Julia Slavin
“Manhattan” by Rodgers and Hart

The house Julia Slavin grew up in a house filled with brothers, pets and a little bit of chaos. Often, her father’s piano playing was a part of the chaos. One song he played, “Manhattan” by Rodgers and Hart, serves as a backdrop to Julia’s childhood memory that brought together her brother’s hamsters and the family cat.

Jeffrey Carpenter
“Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver

Jeffrey Carpenter spent summers at a Christian camp in Colorado where his father was a youth minister. It was the seventies, it was Colorado and it was camp, so John Denver was big around the nightly campfire. “Rocky Mountain High” became Jeffery’s favorite song and album. That is, until one night when the camp’s counselors revealed John Denver’s “real” identity.

The sound of the rock and roll underground recently is defined by two genres: a psychedelic folk revival and electroclash. Why this, and why now? Ian Svenonius explains.

Why we take the drugs we take can seem sort of black and white: Illegal drugs are bad, legal ones are good. But not all illegal drugs are bad. And the way we get the legal ones isn’t always good. We spoke to “John” on the southside of Chicago. He sells the drugs people need for their health.

Thanks to Dr. Greg Scott of Depaul for his research and interviewing help. To see a trailer for his film about Chicagoland injection drug users, go here.

Chicago Hustles
Original Airdate: April 28, 2005 WBEZ Chicago Public Radio
WBEZ Re:Sound, WBEZ 8-48, Marketplace

A cigarette hustler takes us through Chicago’s underground, where
people use their own cars as cabs, drug dealers create mini-economies,
and pharmaceuticals are sold door to door.
Awards: 2006 RTNDA Regional Murrow Award Recipient: News Documentary

Related links: Third Coast International Audio Festival “Behind the Scenes”

Marketplace: “Door-to-Door drug delivery”

Special thanks to Dr. Greg Scott of Depaul for his research and interviewing help. You can see a clip from his upcoming documentary film about Chicago injection drug users here.

Basket Bridge
Original Airdate: September 18, 2004
Aired: NPR’s Studio 360, Museum, Tribe, Lonewolf

Tucson, Arizona is celebrating one local tribe’s artwork with a new
overpass over a 6-lane highway. The bridge is designed with
traditional patterns of coyote tracks and lizards used by Tohono
O’Odam basketweavers. But, the designer of Tucson’s new bridge isn’t a
basket weaver, or Tohono O’Odam. Rosemary Lonewolf is a Tewa Indian
potter from New Mexico and she took on the Tucson project because she
was sick of seeing tacky appropriations of Indian symbols. Ann
Hepperman and Kara Oehler of KNAU produced our story.

Wesley Stace
“Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” by the Alan Price Set and covered by Randy Newman

Wesley Stace remembers one of his favorite songs as a child, “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear.” It was the first album he ever owned, bought for him by his mother. It brings back memories of his favorite radio show “Junior Choice” and how he used to abuse the family’s record player.

And I Walked…Stories from the Border
Original Airdate: 2003 Third Coast International Audio Festival
Aired: PRI’s Here and Now, Hearing Voices “Crossing Borders” Special, WBEZ Re:Sound, WNYC Radio Lab, 2005 True/False Film Festival, Features Festival in Lucerne Switzerland

Awards: 2007 George Foster Peabody Award as part of “Crossing Borders,” 2004 RTNDA Regional Murrow Award recipient: Use of Sound, 2003 Arizona Associated Press Broadcasters: First Place, Use of Sound, 2005 NFCB Golden Reel–National News and Public Affairs Pieces

Much of the Sonoran desert between Tucson and Mexico is a haunting
wasteland of discarded shoes, shirts and empty plastic water jugs.
People leave one place for another in search of a dream. Some lose.
They die from dehydration. “And I walked…” is a soundscape of how
the thirst for the American dream translates into a literal thirst for
the scores of illegal immigrants who risk their lives as they cross
the desert from Mexico into the United States in search of
better-paying jobs.

Out of the Chatroom and Into the Bedroom: Sex and the Internet
Aired: June 4, 2003 WBEZ Chicago Public Radio Special Series: Speaking of Sex
Also Aired: WNYC Radio Lab, WBEZ 8-48

Sex web sites are everywhere. Out of the Bedroom and into the Chatroom
is a window into five different experiences of online sex. They are
the stories of: Internet daters looking for love in the digital age; a
Chicago art student who tried to have Internet sex with 500 men in a
month; a sex researcher struggling to find out what the Internet means
for sex and society; an undercover cop surfing the web for sex
criminals; and a Chicago Internet entrepreneur selling a very personal
sex toy out of his basement.