The Next Big Thing Archive

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April 2005

Everybody Is Looking for a Better Place

Friday, April 29, 2005

A fresh look at Hans Christian Andersen’s story the Ugly Duckling. Online romance that has nothing to do with the internet. A visit from activist lexicographer Erin McKean, who sets her sights on Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. And new songs from musical guest Nina Nastasia.

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Observe Your Breath

Friday, April 22, 2005

Dean takes a yoga class with New Yorker cartoonist David Sipress, whose mind is rarely quiet. We mark the arrival of spring weather with a visit to Queens, where the frogs and woodcocks are out in full force. Performers rehearse for the opening of an original chamber opera by Susie Ibarra and Yusef Komunyakaa. And we follow women in an Australian town who become increasingly frustrated with the local police for refusing to aggressively pursue a rapist.

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"Ten After Eleven"

Friday, April 15, 2005

We use the full hour to premiere "Ten After Eleven," a radio play written for The Next Big Thing by Theresa Rebeck, in collaboration with the Naked Angels Theater Company, starring Marlo Thomas, Lili Taylor, Dan Lauria and Fisher Stevens. The play was inspired by the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese – a crime said to have been heard by many, but acted upon by virtually none, in a Queens neighborhood.

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There You Are: a Normal person. And Then One Day...

Friday, April 08, 2005

Nearly twenty years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, we bring you stories from survivors, collected by Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich. Also this week, record-digging with Ken Shipley and Rob Sevier, expert scavengers of the Numero Group label. And conversation with former New Yorker colleagues Jamaica Kincaid and Ian Frazier, who have remained fast friends for three decades.

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Something to Believe In

Friday, April 01, 2005

Baseball fans explain their allegiances. Maira Kalman sketches her way through the streets of Manhattan. Audio artist and filmmaker Miranda July tells both sides of three stories. And Orson Welles stumbles over "a can of peas." Also in the show, tales of a phone-sex operator, by fiction writer David Cale.