The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey

Saturday, December 10th, 2011 | shows, stories | No Comments

Now in heavy rotation: The Hidden World of Girls from The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva). Do I even need to tell you how great this is? If you hear one minute of it, you might as well give up on doing anything else until it’s over.

How To Do Everything

Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 | cool, shows | No Comments

Please welcome How To Do Everything to the mix! It’s half advice show, half survival guide. If you need to know how to find a date, or how to find water in the desert, this is the show for you. No question is too big or too small.

Here’s how it works: you send HTDE your questions—from “how do I break up with my hairstylist of 20 years” to “how do I not sound stupid when ordering wine” to “how do I escape a charging rhino”—and Mike and Ian answer them. Usually, given how little they actually know how to do, they find experts who can help you out.

How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag and produced by Blythe Haaga. You may know Ian and Mike as two of the names Peter Sagal says really fast at the end of NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me.

We’ve added 15 episodes of HTDE to the mix and will add a new one into heavy rotation every week.

Sound Opinions Reviews on Remix

Saturday, July 16th, 2011 | cool, music, shows | 1 Comment

We’re excited to offer new album reviews selected from the world’s only rock n’ roll talk show, Sound Opinions. Produced at WBEZ Chicago, Sound Opinions is hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, two of the finest and best-recognized pop music writers in the nation. Jim and Greg save you the time of that pesky listening process, by boiling down their reviews to three easy to use phrases: Buy It!, Burn It! or Trash It!

Dinner Party Download turns 100!

Sunday, June 12th, 2011 | shows | No Comments

Though they’ve been helping us win dinner parties for the past few weeks, we haven’t officially introduced our latest Remix addition, The Dinner Party Download. The show is a fast and funny “booster shot” of news and culture designed to help you dazzle your friends and family at this weekend’s dinner party. In every 15 minute episode you’ll learn a joke…get the week’s major headlines…bone up on some history…drink in a cocktail recipe…meet an artist of note…savor an emerging food trend…and hear your new favorite song. Plus, unconventional wisdom from hosts Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam. Maybe “wisdom” should be in quotes there.

It just so happens that this week is DPD’s 100th episode, so in honor of the occasion Rico and Brendan have filled the dinner party with a few “dream guests”, Rico samples a 100 year old egg, and the guys finally ask permission to use to the theme song they’ve already been using for 100 episodes. It’ll be a party for the ages.

Episode #100 is playing on Public Radio Remix all week, but if you just can’t possibly wait, here you go:

The Guardian’s Science Weekly will make you love science (again and again)

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 | shows | 1 Comment

Please welcome the first (but not the last) podcast from The Guardian to REMIX Radio: Science Weekly. The program is an accessible and entertaining weekly look at what’s going on the world of science. It’s smart and surprising and I think it’s the best topical science program out there, so I’m thrilled we get to present it to you on the US airwaves.

Here’s the thing I love most about the show: For the Christmas holiday, Science Weekly producer Andy Duckworth went to the Large Hadron Collider at Cern and covered the strange and charming day to day life of the researchers at the facility, using humor and sound in a 20+ minute feature that is a great joy to listen to. A proper doc, through and through. Don’t take my word for it, listen:

Christmas at the Large Hadron Collider:

So, I hear that episode, and I think, That was brilliant, they should let poor Andy get out of the production booth more often! More Andy! More roving reportage!

Then I hear the next episode, and it’s the always brilliant Alok Jha sitting in a studio in London and simply talking to smart people in Antarctica and the US over the phone and it’s awesome. A totally riveting half hour breezes by and I love every minute of it:

Monitoring Climate Change in the Antarctic:

THEN I think, Get back to the studio Andy; you’ve got a job to do! Those interviews don’t just edit themselves!

The next week, a panel of science writers will discuss if the latest “monumental discovery” is all it seems, or if it really deserves those quotes, for irony’s sake.

I figure, if each week I’m convinced that the latest episode is the episode all future episodes should be modeled, then they must be doing something right.

Don’t trust me, just stay tuned.

Two Wheels to Nowhere

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 | shows | No Comments

Aengus Anderson actually did it. That dream- the cross country trip on a motorcycle- writing, and in this case recording, all along the way: 13,843 miles, 89 days, 37 states, 166 interviews.

The result is a 7(!) part free range audio docudrama that explores how Americans are facing the unknown. He asked each person two questions: what is the most exciting thing in your life? What is the most concerning thing?

The result is a moody, winding tale that never feels slow or depressing, which I think may be harder and  even more impressive than a 14K motorcycle trip. Third Coast conducted an interview with Aengus about the series that you should check out. You can listen, rate and review the the whole series on PRX.org, or just wait for it to come on REMIX by chance, which I think may be the best way to encounter it.

Stop and listen radio

Monday, September 20th, 2010 | cool, shows | 1 Comment

I love intricate stories and sound design, but my weekly, can’t miss radio show is On The Media produced out of WNYC. I hope to get rights for a few of their evergreen pieces to put on the ol’ REMIX, but for now, their podcast steadfastly serves as my Saturday morning dishwashing accompaniment. The show is always killer, but this week featured an interview with Richard Connor, editor of the Portland Press Herald of Portland, Maine that made me turn off the water and pay close attention. There are so many great things going on here of note: (1) there’s a level of feet-to-fire holding that you rarely hear on public radio, (2) the interplay gets contentious, but never overly aggressive or mean spirited (to my ears, there is plenty of disagreement in the comments), (3) there are several points where I expected Bob to drop it, and let the newly modified presentation of the point of view stand (because that’s the way it’s usually done), but Bob never lets go, (4) the piece is called “For Some, An Apology Offends”, which is a very nice (and knowing) reference to the media’s long standing tradition of using some form of “some have said…” when they really mean “I” or “we.” I know this fact because On the Media taught it to me.

The short story is, it’s riveting radio and you should check it out.

Side note: this codified another new habit I have when I listen to the radio. Whenever I hear something tense or controversial on the air, I run to the program’s comment page and look at what people are saying about it. I rarely comment myself.

Why we do what we do

Thursday, September 16th, 2010 | cool, shows, sound, stories | No Comments

PRXer Matt MacDonald turned me on to the RSA Animate video series a couple weeks ago, and man alive, are they awesome. This episode tackles an issue that confounds a lot of people in the public radio profession: why do we work so hard on something that (usually) offers so little financial gain? It turns out, independent producers aren’t freaks when it comes to this disassociation of higher brain tasks and monetary gain. We’re normal! At least in that sense. Indies are freaky in plenty of other ways. Come to Chicago in October and we’ll prove it.

Oh, oh: I uploaded a great new piece today (well several, but this one deserves to be listened to separately when other ambient noise is at a minimum). It’s called Secrets and Noise by Amy Conger. The piece gets progressively louder “as more and more noises and voices come in to muffle the speaker who only wants to tell you a little something.” I really dig it, but fear some of its greatness could be lost if you heard it on the car stereo, zooming down the highway. Take the time now, dear listener.

Rip and Rebind: The First Five

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 | cool, shows, Uncategorized | No Comments

From Rip and Rebind mastermind Carl Scott:

Rip and Rebind is an anthropological snapshot of life taken with hip-hop’s camera. Through a collaged narrative reflecting the mash-up genre whose origins are largely found in Hip-Hop, this sonic journey confirms that the music is a reflection of the people. The series aims to preserve an honest perception of an artistic expression that has too often been commodified. Sample-heavy and audibly rich, Rip and Rebind is essentially cultural “crate-digging.”

The phrase “rip and rebind” comes from the publishing industry. When a successful book is being re-published as a paperback, sometimes there is an abundance of hardcover editions left over. In order to reuse the hardcovers for this new purpose, the books are ripped from their hard shells and re-bound as paperbacks for a new audience of readers.

This show was created, hosted and produced by my REMIX colleague Carl Scott and I’m honored to have it be the first radio series produced with REMIX in mind. The first five episodes are on the stream, but you can listen and rate them on demand at their home on PRX.

All the Planets Wonders Available on YouTube

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 | cool, shows | No Comments

Josie Long makes me happy. Her BBC Radio 4 series, produced by the awesome Colin Anderson, is without a doubt, my favorite radio from the last couple of years. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t have it available all the time, beaming directly into my head, so some fantastic person put them on YouTube. There are only four episodes, and I know I’ve mentioned the show before, but listen now. Whether or not you chose to awkwardly stare at the still photo of Josie at the same time is up to you.

Series one is locked up rights-wise, so I can’t broadcast it on the REMIX Radio stream, but I hear that series two is being commissioned by the internet, so you will hear it as soon as Josie turns in her scripts and it gets produced.