Transmissions
Discarded: Addicted to Convenience
Gloria Riviera, Alie Kilts, (US 2023)
Gloria Riviera and Alie Kilts (US 2023)
42 min Episode 1 of 4
The invention of plastic changed the way we live — and now we’re hooked. The journey starts in Louisiana, where plastic is born, to New Jersey, where plastic goes to die… or live again. This episode explores greenwashing, wish-cycling, and our collective culpability as we try to understand how we became so reliant on plastic — despite knowing its harm to the earth and the communities closely impacted.
This is the story of a modern-day Erin Brockovich, set on the Mississippi River in an area known as “Cancer Alley.” Her name is Sharon Lavigne, her community is St. James Parish in Louisiana, and her fight is to keep out one of the largest plastic manufacturing companies in the world. In this investigative four-part series, hosted by Emmy award-winning journalist Gloria Riviera, we discover how our plastic world came to be. Because plastic is everywhere – it has advanced our world, but it has damaged our environment and our health. So what do we do? We look at what’s next for all of us, and how we can learn from communities like St. James to make a difference in our own backyards.
This series is presented in partnership with Only One, the action platform for the planet.
A Lemonada Media original
Hosted by Gloria Riviera
Produced by Alie Kilts
Outside Is The Sky
James Ginzburg and Patrick Eakin Young (UK 2021)
James Ginzburg and Patrick Eakin Young (UK 2021)
31 min
The jagged surfaces and iridescent veneers of electronic artist Aho Ssan’s labyrinthine debut become the material and psychological furnishings of a sonic dystopia in this chilling allegorical fable. Like all Class 8 citizens, Désiré has spent his entire life confined to cramped living quarters, with no access to the outside world. When his parents suddenly vanish from the apartment, he is forced to confront his own role in their disappearance, and begins to question everything he thought he knew about his situation.
From the award winning Soundworlds - an audio stage for diverse stories told in extraordinary ways. It’s a place for an exciting new form of audio drama that we call sonic theatre.
Written with artist/musician James Ginzburg
Directed by Patrick Eakin Young
Produced by Eleanor Turney & George Warren
The Syria Trials: The Doctors Who Resisted
Sasha Edye-Lindner (UK 2022)
Sasha Edye-Lindner - 75 Podcasts (UK 2022)
29 min Episode 3 of 11
While many doctors and medical staff sided with the Syrian regime after the protests began in Syria in 2011, there were, of course, many doctors, nurses and medical students who sided with the protestors calling for freedom and democracy. Field medical teams to help injured protestors, and later field medical hospitals and checkpoints to care for those wounded in the escalating war, were set up - only to become targets of the regime’s increasingly more violent tactics.
Please take care when listening - this episode talks about violence and war.
The Syria Trials takes the listener on a trip through the stories around the scattered landscape of justice and accountability efforts for the atrocious crimes committed by the regime in Syria, since it violently suppressed the peaceful revolution in 2011. Less than a year after the Koblenz trial, the world’s first criminal trial to convict a Syrian official, they explore the other trials now underway, as well as the cases being built, that all set out to bring about justice for Syria. Where are we now on the long and complicated road to justice? What does the road ahead look like? What can the law and international justice do - and what can’t it do - for Syria?
Hosted by: Fritz Streiff
Produced by Sasha Edye-Lindner
Created by 75 Podcasts
Wochende (Weekend)
Walter Ruttmann (DE 1930)
Walter Ruttmann (DE 1930)
11 min
Wochende was presented in theaters as a sound-only experience. No images were projected on the screen. The 11 minute of music fragments and sounds represent a weekend in Berlin, including Saturday afternoon at a factory, a night in the city, a pastoral Sunday, and the city returning to work on Monday. The effect was a sonification of the visuals one would expect from a film, but a film without images.
Wochende, as a sound narrative, was also broadcast on radio and so is sometimes referred to as a radio play. In that context Wochende may be the first significant recorded experiment with montage for radio
Producer: Walter Ruttmann
The Dreams
Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange (DE 1964)
Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange (UK 1964)
45 min
The Dreams is one of four programmes "Inventions for Radio", this is surprisingly modern collection of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their dreams.
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop provided a base for a series of exceptional composers and sound designers but none of them generated quite the same level of interest and fascination as Delia Derbyshire.
Delia's editing and repetition, together with her dissonant, often terrifying musique concrete soundbeds, make this distinctly uneasy bedtime listening.
Producers: Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange
Radio Ballad: The Travelling People (1964)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1963)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This ballad gives voice to travellers in the UK as well as the people who have a distrust or fear of this group. Note this was recorded in 1963 and some people featured are quite outspoken about their racist beliefs.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
The Solitude Trilogy: The Idea of North
Glenn Gould (CA 1967)
Glenn Gould (CA 1967)
56min Episode 1 of 1
A visit to the archives with Canadian pianist Glenn Gould's landmark radio documentary, The Idea of North, first aired on CBC Radio in 1967.
In his boldly experimental program about the Canadian north, the pianist used a technique he called "contrapuntal radio," layering speaking voices on top of each other to create a unique sonic environment situated in the space between conversation and music.
The North provided Gould with an ideal subject matter for exploring the condition of solitude.
"hybrids of music, drama, and several other strains, including essay, journalism, anthropology, ethics, social commentary, and contemporary history."
The densely layered radio pieces presented a real challenge to audiences at the time, and they still do. Yet their enduring cultural impact — a rare feat for radio programming — speaks to the inspired balance of music and meaning that Gould was able to achieve.
Composed by Glenn Gould
Listen to the series
Phantom Power: The Sound World of Harriet Tubman
Maya Cunningham + Ravi Krishnaswami (US 2023)
Maya Cunningham + Ravi Krishnaswami (US 2023)
41 min Episode 7 of 7
Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham reads “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology
She uses field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. You’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. The sounds and music from today’s show can be heard on Maya’s Spotify playlist
Produced for Phantom Power
Written and narrated by Maya Cunningham
Produced by Ravi Krishnaswami
The True Crime of Your Frozen Death
Ross Sutherland and Cristina Marras (UK/IT 2022)
Ross Sutherland and Cristina Marras (UK/IT 2022)
44 min
A homage to the Giallo film genre, set within the True Crime podcasting scene. What happens when an Italian podcaster becomes the protagonist of their own true-crime podcast? An absurd foray into the genre in Italian.
As Ross says in his intro, you can give it a try without being able to understand a word (if you don’t speak Italian) or you can also get the subtitled version here:
From Imaginary Advice
Story by Ross Sutherland
Translated by Cristina Marras and performed by Cristina Marras
Original music by Jeremy Warmsley
Here Be Monsters: Without Name
Lina Misitzis (US 2013)
Lina Misitzis (US 2013)
30 min
Eugene up and left for California one morning without packing a thing from his apartment in Brooklyn, New York. HBM producer Lina Misitzis and her roommate Adrian got the apartment at a discount. The condition, though, was that they took the place as Eugene left it—full of his left-behind life. For two years they enjoyed Eugene's magazine subscriptions, ate out of his bowls, slept on his old couch and used his designer spices.
Content Note: This episode discusses sex work, drug use and animal abuse.
Produced by: Lina Misitzis
Produced for Here be Monsters