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 (L-R) Mary McGrath, author Zadie Smith, & Christopher Lydon |
About the Whole Wide World
The Whole Wide World decodes the riddles of the new race,
the new map, the post-Cold War 21st Century system
known as “globalization,” through the voices of
artists, economists, refugees, and historians and
plain folk.
Hosted by Christopher Lydon, the seven-part series
encompasses trends that could kill us–viruses,
habitat collapse, starvation, terrorism and war–and
also the technologies, cultural connections that could
rescue us. Each program features voices both famous
and obscure, such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, psychologist Steven
Pinker, novelist Zadie Smith, and prophetic political scientist
Samuel P. Huntington.
A collaboration of Lydon and producer Mary McGrath
(both formerly of The Connection)
and the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for
Internet and Society, The Whole
Wide World weaves literary voices and an extraordinary
range of musical
texture into every hour and engages listeners in
critical topics of
discussion.
Host: Christopher Lydon
Executive Producer: Mary Mcgrath
Producers: Benjamen Walker, Katherine Bidwell
Production Assistance: Kezia Parsens
Engineer: Tom Tiger
Director of Business Development: Keith Kiya Wilson
Website: Justin Grotelueschen
Graphics: Elena Gorodenskaya
Strategic Defense: Jake Shapiro
Radio Visionary: Jay Allison
Partners: The Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at Harvard Law School, Public Radio International, & Open Studio Project.
 Producer Mary McGrath & Host Christopher Lydon |
Christopher Lydon has been a distinctive voice in
print, television and radio journalism for more than
30 years. In the Seventies he covered the McGovern,
Humphrey, Reagan and Carter presidential campaigns for
The New York Times Washington Bureau. In the Eighties
he anchored public television news on WGBH, Boston. In
the Nineties he founded “The Connection,” on WBUR
Boston and 75 public stations around the country. In
Jamaica, West Africa and Southeast Asia in the past
year, he has been developing a new local-global
conversation, Wide World, for broadcast and Internet
transmission on his website, christopherlydon.org.
Mary McGrath has worked in radio and television for
almost 20 years. She co-founded “The Connection” on
WBUR in Boston with host Christopher Lydon. She
coordinated international news coverage for the
Christian Science Monitor’s start-up international
news program “World Monitor” during the revolutions in
the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. From 1984
to 1990 she worked as a producer at the MacNeil/Lehrer
NewsHour in New York City.
Additional support for this work provided by
with funding from
Transom is interested not only in new talent making new work, but also in established talent trying new things. In that regard, Chris Lydon and Mary McGrath are no strangers to our pages. Through this link you can follow their trail of virtual crumbs to this point.
We’re glad to see them here again, this time with the beginning of a new series of seven hour-long specials that will be distributed by PRI.
Transom and the Open Studio Project have collaborated on launching this project, offering help in whatever ways we could. Our motivation? We like hearing Chris Lydon on the air.
We’re proud and happy to be featuring this first hour of the series in its whole wide world premiere.
I want to mention that we excepted this program, pulling out the "Amber" interview at the end, for our broadcast special, "State of Union" which can be heard at the HearingVoices site if you’re in the mood to listen to yet another documentary hour streaming over your computer speakers.
what would it take to hear this on the radio in the south?
still seems to be a media blackout down here in new orleans and elsewhere… where will this and the "state of the union" piece be playing on the radio in the u.s.?
what an astonishing undertaking.
I have Jamaica, Ghana and Singapore in my house. The shrunken world of globalization in this case is a pleasure. I live in a protected environment where all is "well" – the thoughts and provocations of Whole WIde world are like diving into a tropical sea. Bracing, disturbing, fertile territory.
So the premise and promise of the objective works. But I think something is missing. It is nothing that any Lydon fan hasn’t said or noted before. In this sort of format, Lydon feels as though he has been domesticated or caged. He isn’t butting in, isn’t asking questions that I relied on him to ask in other conversations. Even when it is as subtle a comment as, "are you sneering?" I feel like I am participating, almost actively.
What do you think Chris? are you feeling straightjacketed in this format? I am wondering why even within these straightforward interviews we don’t hear from you, from within. Your speakers would be more animated as well. I am curious about what you were thinking during the editing process, what you felt about the energy – yours and your speakers.
Are YOU less engaged in an interview when there is no live audience or pending Amber on the line?
Did you CHOOSE to be silently polite? to limit yourself to the expansive intelligent intro and segue?
I think trying to listen to an hour via the internet is somewhat prohibitive (this would be another real difference between radio vs web). For those of you so daunted – listen for at least the first 10 or 15 minutes to get a taste of this smorgasbord. maybe we can break it up into segments for easier downloading/listening here.
Would you mind expanding a little on how you put this series together? Did the theme of globalization emerge from this diverse group of interviewees, or did you start with it? did you REALLY just bump into zadie smith in a harvard book shop? and did serendipity play any other roles in this work? Did you find yourselves more optimistic for our collective global future, or less as a result of these interviews?
Thankyou.
Mary, I was thinking about the questions I asked of Chris -I would be curious to hear comment from you as his producer. Working in the 2 different formats. What do you think about his energy, the interviewees and your own vs live call in. Did you think it was better to have talkers expounding without Chris jumping in?
I’ve been enjoying the experiment. As a producer it’s only helping me learn more. I can catch with my eyes closed, but I’d like to be able to cover first base too. I think Chris would say he greatly prefers the other format where he can jump in and ask more questions. He likes the convesational mode that unfolds in its own time and space. I take your point that you want to hear more of him inside the interviews. It’s something we’re working hard on right now in fact. We’re putting together the second hour of the series in which we’re trying to decode the reasons for war — now, since 9/11 and since the end of the Cold War. We’ve interviewed lots of people and have begun to narrow down the areas to a kind of museum tour of what is causing most of the conflict in the world now, specially in this run-up to a war with Iraq. I’m wanting to hear Chris be the guide and write — he writes so damn well — in and around a lot of these sections. We’ll surely leave in a lot of his questions. I think a lot of people will share your thoughts Vicki but what of others who don’t know him?
Jay has helped a lot in this process. He coined a word to describe what we’re doing — it’s a HYBRID between talk radio and something slightly new where Chris has a different kind of a presence. He’s still the interviewer, obviously, but he’s also a guide. If he didn’t quite know where he was leading you in a live talk format, always to an interesting, surprising place; now he’s taking you along with him and telling you what he learned along the way. The last hour of this series is a live call-in show. You’ll get to hear him in the other mode.
ok now, sitting here pretending I have never heard Chris; I still think, particularly in the first part of the hour, the speaker went on for too long – and the material was DENSE and the speaker dry, in a holding-forth kind of way. I think if Chris were more involved in the interview (and not just Chris because it’s Chris, but anyone) the listener could breathe, re-focus, check out another angle, question. Chris should enjoy the privilege of interviewer and host-guide by just going back into Sach’s interview and comment or enlighten or prod us with his asides or pointers – even if he didn’t do so during the interview. – this could be the best of both worlds…
Chris’ writing IS brilliant – and needs to be there, otherwise there would be no meaningful way to link the pieces together. I am thinking perhaps that your biggest challenge as producer would be to coax Chris into a more natural or animated hybrid place as a guide AND interviewer where there is no difference between the two roles. Whoa, maybe you guys will develop a whole new radio role format!
For me the hardest part in directing someone for radio is achieving a tone that the speaker is comfortable with that will engage the listener. Sometimes it’s more plain speaking in the script, sometimes it turns out to be just the tone, which in the end ironically, is usually the person’s "natural" speaking-to-you tone. I missed that from him in this hour. We want to hear what he’s thinking, because he thinks amazing things, even if only an afterthought from an interview and we DEFINITELY want to look at what he’s looking at, or where he’s traveling to – I mean look at the first 5 mins of the piece – brilliant, full of promise, enticing. So I guess you will just have to dog him into this new role.
Maybe Chris will visit the site and talk about what it’s like for him, blending these two roles. And in case he’s not reading here, let him know that he’s pioneering a new radio role – and if he can’t pull it off, well, I don’t know who can.
I am looking forward to the 2nd hour you write of – it is indeed timely and will surely keep our heads on straight in the midst of the mire.
Gotta say I agree with Viki’s comments. Too much of this hour felt classroom-drone-like to me. Information pouring forth with no ebb and flow, just a steady stream. Zadie’s voice over the music was such a relief. Colin and the reggae. Amber catching me up with her real passion. These were places I understood why I was "hearing" this, not reading it. Chris Lydon is a wonderful writer, but some of the writing I couldn’t HEAR because my little brain couldn’t keep up with all the big words and the flood of thought. In live conversation his amazing humming bird energy works like a charm. But he didn’t seem quite comfortable or somehow himself, and I missed him.
Economics is at the heart of globalization but the discussion of economics does not always make for engaging listening. I think something could have been done to make the two economists more accessible. Like decide what’s really important for us to know and cut some of the rest, or have Chris sum it up, or reflect on it or something. As Vik suggested, if Chris had been more "live" and engaged in a conversation and less passive those sections could have been enlightening and not, at least to me, deadening. I had to work hard to hear some of the information and opinions.
I applaud the intention to explore this complicated subject. I just want it to be more fun for my ears.
After listening to this piece post-production…what parts of this segment excited, thrilled and delighted you? What parts left you tuning out to your own work? I ask this because I wonder how often you listened to broadcasts of the Connection. What is it like to have the liberty to edit yourselves? Or is it oppressive to know how many times you can return to something? How have your ears changed? How has being ably to manipulate the listener changed?
It’s wonderful to hear you two once again on the airwaves. But I NEED to know what is it like to no longer be live? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Where does your adrenaline rush come from? In conceptualizing, collaborating and editing?
In the documentary film "Twitch and Shout",
(which is about Tourette’s Syndrome) one man with Tourette’s went on medication and although he had finally assimilated his timing was all off–he could no longer use revolving doors , or turnstiles– he had lost something, his rhythm–do you feel like this as you are no longer doing radio in the present tense? Or are you finding this context challenging and exciting?
Thanks for the thought provoking radio-Turbo B.
Thanks for listening, everybody, and for pitching in with comments. The stage director Peter Sellars said about his "Children of Herakles" production in Cambridge last month that it was everything but entertaining–gripping, disturbing, thought-provoking, etc, but not your expected night out at the theater. And I guess I would say something similar about what we’re doing. We want it to sound intense and well-wrought and different–but not candy for the ears. That first hour is pretty full; I almost think you have to hear it twice. A lot of the voices in it would make more than a full show on most radio programs. I guess we feel we’re making up for lost time, or missed subjects that must be talked about. The program we’re doing on "the war" is a tougher, even more serious exercise in condensation. I don’t know how to get around it, and I’m not sure I’d want to. Another point: of course I much prefer live call-in radio, and I expect we’ll get back there… for many reasons. Live and loose is more revealing and more fun for everybody, starting with me: yes, it let’s me interrupt, ruminate, be playful or allusive; it let’s Mary in over my earphones with her commentary on where the conversation ought to go; and best of all, it gets democratic. Any listener with the gumption can join in, surprise everybody, air out the conversation. Yet another: the global thread in these shows came naturally out of where I’d been lately, where the Internet can take us, and where all science, politics and culture seem to be pointing us. One more: yes, I really did bump into Zadie Smith on the morning after I finished the last sentence of "White Teeth." My question to y’all: what’s your model of radio that is rivetingly well produced and at the same time "stone serious," which we must be in these times? Sorry to be late joining the discussion. I’d like to leap in again. Thanks to all, most especially Jay for his encouragement. Chris Lydon
"gripping, disturbing, thought-provoking " sounds pretty entertaining to me…you get to leave with a doggy bag for later.
I think you may have misunderstood some of the comments about the density factor. In these days we aren’t looking for candy yet and serious is good – but as you know, we can’t listen twice. It’s radio. Riveting for me is not a long winded lecture that I didn’t sign up for – sometimes you can pull that off on tv because we are picking up extra visual signals but radio precludes that -gripping in this scenario could only be you actually conversing or coming back in to, forgive my seemingly obtuse brain, help us chew it down. I don’t mean coming back in to re-phrase or segue but to question even if it is merely rhetorical: what about this? When you listened afterward, did you have questions or comments you wished you said? I felt lonely listening in the first part, and I didn’t want to be alone in a brightly lit room, just me and the economist on the other side of a plexiglass soundproof room….
Speaking of which, the Sachs interview – did you REALLY let him talk for so long without saying: whaddya mean, how does that work, that sounds like bullshit, can you say that for the children, etc etc.
And if you did just let him roll, then you should fix your own beverages, somebody might have been slipping something into yours. I don’t mean to be flip, but your absence is glaringly uncharacteristic and makes a six minute or more one-voice soundbite on global economics, (breath) a very dry swallow. We just need and want you to be the fluid in this case, not necessarily fruit juice or sugar water, fresh water will do fine, maybe with a sprig of sassy mint or something…for entertainment.
This program’s existence is the best news I’ve heard in a long time.
Worth the Wait Wasn’t it?
international dialogue about dialogue about current ideas (not just this week’s events)–
communications methods evolving at least as much as other technologies.–.
hallelujah
It’s perfect to personalize the discussion with global citizens… the exchange and dialogue is happening whether or not we Americans join in. We should join in
congratulations and thank you!
I hope it reaches a huge chunk of the current public radio audience -and beyond
Now that WWW has started to air — and offers further installments above and beyond what’s being presented here (fans can glomb onto it at WGBH.org at 6pm EST on Sunday nights) — perhaps this discussion can expand a bit.
One thing that The Connection offered was a variety of scale — here the Middle East, here a local big band leader. The challenge with WWW to my mind, as a Connection listener, is that the scale has to be constantly HUGE.
And the problem with that is that there is no respite. None of the fallbacks to the tried and true evocations for call ins, none of the rote patter that lets the listener rest a bit.
Which leads me to an earlier query about an earlier version of this: What is the important element in WWW? Is it Lydon’s POV? Is it the guests and the insights they offer?
My feeling is that, since we are talking about 7 weeks here, we are being asked to participate in a journey. And because Lydon is the constant in this journey, we will call him, for want of a better word, our "hero."
This is where things start breaking down for me — not that Chris doesn’t have heroic credentials, of course. But I’ll be interested to see if others perceive alterations in perceptions of Chris as the series progresses. My argument is that in The Connection, Chris was the constant, from subjects great to subjects small. He will be the constant here, too, but as our Odysseus, our Everyman, our Mr. Standfast (or so I argue here),is he actually our barometer for the different environments to which he wishes to expose us? Will he become the guage by which we comprehend WWW?
IN OTHER WORDS, will the story of WWW be about Chris Lydon? Will the story of WWW be about WWW as discerned by Chris Lydon? Or will the story of WWW simply be about WWW?
Greetings folks. I’ll admit up front I’m a Lydon-McGrath partisan from the Connection bust up, but I don’t plan to dwell upon that. However, I’ll get the kudos out of the way up front (and quickly). I was simply amazed and overwhelmed by the content of episode 2. Here in Boston the broadcast schedule is a week behind, so I hear it after the war began. It could not have been more timely or more valuable to me.
Okay, that being said, here’s my critique of certain things (I’ve always been better at pointing out specific flaws than successes). Ramble begins…
* Mary and Jay’s "hybrid" theory aside, what I’m hearing so far is a show that’s suspended between two different radio worlds (maybe more?). At times it’s a "produced" show, and at others an "interview" show. The two aspects haven’t gelled into a coherent whole quite yet. Show 2 was much better in this regard than show 1, yet it still seemed to have a problem weaving it’s way back and forth between the conversational interviews and the written linking segments.
Some of this may just be a matter of aural expectations. Nowhere else in the Public Radio landscape do we hear production that cuts back and forth between edited interviews that include the voice of the interviewer (unless that interviewer is on location, and the sound quality makes it obvious) and written passages with such frequency.
Take "Fresh Air" for example. It’s pre recorded and edited. Yet it keeps the feel of a "live" interview because the interview segments are not interrupted by any other material. An ATC essay or report, on the other hand, will frequently cut back and forth between the reporter and interview sound, but rather than including the interviewer’s questions, the "field" sound will be only of the subjects, and the reporter will exist almost solely in the written segments that are obviously done as a studio voiceover.
I say this knowing full well I may be falling into a "trap of expectations." There is what I think of as a set of public radio "rhythms" that almost all of the NPR/PI/etc. offerings use (almost as if they were all mimicking each other). Sometimes a person’s criticism of something that is "wrong" is simply a failure to meet the preconceived rhythmic expectation, which makes it seem "wrong" even though there’s nothing inherently wrong about it.
So, I support ideal of creating something new. However Wx3 is neither falling neatly into the old rhythms, nor landing nicely in it’s own new, unique "pocket" yet. I’m sure this will resolve itself with time and experience.
* I vote for more interviewees, less Lydon-in-interview, unless Chris’ questions give us greater content or context. Chris has the tool of the non-interview written segments to use, and he uses it brilliantly.
Whatever balance between these two elements you strike, I think you should never go straight from a Chris written setup directly to a Chris interview question. Chris can set up the question in his written segment and then just let the interview voice answer it. It’s less fatiguing on the ears that way. Sometimes I’m raring to go after his setup, but then we get hit with one of those Lydon "seven questions in one" moments that are fine in the context of a straight-through interview, but merely knock us out of rhythm in an edited show.
* I have seen earlier comments that some feel that Lydon is seeming "restrained" during the interview segments. I feel that’s appropriate, since Chris has his say in the linking segments. Unlike live interview, there’s no need to "jump in" in "real time."
* Perhaps it will not ever be possible to reconcile those who want more Lydon with those who want less. For me, my feelings change from segment to segment, depending on how strong the interviewee is — boring speaker calls for more Lydon, mesmerizing speaker calls for no Lydon. But which is which will always be up to the individual listener.
* A minor note on the Lydon signature "hmmmm…." It was always wonderful punctuation on the live "Connection" but here it seems out of place, especially during phone interviews. If it’s technically possible, perhaps you could put Chris on a separate recording channel and mute the "hmmm"s (or at least duck them a bit in the mix).
* The first show was fascinating and overwhelming — an overstuffed buffet of food for thought. But, to continue the food analogies, it was also much like a casserole where all of the individual ingredients are tasty, but the whole dish doesn’t quite come together into a single coherent flavor. I sensed this from both the production standpoint (already covered in my "stuck between worlds" comment) and the content standpoint. Many interesting people having many interesting things to say, with Chris trying to bring them together into a whole, but not quite getting there.
Show 1 also gave me struggles similar to the one voiced by "Jackson". Was this supposed to be an impartial investigation into globalization, with Lydon as omniscient guide (which is what everyone "expects" an pub-rad news show to be) or Lydon’s personal views on globalization, or something in between?
Show 2 did not have these problems for me. It was more like Lydon was our guide, showing us the places where the trajectories of five different vectors intersected, leaving us to marvel at the patterns that were created. The scan evidence of two shows may indicate that the "museum tour" approach may be more successful than the "smorgasbord" approach.
Here’s hoping these comments are useful. I would love it if anyone more familiar with pub-rad production technique could provide me/us with more formal terms for some of the concepts we’ve been discussing.
a t-shirt for thoroughness. thanks.
please email me; I need your mailing address and tshirt size please; my email address is info@transom.org.
Thanks
One of the my favorite programs of all types for all times. Here was a guy — James Burke, I believe — who illuminated the threads between things we believed had no connection.
The beauty of those series was erudition, pure and simple.
My feeling is that Wx3 is frequently a demonstration of insight — and to both Lydon and McGrath I offer much credit — but missing here is the foundation of sheer knowledge. The tirelessness, say, of Michael Goldfarb banging around the frontiers of Iraq, squeezing out what Iraq’s neighbors have to say. One of the images used in the preparation of Wx3 is that of "parachuting" — dropping out of the sky rather than emerging of the earth.
I am reminded of — was it Lawrence? — commenting on Whitman. He, Lawrence said, was like a car bombing down a highway in the night, illuminating the road in front with his headlights. He could say nothing of the landscape.
Is that possible here?
I’ve been sick in bed for the last 6 days listening to my public radio station 24 hours a day. I think all the war coverage hasn’t helped my recovery.
So, on comes Chris Lydon. Oh, good, I thought. Here’s the guy I couldn’t make heads or tails when I read his words on Transom. I have a second chance. But, oh. Hearing him didn’t make it any better.
But Amber was great. That’s why I’m here poking around, seeing if I can hear her again.
I’d sure like to hear somebody ask her, Do you support our troops?
Amber was wonderful. I tried to imagine, as I listened to her the second and third times, what her everyday life was like.
I wonder if there are people around me of such insight and eloquence, but whose daily personae conceal their depths — as it has been my experience that not many people wear their poetry on their sleeves.
Amber can be downloaded or streamed from here:
http://www.hearingvoices.com/special/2003/union/
scroll almost all the way down. Actually, almost everything on that page is well worth listening to.
I tried to attach the MP3 file to this post, but it was too big.
Lyndon’s excitement at the inevitable consequences of post modernism is poor and uninteresting.
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My local NPR station replayed this story last night and for that I am grateful. I too was a PCV in W.Africa (Niger)and was transported back there while listening to this story. Jenafir captured what most of us ended up taking for granted or taking for normal (sweeping dirt, for instance)
as the days wore on and life became just that. Life. I was also struck or perhaps reminded of how time seems to stand still in this part of the world. I guess most of us in the U.S. would relish this as it seems life here is on the fast track and getting faster. But the fact remains that for those living in W. Africa, change and/or progress are difficult to measure.
So thank you for this project. It was a reminder of so many experiences that had slipped into a rather dusty corner of my mind.
I only wish I’d been handed the same booklet on the 13 signs of withdrawal. I had to wing it!