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About Pacific Drift
Ben AdairThere were four central beliefs behind Pacific Drift – ideas that encourage and inspire me to this day.
- Between the entertainment industry, the arts scene and the universities, Los Angeles today may be the greatest collection of raw creative talent in the history of the planet.
- LA is also a city of secrets: the most delightful, weird and interesting things in the world are here, but it can be a complete pain in the butt to find them.
- To top things off, there is a disturbing lack of idea-exchange in the media and everyday conversation here; even discovered things are rarely talked about.
- And yet, despite all this, I believe that all our ideas and emotions tie us together in complicated webs of understanding and interrelationship. Even though we can’t see these connections, they are all around us and affix us to people and places we may not even know exist.
For just over a year, Southern California Public Radio allowed Queena Sook Kim, Ayala Ben-Yehuda and me – as well as a few other, key collaborators – to examine these beliefs.
The show we created, Pacific Drift, merged stories and ideas, blended topics and people, drifted from place to place all over Southern California in an attempt to capture the vibrancy, excitement, diversity and creativity that’s a huge part of living here. We showed how computer scientists have a lot in common with woodworkers; how film directors confront similar problems to those fighting for and against gangs; how art communicates with real life to answer some of the most pressing questions of our day.
Below are four stories. Each illustrates a specific aspect of the work we did. Though we only made 27 episodes in all, Queena, Ayala and I all worked very hard, are extremely proud of what we accomplished, and feel very lucky to have been able to do it.
I’m currently retooling five complete episodes to distribute through PRX. Until then, the complete series can be heard by going to the Pacific Drift webpage and clicking on the “Archives” link at the top of the page.
Ayala Ben-Yehuda
“King Drew Dental Clinic”
by Ayala Ben-Yehuda
If healthcare has become a luxury in the US, dental care is an extravagance. More than the color of your collar, teeth have become our nation’s clearest indicator of where someone’s from and where, exactly, they are going.
In an example of the type of story that’s less and less common on local radio – the news feature – Ayala Ben-Yehuda spent a morning at the emergency dental clinic at King Drew Hospital in South LA to illustrate the human drama and social tragedy of bad, painful teeth.
“Sam Stern Rough Sex”
by Ben Adair
Pornography rates right up there with Hollywood as one of Southern California’s biggest and most influential industries, yet stories about it are often completely off the mark. Coverage of “the industry,” talks hyperbolically about money and morality; coverage of “the workers” portrays them either as sexual superbeings or the Helpless Victims of Bad Men.
By focusing our stories on actual participants rather than the academics, policy-makers and opinion-mongers you usually hear on the radio, we found that reality is far more complicated and interesting, and tells us much more about the conflicted motivations that rule all of our lives.
Note: This piece deal with mature themes, so be warned.
“Botanica Sacrifice”
Queena Sook Kimby Queena Sook Kim
Charles Guelperin, aka Baba Funkee, is a santero, or faith healer, at a local Hollywood botanica. Botanicas are something that you see all over Southern California – little shops that sell religious trinkets, statues, candles and herbal remedies – but that few outside their target market ever enter.
We made it a mission on the show to explore the entirety of our community. We were often amazed by how friendly people were and how excited they got from our interest. We always put directions to the places we’d go on the website and encourage listeners visit themselves.
“The Uses of Fear”
by Ben Adair
More and more, abstract and ever-present fear defines us as a society. This montage made up of a mafia executioner, a horror film director and a hypochondriac explores a few different uses of fear and how we are all held captive by both others and ourselves. The story illustrates a style we were organically developing where linear narrative was discarded (and sometimes very purposefully undercut) in favor of a linear progression of ideas and emotions.
About the producers
Ben Adair is the managing editor of Weekend America. He was the creator and host of Southern California Public Radio’s Pacific Drift. He’s been a journalist and radio producer based in Los Angeles, Calif. for 16 years. More about Ben Adair on his PRX profile page.
Queena Sook Kim is a producer-reporter for 89.3FM-KPCC. She was born and raised in Southern California and has reported for the Wall Street Journal. Her work has appeared on Day to Day, Studio 360, as well as, the Los Angeles Times, Modesto Bee and LA Weekly.
Ayala Ben-Yehuda got her start in public radio as a freelance reporter for WFUV in New York City. After production stints at Marketplace, Weekend America and NPR, Ayala joined Pacific Drift in its second season. She now covers the Latin music industry for Billboard Magazine.
For about a year, Ben Adair and co-producers Queena Sook Kim and Ayala Ben-Yehuda created a show in LA called Pacific Drift.
Southern California Public Radio took a chance investing in a local project so adventurous and highly-produced.
The series has ended its run, but we at Transom think this work deserves a national hearing and an extended life for audiences beyond LA. The producers have put some of the pieces up on PRX and will be adding more.
We invite you here at Transom to hear a few selected stories and talk about the ways creative local radio can thrive.
ben, queena, and ayala,
i really like what i’m hearing so far. i’m through 3 of the 4 posted pieces.
so, i’m curious about some things…
why is pac. drift no more?
how difficult was it to produce interesting content each week?
do you consider 3 producers to be too little for an hour-long weekly show?
how was the listener response?
what kind of costs were involved aside from paying the producers?
does SCPR have any other programming that comes close to addressing your four central beliefs?
Hi everybody, thanks for stopping by. I’ll try to answer all the questions that come through here.
First though, I want to encourage people who like these stories to check out a few more on the show’s PRX page:
http://www.prx.org/series/16443/pieces
And to go listen to complete shows at the KPCC / SCPR page:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/
We ran a lot of repeats, so it can be a little frustrating to find all the original shows. There were 26 in all, if anyone’s counting.
Making Pacific Drift was a really wonderful experience, so I’m really grateful that Transom has given some of the material a wider audience. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Thanks,
Ben
Hi Zak,
Thanks for your posting. I’ll try to answer all your questions.
why is pac. drift no more?
After just over a year of production, KPCC decided the show didn’t appeal to the audience they want to cultivate.
how difficult was it to produce interesting content each week?
We were never able to get up to a once-a-week schedule with the show. The stories we were doing were all pretty high-concept and well produced, plus we crammed so many into each show that the work load, even at our most productive, had us putting out a show every other week.
Each show began with an idea or a theme and then, over the course of the hour, migrated to touch on other ideas or other themes. They always seemed like natural progressions to me: turns a conversation might take over an hour or topics closely related to each other.
For example, one show started with a conversation about an art show at LA’s MOCA called "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States" and then had stories a story about psychedelic drugs as medicine (which you can find on the transom page), then talked with the head of the gnostic church in LA about substances that religious people use to obtain spiritual ecstasy, then a story about a rabbi who surfs for religious awakening, then about a group on the Westside involved in ecstatic dance, then an interview with a photographer with a book of Southern California churches, temples and mosques, then a story about Mikvahs, or Jewish sacred baths, then, finally our first story about Botanica El Congo Manuel. (You can hear our second story with Baba Funkee here, called Botanica Sacrifice.) There were also a couple to three full songs played each hour, which would be sort-of on theme. In this particular show, we heard "Up from Skies" by Jimi Hendrix.
do you consider 3 producers to be too little for an hour-long weekly show?
Well, it depends on your ambition, I suppose. We were fairly ambitious and could have used more help, sure. But other shows, like talk shows, get by doing daily hours with just three producers. When I ran Savvy Traveler, we had, I think, four producers, a host and an engineer (and a pretty big acquisitions budget!). Marketplace Money gets by with just a few producers, I think.
how was the listener response?
Decidedly mixed. We were on at a weird time — Sunday evenings at 9 pm for the first season, then Sundays at 8 pm for the second (we were cancelled about midway through the second season) — and so the email we got was uniformly positive and very excited, and also surprised because most people found the show by accident, having no idea that KPCC produced it.
After a year of Arbitron books, however, we had only negligible effects on KPCC’s Sunday night ratings, so it became tough to justify the expense of a full show.
what kind of costs were involved aside from paying the producers?
Most of the costs were staff. I made a very few acquisitions. There were some start-up equipment costs.
does SCPR have any other programming that comes close to addressing your four central beliefs?
KPCC / SCPR’s main focus remains news and public affairs / public policy programming. Queena remains at the station as a reporter and producer for a Saturday afternoon show called "Off Ramp," which has tried to build on some of the ideas I laid out with "Pacific Drift."
Ben, Queena, and Ayala I’m so pleased to see you here on Transom. I’ve been wending my way through your pieces on PRX with just Small Town Circus left to listen to.
I’ve got a bunch of questions about process.
How much tape do you gather to get down to say five minutes in Queena’s Botanica Sacrifice piece or almost nine in Ben’s Rough Sex With Sam Stern? Once you’ve done the reporting how much time are you putting into producing each piece?
How did you decide on the non-narrative narrative in the Uses of Fear? How many different versions did you try before you found the right flow and interplay between the voices/stories?
Lastly, Ben, you narrate in this great non-narratey, natural style. Are we hearing the first take or the fifteenth or pieces from multiple takes? This really is the last question, your writing, like your voice, seems totally natural- informative but unobtrusive. Can you talk about your writing process?
I’m looking forward to hearing your full shows on your website. What are you working on these days?
Hi Lisa,
How much tape do you gather to get down to say five minutes in Queena’s Botanica Sacrifice piece or almost nine in Ben’s Rough Sex With Sam Stern? Once you’ve done the reporting how much time are you putting into producing each piece?
Because we were ostensibly a weekly show, our production process was, by necessity, pretty efficient. Lots of our pieces were simple field interviews cut from an hour or two (frequently less) down to several minutes. Because of this, our creative process was all-encompassing — not just in the production. When we came up with an idea or a question that we wanted to explore, we would ask ourselves, "Who is the best person or people to answer this question? To explore this subject with?" We would also set the interviews in creative places and have things to do while talking. One example I can think of is when Queena interviewed a filmmaker who made a documentary about the rise of surveillance culture. She interviewed the woman while looking for new LAPD surveillance cameras downtown.
How did you decide on the non-narrative narrative in the Uses of Fear? How many different versions did you try before you found the right flow and interplay between the voices/stories?
We didn’t have a lot of time to sit back and think about our segments — plan this or that turn, this or that revelation — so we did most of our structuring and cutting intuitively. I’m a big believer in theory following practice (there’s an interview I did with the painter Ed Moses somewhere on the site that talks about this) and so I believe if it sounds and feels right, it probably is. But I’m also the guy who’s show was canceled for bad ratings, so …
For the fear montage, I knew I wanted to do something about fear in our society, its creation and management. So I started to think about how to get at that in interesting ways. Who are some people who create fear? Who are people living with fear? I didn’t want it to be abstract, like, "I fear the terrorists" or "I fear the government." It just so happened that we found the hitman and the hypochondriac. The horror film director seemed an obvious complement. I was very surprised when he answered his questions the way he did. He and Julian Hoeber echoed each other quite nicely.
Lastly, Ben, you narrate in this great non-narratey, natural style. Are we hearing the first take or the fifteenth or pieces from multiple takes? This really is the last question, your writing, like your voice, seems totally natural- informative but unobtrusive. Can you talk about your writing process?
Thanks, Lisa. Queena and I worked really had on that and I think if you listen to the shows, you’ll hear a real change in my narrator style over the year-long run. I think writing for radio is very difficult and it takes a long time to find your own natural voice. I’ve been working on my own writing for a very long time too.
On Pacific Drift, I really wanted as little narration as possible — the original idea was to have NO studio narration at all. But I found I needed some, so I started writing little intros to the shows and interstitials. But the point was to always get through it as quickly as possible and get back to the tape. That to me is always the best possible way — say as little as possible, the bare minimum and get to the tape. The tape is your story.
Thank you for so thoroughly answering my questions but you didn’t answer the last one- What are you doing now?
Hi Lisa,
I’ve just started working with Peter Clowney et. al. at Weekend America. I’m the managing editor.
OK, so I LOVE this piece. Completely appeals to the things I’m most interested in currently as a producer–the juxtaposition of things and letting the listener have stories and ideas wash over them with plenty of room for their own associations and conclusions. Oh yeah.
But I’m curious to hear a little bit more about how/why you each decided on these particular pieces for Transom. I was excited to read about your concept for Pacific Drift (although sad that it’s after the fact and the show’s gone) but, listening to the first 3 pieces in a row on a Sunday evening–I gotta say: quite an anxiety provoking little trio! The skin sloughing off a young girls face, degrading women, sacrificing a chicken… I was really relieved to get to the joyous flow of the Uses of Fear. Even though it’s about fear and, you know, murder… it’s got such a different quality and I so loved the blend of its stories, the music–everything.
Although I understand that you’re showing the different types/styles of pieces that the three of you worked with, I found myself wishing that the Transom show page had a chunk of a single show as it’s the "drift" if you will, that most interests me. And the question of whether there’s any future hope for this kind of a blended show anywhere on the radio horizon.
I’ll have to listen to some entire shows and come back!
I also wanted to say that as much as I found it disturbing, I admired what I found to be the most disconcerting thing about the Sam Stern Story–this very articulate and appealing voiced guy so easily talking about behaving in such a horrifying way. Very powerful and provocative.
Wow! I’ll echo Sue’s thoughts on anxiety. I was having visceral reactions to several of the pieces. Powerful work. The pieces felt like we were getting up very close to the subjects, in moments of pain or fear or shame.
The arc of the porn piece was interesting– the subject had a rich voice, and the first few minutes felt relatively innocuous– making the later revelations more startling. Ben, I’m wondering if or how gender dynamics played into that interview. Do you think he would have been as honest (or said what he said) if you were a woman? How parallel or divergent were your thoughts and what you said? Were there any moments where you weren’t sure what to say next? Did you ever have doubts about the authenticity of what he was saying, even when it sounded sincere?
I liked how all the stories took a particular touchstone (dentistry, porn, etc.) as a lens through which to see the world.
The above discussion about narrative voice intrigues me. Can you talk specifically about how your narrative presence changed over the run of the show? In finding your voice, are there differences between your radio voice and your "real" voice? Or do they converge?
Since you talk about how L.A. is the narrative ocean in which these stories swim– do you think your production aesthetic would work effectively in other geographic regions?
And since you mentioned that finding some of the really great stories can be a "pain in the butt"– do you have any tales of fortuitous or particularly hard-won story ideas?
Thank you for sharing your work and your thoughts!
Hi Sue,
Thanks for writing in — sorry for the delay in getting back to you. My day job is sucking up a lot of my energy right now.
I chose these four pieces for Transom because I felt they have some of the best tape we collected for the show. One of my philosophies in radio is to always lead with your best tape. Whether it’s a 1:15 newscast piece or a hour-long documentary, I want to get you right in the moment with the people we’re talking to. Same here.
I actually thought the tape with Mundo is the scariest because of the way he so matter-of-factly talks about killing someone. That’s fear that sticks with you!
I can recommend a few Pacific Drifts in the KPCC archive, as it looks like I won’t be putting them on PRX any time soon (got turned down for the needed funding to reversion them).
The Dreams show:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/11/20051106.html
The Fear show:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/11/20051113.html
The Ecstatic Experience show:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/11/20051120.html
The Narcissism show:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2006/02/20060212.html
The Pain show:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2006/03/20060312.html
There are also some really fun and nice segments all around. I have to say, we didn’t always hit the mark, but I think the show had a lot of highlights.
Check Sexual Healing here:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/05/20050515.html
Actually, all the stories in that show starting at Sexual Healing are really remarkable.
Also, probably the goofiest story you’ll ever hear on public radio is here:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/05/20050515.html
Click on "Squirrel Radio Action."
Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for your reactions to the pieces.
Ben, I’m wondering if or how gender dynamics played into that interview. Do you think he would have been as honest (or said what he said) if you were a woman? How parallel or divergent were your thoughts and what you said? Were there any moments where you weren’t sure what to say next? Did you ever have doubts about the authenticity of what he was saying, even when it sounded sincere?
Sam Stern is one of the most remarkable guys I’ve had the fortune to meet. I first met him through his online diary (this was in the days before "blogs") jewishcheerleaders.com where he chronicled his adventures in the adult industries with huge doses of intelligence, compassion, confusion and humanity. I had known Sam for a while before we did this interview — in fact, he worked for me collecting tape: recorded that interview with Julian Hoeber that you heard in the Uses of Fear piece — and I think that made more of the difference in his being forthcoming (more so than gender, for example).
Last I heard from Sam, he had moved back East. I’m not sure what he’s up to now, but I hope to run into him again.
The above discussion about narrative voice intrigues me. Can you talk specifically about how your narrative presence changed over the run of the show? In finding your voice, are there differences between your radio voice and your "real" voice? Or do they converge?
I think I got more comfortable in my host role. And also Queena got better at coaching me. Most of my improvement in this regard is due to her excellent direction. I think you can hear a big difference in my voicing if you listen to the first show here (about different communities in LA):
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/01/20050130.html
and in, say, the Dreams show cited above.
That said, my sister says the only time she’s ever heard my "actual voice" on the radio is in the Deep End Dining story that Eddie Lin and I recorded at the end of the Fear show (also listed above).
Since you talk about how L.A. is the narrative ocean in which these stories swim– do you think your production aesthetic would work effectively in other geographic regions?
I don’t see why not. I’m still a big fan of this type of radio and it makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. However, I’m not sure it will ever live on public radio in any kind of ambitious or creative way. Audiences these days seem to want their radio very cut and dry — that report that the PRPD did about local news speaks to this point. I think this will always be a very niche way of producing, for better and worse.
The only two shows I can think of that approach what I was trying to get at are the old Joe Frank shows (he played with narrative in very elegant ways, especially in his last few seasons on KCRW) and sometimes Radio Lab (although it’s still unclear to me where that show will end up, production-wise, and whether it will ever reach more than a very limited (and hence, niche) distribution).
And since you mentioned that finding some of the really great stories can be a "pain in the butt"– do you have any tales of fortuitous or particularly hard-won story ideas?
Yes.
The Sam Maloof / Danny Hillis interview that Queena and I did will go down in my book as one of the most amazing afternoons I’ve ever had. You can hear it here (start listening with Brian Eno):
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/06/20050612.html
The Singing Cells piece in the second show was pretty amazing:
http://www.scpr.org/programs/pacificdrift/listings/2005/02/20050206.html
I love Queena’s two interviews with Baba Funkee. And two pieces we ran in the love show (click on Sexual Healing above) — interviews with Pamela Dewalt and Elinor Casteneda, recorded by Polly Striker — are pretty darn amazing.
HI, I’m an old friend of Sam’s from Italy. I knew him when he was self-publishing a comic book called masturbating into a sock. I’m trying to get in touch with him. Could you pass my email along for me? thank you, Paul Beel. Gecko.2@tin.it