December 29 , 2007 (#65) - The Long Haul Show
Originally aired February 17, 2007

This week we feature the work of Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister of Long Haul Productions. Dan and Elizabeth specialize in stories that follow people over days, weeks, and even years. At a time when our atrophied collective attention span adds up to about a nanosecond, Long Haul offers us something completely different: the long view over a long time. It's not the easiest way to tell a story -- it's labor intensive and time consuming -- but it is possibly the richest and most revealing.

Movin' Out the Bricks

In the fall of 2002, Catherine Means was living on the tenth floor of what she describes as "hell" -- Chicago's Stateway Gardens high-rise housing project. That September, she finally left Stateway and moved into her first apartment. Long Haul followed Catherine (aka "Coco") for over a year as she transitioned to her new home and life.

Lord God Bird

The Ivory Billed Woodpecker was thought to be extinct -- until 2004, when it was rediscovered near the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas. The sightings were big news in a community depressed by recession and population loss. This story is one of Dan and Elizabeth's "song stories", interweaving interviews with Brinkley locals and an original song written and performed by Sufjan Stevens.

Poet Laureate

Three Oaks, Michigan -- population 1,800, located just across the lake from Chicago -- is one of the smallest towns in America to have a poet laureate. Like many rural towns, Three Oaks' economy was badly hurt by farm consolidation and factory shutdowns, but an influx of artists and creative types has given it new life. Dan and Elizabeth recently relocated to Three Oaks and documented the selection of the new poet laureate.

Featured Music

Mum, "The Land Between Solar Systems", Finally We Are No One (FatCat, 2002)

Extras:

Hear more of Dan and Elizabeth's work, much of which is archived on their website.

Learn more about writer and musician Sufjan Stevens.

December 22 , 2007 (#81) -- The Just Good Radio Show


Bells In Europe
Peter Leonhard Braun - Producer, Germany
(Adaptation by Steve Wadhams - Producer, Canada)

In film, the Germans have Herzog. In music, Wagner. In literature, Goethe. And in radio, Braun.

40 years ago, Peter Leonhard Braun inspired a revolution in radio-making and developed a whole new way of telling stories with sound. Before Braun's legendary work, audio documentaries were stuck within the confines of the studio, with a talking head telling listeners about an event. But in the mid-1960s Braun took radio-making out of the studio and into the world.

One of his most famous pieces, called "Bells in Europe", chronicles European history through the sound of bells. It investigates what bells were used for -- to call communities together, to warn people of coming disasters, to celebrate weddings and mourn funerals. And it also looks at the darker history of how bells were melted down for munitions during European wars.


Artist Crawls to Canterbury
Conor Lennon -- Producer, BBC

British performance artist Mark McGowan specializes in bizarre spectacles of endurance. Like standing outside 10 Downing St. and kissing a photograph of Tony Blair 100,000 times. Or sitting for two weeks in a bath of baked beans, with two french fries stuffed up his nose and 48 sausages strapped to his head, to promote the much maligned traditional British breakfast. Or, as documented in this story by Conor Lennon, crawling for sixty miles from Southwark to Canterbury in search of love.


Featured Music:

Coming soon!

Extras:

Learn more about audio luminary Peter Leonhard Braun.

Visit artist Mark McGowan's webpage.

December 15 , 2007 -- Pre-empted for Special Programming

No show this week. Tune in next Saturday!

December 8 , 2007 (#80) - The Edna Lavilla Show


The Search for Edna Lavilla
Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney - Independent Producers, Australia
with Russell Stapleton - Sound engineer, Australia

You'd think it would be safe to do a story on the death of a woman more than 70 years ago... But Australian producer Eurydice Aroney found out the hard way that this is not always the case. Along with co-producer Sharon Davis, Eurydice went in search of her long-dead grandmother, Edna Lavilla, whose history was unknown and whose death was clouded in mystery. What she discovered (after years of research) was a closely guarded family secret and a tale of mystery, tragedy, political controversy, and intrigue.

The Search for Edna Lavilla won an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Third Coast Festival Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition.

Featured Music:

Sylvain Chauveau, "Fly Like a Horse ", Nuage (Type, 2007)
Sylvain Chauveau, "Le Tunnel ", Nuage (Type, 2005)


Extras:

Learn more about all the winners of the 2007 Third Coast Festival Competition.

Listen to "My Personal Board", a "reality radio" soap opera by Eurydice Aroney.

December 1 , 2007- The 2007 Third Coast Festival Broadcast (Part 2)

This week it's the exciting conclusion of the 2007 Third Coast Festival Broadcast, featuring the festival's winning documentaries (including the GOLD award winner!) The show is hosted by Re:sound's Gwen Macsai and you can find out more about it here.