On Demand
The Next Big Thing Archive
April 2003
You’re the Fool
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
The Next Big Thing is radio drama. We're giving over the whole hour to "You're the Fool," written by Roy Nathanson for our show. It's more than a play with music. In a way, it's an extended musical composition … with a plot.
In Their Heads
Friday, April 25, 2003
Many acts of imagination. A pro-choice anthropologist tries to get into the heads of her right-to-life subjects. A novelist offers a close-up view of Glenn Gould’s strange behavior. And performer Tracie Morris reinterprets familiar songs with her own “Afrofuturistic” twist. Also, sound art from the floor of the Mercantile Exchange, and tales from trespassers on the grounds of an abandoned institution.
Where the Trail Leads
Friday, April 18, 2003
We hear stories of people following leads… out of war – in Bosnia and Iraq, into the Appalachian Mountains, or towards a reconstruction of what ancient Greek music might have sounded like. Also, the latest episode of “You’re on the Air with Jonathan Katz,” and a consideration of the politics of weddings – and wedding cakes.
Off-Shore and on Distant Shores
Friday, April 11, 2003
Thoughts about war from afar from one thoughtful TV viewer and an ex-patriate Iraqi family who witnessed the first Gulf War. Also, ministering to the forgotten – on board cargo vessels and among the dwindling number of Italians still living in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood. And writer Jesse Green on learning how to make matzo ball soup (or, maybe how not to).
If Memory Serves
Friday, April 04, 2003
Remember when...in 1977, NASA put a gold-plated record of earth’s sounds, voices and music on board Voyager 1? Or when New York City’s Meatpacking District really was a meatpacking district? Or when Marines went to Iraq to take on Saddam Hussein – in 1991? A look into the not-so-distant past from the vantage point of the not-so-comforting present. Also, Jeffrey Eugenides reading from his short story on thwarted fatherhood.
