Best of Public Radio

FATS WALLER: IF YOU GOTTA ASK is a one-hour music intensive documentary about Fats Waller, one of America's great composers and performers of the 20th century. His songs, stride piano style and on-stage and on-screen antics were legendary and made him one of the first African-American superstars. Count Basie sat at his feet to learn, Art Tatum considered Fats the best, and Waller's stride style influenced Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and many others. During this documentary, host Dick Hyman talks with Murray Horowitz, who wrote the play “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, pianists Eric Reed and Judy Carmicheal and a lot of great music.

Hosted by Murray Horwitz, this special features a concert from NYC-based 2006 Grammy-award-winning band, the Klezmatics.

Stochasticity is how scientists refer to the game of chance that nature plays. It's a game that affects our day-to-day experiences, the thoughts in our heads, and the basic processes that go on deep inside living things. In this show, delve into the chaotic and the haphazard, and explore the human desire to see patterns and purpose in the noisy disorder of life. Through lotteries and coin flips and the firing of neurons, Jad and Robert explore how randomness shapes the world around us.

In this program, hosts Jad and Robert delight in the discovery of sperm, become hysterical about the possibility of a world without men (now that science has reproduced life without men), and empathize with a wife contemplating inseminating herself with her dead husband's sperm.

Every day, you make a million decisions -- what pants to wear, what to eat, who to trust. While these decisions seem to make perfect sense to you at the time, most of these decisions may not actually be rational, consistent, or really even conscious. On this program, we share the story of a perfectly rational man, investigate how a hot cup of coffee can make us trust someone we just met, and uncover the hidden life of our everyday decisions.

When Emmanuel was growing up in the Bronx, everyone in his family knew something wasn't quite right. His parents schooled him at home, apart from other kids, and he spent his childhood feeling different and alone. Then, a visit to a doctor 18 years later changes everything. This show explores what happens when a problem is diagnosed. What counts as wrong in the first place? What does it feel like to deliver news that no one wants to hear? And, how do people react when they finally find a label for what they have or what they are?

No one ever questioned that Wayne Joseph was a black man. But one day he took a DNA test and found out that he has no African ancestry. What happens when the biological and social realities of race collide? This program assesses the science behind racial differences and uncovers the surprising effects of stereotypes. Also, writer Malcolm Gladwell talks about growing up as a half English, half Jamaican runner, and Jad offers up some DNA to test his race.

Nina Simone was as powerful and complex a person as the music she played. She called it “black classical music” and it resists all definitions. Its jazz, rhythm & blues, folk, gospel and all genres in between. It’s as combination as rich as the culture. Like any legend, Nina Simone because a symbol for people and movements through the years, but however she was first and foremost a performer. She acted out the story of each song as if it happened to her just yesterday. During this hour, we’ll hear about the life and music if Nina Simone from colleagues and friends such as Odetta, Patti Smith, journalist David Nathan and more. The show is narrated by her daughter Simone and includes some of her trademark songs as well as previously unreleased tracks.

With the presidential election looming, WXPN decided to survey some of our favorite political songs. We show how peformers have taken on racism, sexism, war and poverty through a variety of genres including blues, folk, hip-hop and good old rock n roll. We showcase conversation and commentary from Billy Bragg, Jeb Loy Nichols, Ani Difranco, Janis Ian and more. And we play some of our favorite songs of dissent.

The Best of Public Radio was preempted during the Fall Member Drive.

The Best of Public Radio was preempted during the Fall Member Drive.

We're deciding if we want to join the military. We're deciding if we want to protest something. We're fighting wars in our own lives, every day. Teens from around America share OUR stories, in OUR words in a special presentation from KUOW Public Radio Seattle and Generation PRX. Host Amina Al-Sadi is a freshman at the University of Washington and a graduate of KUOW's Weekday High. Her dad is from Iraq, and she's active in her mosque. Her whole family loves to talk about politics. In between segments, she shares her personal experiences with growing up after 9/11. Producer Jenny Asarnow is our curator, producer and editor.

If you applied for any job, would you publicly discredit the other candidates for the position in hopes of getting it yourself? Why is this technique practiced and accepted in running for political office in the United States, including in the race for the presidency? Host Suzanne Kryder talks with a panel to explore these questions. Guests include former Albuquerque Tribune managing editor Kate Nelson, Dr. Gilbert St. Clair, a lecturer in political science at the University of New Mexico and Dr. Guy Burgess, co-director of the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado. The show is complimented by interviews with citizens and samples of political ads from the last 50 years. Part One focuses on the tone of political discourse throughout history and why political speech between politicians today is so contentious. Part Two spotlights campaign advertising, the role of the media in setting the tone, and initiatives underway in some places to improve the tone.

The 60's folk revival centered around two locations, Greenwich Village in New York City and Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the heart of the Harvard Square scene was a small coffeehouse called The Club 47. The Club 47 50th anniversary Hoot Radio Special mixes interviews with performances by many of the singers and musicians who played an active roll in the development of the Club 47 and the 60's folk revival. Peter Rowan, Geoff Muldaur, Carolyn Hester, and Bob Jones are just a few of the many voices that tell the story of the Club 47's humble beginnings, its legacy as a launching pad for artists like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Taj Mahal, and the birth of a new American bohemianism. Recorded at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square on the 50th anniversary of the day the Club 47 opened in 1958, the program (in the best of folk traditions) is an oral history of a time that was indeed "a changing".

Pete Seeger is perhaps America's best-known folk musician, the songwriter/adapter of such hits as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Guantanamera," and 1994 recipient of the National Endowment for the Art's Medal of Arts. In "Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing?," David Dunaway, host, producer and Seeger biographer, explores the legendary singer's life and music in three captivating hour-long documentaries. Each program features audio from Dunaway's 11 interviews with Seeger (1976–2006) and from Seeger's 124 albums as well as an archive of 114 interviews with the artist's family and associates.

Since 1970, the Unitarian Church in Peterborough has hosted the Monadnock Summer Lyceum, a series of summer lectures covering a broad range of issues. The lecture series is a revival of the original Lyceum, begun in the mid-nineteenth century, the first in New Hampshire. It is known as "a feast for the thoughtful" and features prominent speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines who discuss topics of importance to our times. Lectures are held during the summer months on Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. and broadcast on NHPR the following Saturday afternoon at 4:00. The presentations are typically 45 minutes long, with additional time allowed for questions and answers. Audience members are invited to meet each speaker at a reception in the parish hall immediately following the talk.

This is not the story of Brazil as you know it. A new Brazil is emerging on the world stage. Brazil today is one of the fastest growing players in the global economy, a bio-fuels pioneer on the fast track to energy self-sufficiency, a booming haven for foreign investment, and a test case for a new approach to governance in Latin America. Can Brazil successfully chart a new path that overcomes the country's grinding poverty and its tide of violent crime, while still preserving the country's unique environment? Will the new Brazil continue as a strategic partner for the United States or could it become a formidable competitor? How will the rest of the world accommodate Brazil's seemingly unstoppable growth? In "Brazil Rising," veteran public radio journalist David Brown takes listeners on a personal journey across the country, exploring Brazil's view of itself, its neighbors, and the world. "Brazil Rising" is produced by Simon Marks, Kristin McHugh, and Keith Porter.

Whole Lotta Shakin' is an exciting documentary series of 10 hour-long programs that explores rockabilly, the brash, fast-paced 1950s mix of blues, gospel, jazz, country and popular music that is a foundation of rock and roll. Hosted by Rosie Flores, the series visits the cradle of rockabilly, Memphis, and presents the music's female stars. It profiles the influential radio program, "The Louisiana Hayride" and explores the rockabilly sounds of California. In an era when America was tuning into Patti Page and Mitch Miller, rockabilly was a bold, young upstart. "Whole Lotta Shakin'" profiles the stars of the genre, including Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly, and shares the stories of the period's best-loved songs, from "Rave On" to "I Walk the Line."

June 14: Summertime Blues: The West Coast had its own brand of rockabilly, thanks to artists whose families migrated to California from the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. They transplanted their country styles to rural California and helped create a Left Coast outpost of country music. Rose Maddox and her family got into music one afternoon when her brother Fred got fed up with picking cotton, put down his cotton sack and told everyone, "We're going into the music business." They were country artists who were also forerunners to the rockabilly sound and influenced countless musicians, among them, The Collins Kids. This program also tells the story of Eddie Cochran and his anthem of teenage angst, "Summertime Blues." His death in a car crash in England in 1960 signaled the end of the rockabilly era, a raucous music that laid the foundation of rock and roll.

June 7: Rave On: "Rave On" profiles a true American original, Buddy Holly, who crossed musical barriers in forging his unique musical style with country, R & B, pop, gospel and jazz. Like rockabilly itself, his national career was brief, but in the 18 months between his first hit "That'll Be the Day" and his death in a plane crash, he left his mark on popular music. The Beatles named themselves as a tribute to his group, The Crickets. "Rave On" explores Holly's musical roots and meteoric rise with interviews from family members, band mates and fellow musicians. And it tells the stories behind his most famous songs, from "Rave On" to "Peggy Sue."

May 31: Rockin' Bones: "Rockin' Bones" explores some of the lesser-known rockabilly artists, who often had one hit song then disappeared from the scene. It tells the story of "Suzie Q," a national hit for Louisiana singer Dale Hawkins, who was then working as a record store clerk. It also highlights another artist from the Bayou State, Joe Clay, who appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" before Elvis. Clay initially failed to make it big on the national scene and ended up driving a school bus. But in the 1980s, he was rediscovered and found new popularity in Europe, like many rockabilly artists from the Fifties.

May 24: Shake This Shack: Texas is home to a style its creators dubbed "Cat Music," for the "cool cats and kittens" who played it with their hip dress and on-stage demeanor. Texas rockabilly artists mixed Western swing, the blues and jazz, and included Sid King & the Five Strings and Lew Williams. "Shake This Shack" also profiles Roy Orbison, one of the most enigmatic of the rockabilly cats, who came from the tiny, wind-swept oil town of Wink, Texas. He formed a teenage band, The Teen Kings, who played at high school dances and rowdy honky-tonk bars before recording their first hit, "Ooby Dooby." Yet it took several years of experimenting with new sounds before Orbison developed his own operatic-rock style of singing that was a departure from his raw rockabilly, with such hits as "Pretty Woman" and "Only the Lonely."

May 17: Real Wild Child: Jerry Lee Lewis grew up praising the Lord and playing piano in the Pentecostal Church in Ferriday, La. His church is known for its ecstatic services, where worshipers who feel the Holy Ghost "speak in tongues." Much of the emotional abandon in Lewis' songs comes straight from that experience. Yet his fame in the secular music world created all kinds of spiritual conflicts. "Real Wild Child" tells the story of one of Lewis' most celebrated songs, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," which launched his career in 1957. He had the Sun Records rhythm section backing him up, who were also members of one of the wildest rockabilly acts ever, Billy Lee Riley and His Little Green Men.

May 10: The Cradle of the Stars: A radio revolution was launched in Shreveport, La., with the Saturday night broadcasts of "The Louisiana Hayride." That show broke the rules and took programmatic risks by putting on young rockabilly artists, introducing Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins to a large audience. Its colorful emcee, Horace Logan, appeared on stage decked out in a black cowboy outfit complete with a pair of six shooters. Its hook-up on the CBS Radio Network enabled it to reach listeners coast to coast, and its first star was the hillbilly Shakespeare, Hank Williams. Program five in "Whole Lotta Shakin'" tells the story of the rise and fall of that influential radio program, one that made so many artists famous, it was dubbed, "the cradle of the stars."

May 3: Rebels With Guitars: Even as America was tuning into Patti Page and Mitch Miller, rockabilly was a bold, young upstart, like Hollywood star James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause." Program four considers how music reflected the restless youth culture of the 1950s as portrayed in films and literature, and it profiles several rockabilly artists for whom rebellion was key to their personas — The Burnette Brothers, Johnny and Dorsey, who pursued careers in the boxing ring in Memphis before taking up music; guitarist Link Wray, the pioneer of the power chord, who had a leather-clad look of a motorcycle gang that was every parent's nightmare; and Gene Vincent, perhaps the best known of the rockabilly rebels, who had a big hit with "Be-Bop-A-Lula."

April 26: Fujiyama Mamas: In an era when women were singing about the price of doggies in the window or imaging a breakfast at Tiffany's, other women were rocking out just like their male counterparts. "Fujiyama Mamas" showcases the women rockabilly artists who rebelled against the traditional female roles of housewives and mothers during the '50s. World War II brought great changes to American society; women emerged emboldened by their experiences during the war, working in defense plants. This show profiles Cordell Jackson, who toiled as a Rosie the Riveter during the war in an aircraft factory before launching her own record label in 1956. It also features Little Miss Dynamite Brenda Lee; Janis Martin, aka The Female Elvis; and rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson.

April 19: Get Rhythm: This program profiles Johnny Cash and tells the stories behind some of his best loved songs: "Folsom Prison Blues," "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire." Cash had an intense love for gospel, country music and the blues, the foundation of rockabilly. A sharecropper's son, he grew up during the Depression in the Dyess Colony of Arkansas. Cash was part of the massive migration from fields to factories that began before World War I, and he left Dyess for opportunities in the big cities. After stints in an auto factory and the military, he formed Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two in Memphis with bassist Marshall Grant and guitar player Luther Perkins. Together, they created some of the best-loved songs in the American songbook.

April 12: Good Rocking Tonight: The first stop is Memphis in the segregated 1950s, where blues, gospel and country music came together to create the upbeat sounds of rockabilly. The program profiles two of the first rockabilly artists on the Sun Records label, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins. Founded by an Alabama farmer's son, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips opened his tiny brick-front recording company by first releasing blues records from African American singers who migrated north from the Mississippi cotton fields. Phillips then switched to recording primarily rockabilly, which appealed to a growing audience of teenagers with its emotional lyrics, searing guitar solos and a big beat for dancing.

Radio Lab returns for its fourth season with five new programs. This season includes stories about deception, ear worms, and the borders of life. Radio Lab is an experiential investigation that explores themes and ideas through a patchwork of people, sounds, and stories. In each episode, Radio Lab experiments with sound and style allowing science to fuse with culture and information to sound like music. Hosted by Jad Abumrad with co-host Robert Krulwich, Radio Lab is designed for listeners who demand skepticism but appreciate wonder; who are curious about the world, but also want to be moved and surprised.

April 5: (So Called) Life
March 29: Love
March 22: Pop Music
March 15: War of the Worlds
March 8: Deception
March 1: Laughter

During the 1930s and 1940s, many black schools in the U.S. fielded traveling swing bands to keep their doors open during the Depression. Narrator Tonea Stewart profiles three of the era's most famous bands in "Swingtime," an hour-long showcase of the Bama State Collegians, the Prairie View Co-eds and the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. The traveling ensembles influenced mainstream music on a grand scale. Harlem's top jazz orchestras pulled talent from these bands, whose members made enduring contributions to American culture. Stewart artfully weaves the era's music around interviews with surviving band members, scholarly commentary and archival sound from now-deceased band members, including the great Erskine Hawkins.

The years of the Civil Rights Movement are counted among the most volatile yet vibrant times in American history. The people and events that shaped this period range from charismatic preachers and actors to students and domestic workers. To celebrate the courage, conviction and commitment of the everyday people who made extraordinary contributions to American social progress, Tavis Smiley presents "Memories of the Movement." This powerful special features the poignant, humorous, unheard, or little known stories and anecdotes from living civil rights icons like actors Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, preachers like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Amos Brown, Editor Emeritus of "Ebony" magazine Lerone Bennett Jr., folk singer Odetta, Asian activist Yuri Kochiyama and a host of others.

On September 25, 1957, nine black students entered racially segregated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Their goal was to receive the same quality education afforded their white counterparts. Who were the history-making, tradition-breaking Little Rock Nine? Most Americans only knew of the social and political upheaval their efforts caused. They did not know Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Dr. Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed-Wair and Melba Pattillo Beals. Using radio drama and interview, host Donnie L. Betts profiles these extraordinary students and in the process examines why they succeeded where other did not. He talks at length with Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine, considers whether American schools are now re-segregating and features music by jazz great Rene Marie.

"The Last Letter Home" is a poignant retelling in radio drama and interview of the experience during World War II of the 332nd fighter group, also known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Producer and host Donnie L. Betts recreates this powerful tale through the fictionalized writing of a fighter pilot, who in a letter to his mother, describes how he hopes to drop "Mein Kampf" on Hitler's office in Berlin as the U.S. bombs the city. In fact, the Tuskegee Airmen overcame segregation and prejudice to become one of the most highly respected fighter groups of World War II. They proved conclusively that African Americans could fly and maintain sophisticated combat aircraft, a truth doubted by many in the military. The 332nd fighter group never lost a plane it was protecting to air fire, only to assaults from the ground. "The Last Letter Home" also features an interview with retired Lt. Col. John Mosley, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, as well as period music by the award-winning composer Joe Bonner.

In a country as wealthy as the United States, "working poor" should be a contradiction in terms. But tens of millions of Americans fall into that category - affecting a growing population of children. What's it like for people in low-paying fulltime jobs, with no savings, falling behind on their bills, sometimes lining up at food pantries, even shelters? And how does this affect the rest of society? In this documentary, we listen to a former police officer, a hospital worker, a nursing home assistant and others who are barely getting by. And we hear the insights of David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Working Poor”, Dr. Nancy Cauthen, of Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty and others.

In this documentary, Humankind explores the philosophical and historical roots of Dr. Martin Luther Kind’s non-violent movement. Interviews include Dr. Arun Ghandi, grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, who as a troubles teenager was tutored by his grandfather and gained an intimate glimpse into the life and beliefs of this remarkable 20th century figure.

In a country by the people, of the people and for the people, who do so many Americans feel alienated from our democratic process? What does it mean to be an actively engaged citizen and how can we stimulate more critical thinking and a more deliberate approach by the citizenry? Humankind presents interviews with U.S. Representative John Lewis, a 20 year member of congress and former civil rights activist, historian and best selling author Kevin Phillips and voices of citizens recorded at the Lincoln Memorial, the National Constitution Center and other historical points of interest.

Granite State voters have had almost a year to get to know all the candidates and where they stand on the issues. But still, with the New Hampshire primary only days away, many people still don’t know who they’ll choose when they head to the polls on Tuesday. Over the next hour, we’re going to see if we can help. On this special program, we’ll try to put politics aside and focus on the main issues that have dominated the campaigns so far.