
- Playing
- Keeping Secrets
- From
- Aaron Henkin
I put this story together after meeting a guy named Frank Warren. He?s an interactive artist who created a project called Post Secret. About a year ago, he started slipping little homemade postcards into library books. The cards had his home address pre-printed on them, along with an invitation for the finder to anonymously mail a secret that he or she had never told anyone before.
The response was huge. Over the past year, Warren has received over twelve thousand secrets in his mailbox.
If you?re interested in broadcasting this story, here?s an intro that might work for your announcer / host:
?On any given day, we all try our best to be compassionate, benevolent, and charitable --- but we?re also human, and that means that we can?t help but harbor certain thoughts that we try very hard to keep from the people around us, and even from our own selves. Today, Baltimore radio producer Aaron Henkin brings us a story about secrets --- what happens when we hold on to them, and what can happen when we?re given a chance to let them go??
More from Aaron Henkin
Talking to Strangers: Chance Encounters with Fellow Americans
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a modern American road trip...
Nepalese Superstar, American Everyman: Prem Raja Mahat
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Prem traded music superstardom in Nepal for a job waiting tables in America...
Inside the Capoeiristas' Circle
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A profile of a centuries-old martial art with roots that go back to Angola, Africa
Rheb's Candies: A Charm City Holiday Tradition
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a VERY sweet holiday story...
"We Mobin'": Mics, Plus Beats, Minus Walls
(00:13:40)
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If music is made on the street, why record it in a booth?
enlightenment by shotgun: coping with ALS
(00:20:00)
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one man's accelerated perspective on life...
The Other End of the Line: Profile of a 911 Operator
(00:08:10)
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a look at life on the phone at the Baltimore City Police Department's 911 call center
Crime and Redemption: A Wise Guy's Tale
(00:49:36)
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A gangster-turned-informant reflects on his life of crime and his quest for redemption
Learning to Sing
(00:07:45)
From: Aaron Henkin
a choral program teaches children the universal language of music...
Bluma Shapiro: Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor
(00:15:25)
From: Aaron Henkin
Bluma Shapiro is a grandmother of four... and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Piece Description
I put this story together after meeting a guy named Frank Warren. He?s an interactive artist who created a project called Post Secret. About a year ago, he started slipping little homemade postcards into library books. The cards had his home address pre-printed on them, along with an invitation for the finder to anonymously mail a secret that he or she had never told anyone before. The response was huge. Over the past year, Warren has received over twelve thousand secrets in his mailbox. If you?re interested in broadcasting this story, here?s an intro that might work for your announcer / host: ?On any given day, we all try our best to be compassionate, benevolent, and charitable --- but we?re also human, and that means that we can?t help but harbor certain thoughts that we try very hard to keep from the people around us, and even from our own selves. Today, Baltimore radio producer Aaron Henkin brings us a story about secrets --- what happens when we hold on to them, and what can happen when we?re given a chance to let them go??
Broadcast History
This piece is slated to air on 12.16.05 on WYPR's arts program The Signal
Musical Works
This piece contains excerpts from a song called "Glue of the World," by the band Fourtet.




Marjorie Van Halteren
Posted on January 11, 2006 at 11:52 AM | Permalink
Review of Keeping Secrets
A piece about one of the more mysterious sides of random communicaton - including the internet, which, honestly, is normally absolutely everything BUT mysterious. Aaron Henkin reports on this interesting project involving postcards and secrets and folks like you and me - at the center of it is this rather compassionate character for whom the project seems to have become nearly a way of life. I was thinking that this piece is a bit long, at 17 minutes, but yet there seems to be more and more to say. Then I was thinking about sending a postcard myself. Thinking about it leads to that, somehow. WHY?