Transom Shows

New Show: Polk Street Stories - A Transom Radio Special Corey Longseeker At Transom we try to find stories that aren’t being told and voices not often heard, like the ones in “Polk Street Stories.” Joey Plaster is an oral historian focusing on queer history in the Bay area. He spent over a year in 2008 and 2009, gathering the stories of the Polk Street neighborhood—on the street and alleyways, in the bars and churches, in apartments and shelters, in the missions and the clubs. Joey says his motivation was, in part, to reclaim a part of queer history: “The Polk Street Community predates the modern gay rights movement and remains a visible manifestation of the stereotypes the movement has worked to scrub clean over the past 40 years, that is: queer people as mentally ill, criminal, licentious, doomed to lonely lives. Instead of repudiating this history, I want to embrace and learn from it.” As a public historian, Joey set out to explore this neighborhood from the inside, and in this hour, you can hear a part of what he found. Read more »
Other Recent Shows
	Finding Miles “Finding Miles” took over a year to record and produce. In the crush of daily journalism on the radio, it’s rare to hear a story unwind over time. Sarah Reynolds writes, “I first knew Miles as Megan back in college. When he decided to transition from female to male, he gave me a call. He was slowly coming out to his friends as transgender — testing them, really — to see who he could still count on. The radio producer in me kicked in and I thought, this is quite a story about to unravel. I pitched him the idea and he agreed to do it: we would document his transition for radio.” This brave and intimate diary illuminates gender transition in an immediate way—from the mundane practical considerations to the fundamental identity transformation. Take some time to follow this path with Megan toward Miles. And talk to Sarah about her producing challenges, like editing a voice which steadily deepens over time from testosterone treatment.

	Working With Studs - A Transom Radio Special In the coming months on PRX, Transom will be distributing four new hour-long radio specials. The first is a tribute to our patron saint, Studs Terkel, on the eve of what would have been his 98th birthday. For many years, Transom editor Sydney Lewis worked side by side with Studs on his radio show and his books. For this hour, produced in a seamless blend of documentary and reminiscence, Syd brought together a crew of Studs’ co-workers who, in turn, brought great stories, along with wonderful previously-unheard tape of Studs himself. Sydney is an oral historian, and like Studs, not a skilled technician, but she overcame her fear of digital recorders and ProTools in order to craft this lovely eulogy to American’s greatest listener.

	Matthew I don’t want to say too much about Matthew Blanchard’s story, because its strength is in the unraveling. Here’s what producer Helena Keeffe says about its genesis. “I first met Matthew in the spring of 2008 when I was a visiting artist teaching printmaking workshops at Laguna Honda Hospital (LHH) in San Francisco. Many of the residents are elderly and suffering from some form of dementia. Matthew stood out both because of his youth and clarity of mind. He wore a face-mask, got around in in a wheelchair and was obviously in recovery from some kind of procedure. He pulled me aside as people were leaving on the final day and asked me if I’d be interested in making some kind of art project based on the healing process he was going through. At this point he revealed what was behind the mask…” Helena worked with Matthew to tell his own story in drawings and sound. From a production standpoint, the story couldn’t be simpler. But it will stick with you.

	Kidnap Radio Annie told me her story over dinner. Her father was kidnapped in Colombia by the FARC guerillas. He was held in the jungle for months. He was rescued in a military raid. It was an amazing story, made more so by the fact that it was so common. Except perhaps for the Rescue part. Thousands of people are still missing down there, and there’s a radio station that broadcasts to them—messages from their loved ones. Shows like “Voices of Kidnapping” have been doing this for years and years. I asked if Annie would want to go back and tell the story of her father, and also of those who are still missing and those who love them. This is Annie’s first piece for radio and it’s a good one.

	Cat Lady Transom sometimes provides a home for things that don’t fit anywhere else, things we’d like to hear out of the blue on public radio, but probably never will. Cat Lady is one of those. It’s a portrait, a reading, a vocal impression, a story, a performance, etc. Artist Joseph Keckler says, “I had struggled for a year, trying to write a piece about my mother, about myself, about what I observed to be an awkward, even incompatible relationship between the roles of artist and mother, about a child’s inheritance of his parents’ pain and desire. I had a long and unfocused essay, which I put aside.” Instead, he made Cat Lady.

	Mortified's "I Hate Drake" This week we’re featuring the co-winner of our Self Portrait competition. It comes from the comedy collective “Mortified” who encourage people to read out loud the most embarrassing things they wrote as children. “I Hate Drake” is an hysterical and heartfelt entry from Will Nolan’s childhood diary about an archetypal bullying episode. Like most of the multi-media pieces on Transom, it’s story-driven and works fine without the images, but the animation deepens the story and makes it even funnier. Producer David Nadelberg says, “I had a specific visual aesthetic in mind for what a Mortified animation should look like. It should have the raggedy, moody, frenetic energy of a teen notebook. Innocent at the core but frayed on the surface. We called this aesthetic: punk meets Punky Brewster.” If you’re feeling a little battered by life today, take a few minutes to let “I Hate Drake” make you feel better. As ever, the producers will be at Transom to take your questions.

	My Most Important Self Portrait Last year, Transom and the FLIK International Film festival put out a call for multi-media self portraits. We have our two winners. Soon, we’ll be featuring “I Hate Drake” from Mortified, but right now Transom is hosting James Barany’s poignant and powerful piece about his own obesity called, “My Most Important Self Portrait.” The animated images of James’s body and the sounds of his voice work together in a dark and elegant duet. We urge you to come take a look and listen. James is available to talk about his process.

	Jennie's Secret For Memorial Day, Transom is featuring an unusual veteran's story. "Jennie's Secret" is about a woman who posed as a man during the Civil War and went on to live most of her life as a man in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois. Over the years the town has been ambivalent about their most famous citizen and is struggling to figure out how to honor the memory of Jennie Hodgers/Albert Cashier. Producer Linda Paul became "obsessed" with this story and tracked down all sorts of interesting people to talk to. It's the kind of piece that was once easy to place in a public radio magazine show, but it's eighteen minutes long and it's not news. That makes it an orphan these days. It's worth pondering what we should do with stories like this--when an obsessed producer and a fascinating story converge, and the story isn't news and doesn't fit the mold.

	Prostate Diaries If this piece were about blood or bones or lungs, it would have aired on NPR. But because it is about the prostate, and includes a talking penis, it presented problems for broadcast. There’s no equal time for body parts. Barrett Golding of HearingVoices asked us if we at Transom would be interested. Yes. Cancer is cancer and it makes sense to talk about it openly and personally, wherever in the body it occurs. The piece also presents complex challenges of interest to radio producers. It is based on a stage presentation written by the patient himself, Jeff Metcalf, and performed by Paul Kiernan. It was recorded and produced for radio by the estimable Scott Carrier and Larry Massett. They are present on Transom to talk about this work, its style and content.

Polk Street Stories - A Transom Radio Special