. There is plenty of sentiment here, but there is wisdom, too. This could play in the context of love stories, old age, Alzheimer’s and loss.

Comment for "RN Documentary: "Pure Wickedness" Bertrand Russell and the People's Tribunal"

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Review of RN Documentary: "Pure Wickedness" Bertrand Russell and the People's Tribunal

In Brussels, US policy in Iraq is examined through a “people’s tribunal.” The model for this experiment is Bertrand Russell’s tribunal that he assembled in 1967 to gather evidence of war crimes in Vietnam. This time around, the forum is inspired by a feeling that a real sense of the human suffering brought on by the war is not being addressed. The tribunal is made up of legal experts, authors and regular citizens who are opposed to the war. They bring with them eye witness accounts, poems, photos and legal precedents. While this is not a legal tribunal with a binding final judgment, its point is still to prove that certain acts are illegal from an international point of view. It’s point is also to give people a feeling of empowerment, that there’s something they can do rather than sit idly by. The People’s Tribunal is well structured and packed with clear information. It is difficult radio, in that it demands your attention, but if you chose to do the work, your efforts will be well rewarded. It’s lucid, well done and, in light of the recent photos of prisoner abuse, you especially feel like the quietly common sensical voices of the people within might offer us some perspective and guidance. This could be a nice addition to your war reportage.

Comment for "Lili Day at the Farm"

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Review of Lili Day at the Farm

Lili Day at the farm features such great lines as “Goodbye pigs,” “he’s got a curly tail,” “look at the mama cows,” and the excellent “baby cows don’t wear diapers. ”You take a walk around a farm with two year-old Lili as your tour guide, and you really feel like you’re there. It also sort of makes you feel like a kid, in much the way playing with a little kid will always do. It’s very good-natured and joyful and it would be really interesting to hear this alongside some other more conventional children’s programming, which isn’t to say this one isn’t for adults, too.

Comment for "Turnstyles 002 Hour 2"

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Review of Turnstyles 002 Hour 2

Sam Fuqua spins the tunes and it’s a lot of music that your average Joe will not have heard of, but Fuqua gives a pretty nice and easy intro into the stuff. There are songs with titles like “Snoopy with a Haircut,” but the music never gets so crazy that if your dad was listening he’d say the world was going down the toilet. Turn Styles isn’t like one of those college radio shows where they throw anything in just to be different. By the end of the hour, I felt like I trusted Fuqua’s taste implicitly and would want to hear more broadcasts. I felt guided by a sure hand and that there was an underlying aesthetic governing the hour’s journey. All the music flows seamlessly—in terms of the mix and the mood-- one song into the other, and Fuqua is a nice host. He’s funny, and he doesn’t inundate you with too much trivia and stuff sometimes better left to album liner notes. I came away learning about a lot of great new music. I now love Beth Orton. This would be a lovely addition to any late night line up.

Comment for "Hidden Children of the Holocaust"

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Review of Hidden Children of the Holocaust

One of my favorite things about these interviews is the way the interviewer occasionally swings the mic over to a fourteen year old to have him comment and react to the tragic stories he's hearing. There’s a concern about bringing it all back to the present day, to make it feel less remote to younger generations. I guess it’s an odd but real concern. The fourteen year-old’s responses are not always that illuminating or unusual—and you get the feeling that the gulf between the childhoods of the story-tellers and the childhoods of the story-listeners is great-- but there’s something that feels right about placing them alongside one another in the same forum. I would have liked the juxtapositioning of the young and the old to have been more sustained but all the same, the stories from the survivors are very tragic and moving and need to be heard. This could run on appropriate anniversaries, memorial days, or around Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Comment for "Dial A Trip b"

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Review of Dial A Trip b

I don’t know, I like this thing. It’s a little like the acid scene from “Easy Rider,” or the behavior modifying films that Little Alex has to watch in “A Clockwork Orange.” It’s kind of avant garde, while at the same time it’s almost making fun of it’s own avant gardeness. It’s hard to know what to say about it, though, other than that it takes you someplace, and in that, it testifies, in its way, to the power of radio. Plus there’s a lot to hear in it. I’d love to hear this played in the midst of a straighter newsy broadcast. I’m imagining the voice of the announcer saying at some point, “let’s take a minute to sit back, reflect on our busy day, and trip out on this” and then pres play. The trick to programming this would be in finding the right context, so that it can be a curve ball to the listeners.

Comment for "Where's Martha?"

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Review of Where's Martha?

Radio is so well suited to the neurotic interior monologue, and Matthew Cowley's words capture the inner ambivalence and rationalizing that leads to a particular kind of yearnful paralysis. All the while, he keeps things entertaining for the listener by being funny without trying too hard. A part of the fun of listening to this is recognizing yourself in The Man in the Odd Hotel Bar, while at the same time being thankful that you aren’t The Man in the Odd Hotel Bar. This could be dropped into a program dealing with dating, romance or into a Valentine’s Day show to cut through the treacle.

Comment for "Torturing Terrorists (es#57)" (deleted)

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Review of Torturing Terrorists (es#57) (deleted)

It’s pretty impressive how much ground Torturing Terrorists covers in so little time; it’s just that the time it takes for the conversation to leap to Hitler is also little. Hitler pops up so much in ethical conversations, doesn’t he? The metronome-like back-and-forth is an odd but interesting structural format. It’s so ripe for parody, too… if there are any would-be radio humorists out there. These would be fun to listen to in the morning… to stimulate office debates around the coffee machine.

Comment for "Carvings"

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Review of Carvings

There’s a level of pathos here that you don’t get all that often, on the radio or any other medium for that matter. Carvings is poetic, honest and full of a yearning that’s almost palpable. It doesn’t adhere to any kind of formula. The difficult sense of hope it contains does not feel tacked on or clichéd, but feels earned. You’re never alone when someone speaks to you like Mathew Cowley does.

Comment for "JAZZ RHYTHM DEMO"

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Review of JAZZ RHYTHM DEMO

The format is a simple and satisfying one: Music plays and stories are told. Dave Radlauer has put together a sampling of different programs to give you an idea of what the series is like, and it is sound rich and entertaining. You get to hear jazz biographies of performers who are household names and others, depending on your level of jazz fluency, that you may have never heard of. Some of these jazz greats were hugely popular in their day but are now a little lost to us. The show rediscovers them and, in some cases, sheds new light on their musical contributions as well as their tragedies. The bios are composed of readings and interviews that create snapshots of the time, which are equally about the music as they are about race and inequality. The bios are also peppered with fascinating details, images and fun facts-- like Fats Waller earned his nickname by being able to eat fifteen hotdogs in one sitting. I did not know that. Sometimes, the music playing underneath the stories is in ironic counter-point to the stories being told… the individual tales of hard times are often playing out to the sweet music these men and women produced during those very times and it pays homage to their dedication and endurance. It also serves to show how the world of music can be an autonomous, pristine realm unto itself. If the demos are an example of the shows quality, this series is a real gift to jazz aficionados and casual listeners alike, and the beauty of it is it could slip right in with either music programming or talk programming.

Comment for "The '63 March : Convergence on the Capitol"

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Review of The '63 March : Convergence on the Capitol

The ’63 March offers some archival footage that you might have never heard before. While it doesn’t exactly offer a new perspective on its subject, it is interesting to hear the voices of the time. Of the rally, one man, who claims to essentially be all for integration says, “I think that its purpose is communism. I fear it.” It’s a real snapshot of the time, of a certain mentality that can easily be forgotten and lost to the annals of history. I can see this running on any related anniversary.

Comment for "Strip Club USA Part Two"

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Review of Strip Club USA Part Two

In this second installment of Strip Club USA, Borten continues to explore the much maligned and misunderstood world of the strip club. Part two has a slightly darker edge, filling out the introductory chapter with an exploration of the psychological aftermath of prolonged exposure to the club scene. Borten delves into the mutual fantasies of the strippers and their clients and deflates both. Part two also strays a little further from the story-telling vox format of the first to offer some grander pronouncements and “voice of the clinician” statements. But Borten still continues to offer small moments of the mundane work-a-day life that all-at-once open up onto greater psycho-sexual, emotional truths. And there’s something about hearing stories aided along by the not-so-distant strains of Bon Jovi coming off a dance stage that really makes you feel like you’re there. Borten’s project attempts to foster understanding, and I think she succeeds without pandering.

Comment for "Strip Club USA Part One"

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Review of Strip Club USA Part One

Helen Borten takes us into the world of the strip joint, examining its customs and rituals—the buying of drinks, the attempts to date dancers—and she brings to her subject the same curiosity and care that an anthropologist studying tribal customs might. Borten’s technique is to bounce around between all the people that populate the world she is exploring—the bouncers, the strippers, the clients—in order to create a sort of multi-perspectived, almost cubist rendering of her subject. But Strip Club USA is at its strongest when it zeros in on one particular person’s story and stays with them long enough to draw a full portrait, and when this occurs, she manages to make us care about them. “I like getting compliments from men my father’s age,” says one young stripper in a moment that just freezes you. Certain parts are structured as a kind of she said/ he said testimonial that shifts between strippers and their clients and, at their best, the revelations that pour forth transcend the world of the strip joint and say something about human sexual, emotional relationships. Strip Club really digs out all kinds of possible perspectives, never stopping to rest on any one pat point-of-view… like, say, all men are jerks, which would be valid, but also easier than what Strip Club aspires to do. It keeps searching out new ground and Borten is never judgmental. She has chosen articulate subjects and she allows them to speak for themselves. In so doing, they succeed in sucking you into their world. Their stories, while sad, are also funny. One stripper tells of her days as a dominatrix and the one client she had who paid for a 100 lemon pies to be thrown in his face. Another guy paid her to pretend she was drowning in quicksand. Strip Club could run as a part of a series dealing with women in the work force, human sexuality and economics… or just a series about sex. People like sex.

Comment for "Lolita Unveiled: Muslim Women's Take on a Scandalous Classic"

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Review of The Power of the Novel: Reading Lolita in Tehran

“The Power of the Novel” is a celebration of reading, an homage to the healing, redemptive power of literature. But what makes this story so moving is the sad, surprising analogy made between the little girl Lolita and the women of Tehran. The women in the story, who meet in secret to read the bizarre, disturbing, and beautiful Nabakov classic, see themselves as victims of a man’s monstrous dream—The Ayatollah—just as Lolita is a victim of Humbert’s monstrous dream. Reading helps the women escape their lives and to re-imagine themselves. Fiction, discussed in this context, reminds you of its great subversive power. And bonus: Jeremy Iron’s reading of the text is fantastic. This piece could go into a show that deals with education, the Middle East, the treatment of women, or reading. Really, it could go anywhere; it’s interesting enough.

Comment for "Fast Food: What and Why"

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Review of Fast Food: What and Why

A few years back, I walked into a Hardee’s bathroom and found one of the kids who worked the counter sitting on a sink eating a hamburger. When I asked him why he was eating in the bathroom he told me that employees weren’t allowed to “eat on the floor.” The humanity. It’s this kind of depressing fast food pathos that Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation” discusses in this half-hour interview. He makes the argument that not only is fast food bad because the food itself is bad for you, but also because of, among other things, the way it’s marketed to kids and the conditions that the meat packers themselves work under. But still, the food is bad for you… whatever that food may be. There’s one moment where Schlosser is invited to read off some of the “hidden” ingredients contained in the “natural flavor” of a Burger King milk shake. It’s creepy stuff. Listening to this interview on the heels of McDonald’s decision to discontinue its supersize menu (a Chevy trunk of fries served with a wading pool of Coca Cola) makes you feel like there is hope for some kind of change. This could go in any kind of newsmagazine show… on a show about health, the economy, youth culture, or the speed of urban life.

Comment for "No Email from Oaxaca"

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Review of No Email from Oaxaca

It’s a window onto such a small, mundane moment, but still, within it, there is a feeling of an abyss being crossed. The reading style is quiet. It doesn’t over dramatize and over-reach. It is personal in the best sense, in that it communicates a sense of Adam’s personality. I hope I’m not spoiling anything by quoting to you the last line of the piece. I don’t think that I am: “He was a nice man but if I saw him again I probably wouldn’t have recognized him or his wife.” How often does a story on the radio end that way? I’d say not often, but stories end like that all the time in real life. It’s nice to hear something like that owed up to. It is honest and well written with echoes of Scott Carrier. It isn't newsy and there is no grand point, but it does make you feel less alone in the city.

Comment for ":60: Peepers"

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Review of :60: Peepers

I just had to listen to this several times. It stirs something within you on a primordial level. It’s undeniably effecting. Hearing this in your car on your way to work might have the power to make you feel lonely for something hard to explain. Nature, maybe. Anyway, the wistful feeling of loss is remarkable. And that it’s a minute that represents two weeks of work gives it an added force. It is like a tightly constructed haiku that has the strength of a sledgehammer. By the end, when all the sounds come together, it is symphonic. Oddly, it feels like the end of a narrative arc of some sort, even though it is wordless. It’s alarming.

Comment for "The Tribe of Als" (deleted)

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Review of The Tribe of Als (deleted)

When I was a kid I used to think I wasn’t cool enough to pass for a Joel. Our minds are so inclined to make connections—to develop theories, to create meaning out of what’s random. Do we ultimately have to claim responsibility for our name? I hope not. My middle name is Stuart-- “Stuey” for short. Charming, well conceived, and well executed. It makes you think about a phenomenon you may not have given a second thought, which is always a good starting point in a radio story. It would be a nice addition in a show on parenting-- about naming your child and the albatross you might be saddling them with.