Generation Putin - Hour Special
From Seattle Globalist | Part of the Generation Putin series | 59:01
"Generation Putin" is an hourlong special on young people and politics in the former Soviet Union. Embeddable on SoundCloud, too.
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- Generation Putin - Hour Special
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- Seattle Globalist
It's been over 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Young people in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Georgia are facing unemployment, democratic pressure, and the legacy of repression, while being influenced by the West, punk music, and the Pussy Riot trials. PRX sent a reporting team from the Seattle Globalist to explore the tensions in these countries, described by The Atlantic as 'uneasily suspended' between two political eras.
Two Little Girls Explain The Worst Haircut Ever
From Jeff Cohen | 02:57
My five year old cut off my three year old's hair. A few weeks later, I decided to interview them and get their explanations. Here's what they told me.
Happy to say that this little radio story has taken another life. In the summer of 2014, it will be a children's book released by HarperCollins Children's Books. Take a look!
Dead Animal Man
From Ira Glass | 07:49
Portrait of a guy who picks up dead animals for a living for the DC Dept of Sanitation.
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- Dead Animal Man
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- Ira Glass
Portrait of a guy who picks up dead animals for a living for the DC Dept of Sanitation.
This was first produced in 1989, for Weekend All Things Considered. It ran on This American Life in 1997.
I use it often in reporter seminars because it was a quick-turnaround feature (5 hours of reporting; 2 days to write and produce) that still has a lot of personality. It's funny at the beginning and sort of wistful at the end, though saying that doesn't capture it either. It's just one of those lucky stories with lots of surprising little moments. In reporter seminars, I always point out how, like any good feature story or interview, at some point someone's got to say something big and universal about what's happened in the story. This one does it in the easiest way possible: after all the action, there's 2 1/2 minutes of the guy and me just talking about what the hell it all means. Many reporters aren't sure exactly how to make a scene work on radio, and this story uses every trick in the book: I narrate a lot of the scenes ON SITE, while gathering the tape (like the first scene, where I explain, while running across a highway, that we're running across a highway). There are also incredibly short scenes, sometimes as short as one sentence of setup script and one line of tape. Also, there are lots of tape-to-tape transitions and unusual transitions from one scene to the next. It's a good story to illustrate all the ways to avoid the rut of doing acts&trax&acts&trax, over and over. It's entirely airworthy still, I think. Fun to listen to. Gets laughs. It's one of my favorite stories, out of everything I've produced in over twenty years.
The Hospital Always Wins
From Al Letson | Part of the State of the Re:Union: Season Four series | 53:56
In this special hour from State of the Re:Union, we take listeners to a place that exists in every American city… but most of us have never seen the inside of it. Back in 2004, SOTRU producer Laura Starecheski visited a state mental hospital in Queens, New York, called Creedmoor. She met an artist there named Issa Ibrahim. He had no perceptible symptoms: he was talented, charismatic, funny, engaging. To be blunt, he just didn’t seem like your typical long-term mental patient. But he’d been at Creedmoor for more than ten years already, with little hope of getting out. Why was Issa still stuck in the hospital? Laura’s quest to uncover Issa’s story took almost a decade. In this special episode, State of the Re:Union takes a close-up look at love, guilt and forgiveness, revealing both the brightest and the darkest parts of human nature.
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- The Hospital Always Wins
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State of the Re:Union
The Hospital Always Wins
Host: Al Letson
Producer: Laura Starecheski
In this special hour from State of the Re:Union, we take listeners to a place that exists in every American city… but most of us have never seen the inside of it. Back in 2004, SOTRU producer Laura Starecheski visited a state mental hospital in Queens, New York, called Creedmoor. She met an artist there named Issa Ibrahim. He had no perceptible symptoms: he was talented, charismatic, funny, engaging. To be blunt, he just didn’t seem like your typical long-term mental patient. But he’d been at Creedmoor for more than ten years already, with little hope of getting out. Why was Issa still stuck in the hospital? Laura’s quest to uncover Issa’s story took almost a decade. In this special episode, State of the Re:Union takes a close-up look at love, guilt and forgiveness, revealing both the brightest and the darkest parts of human nature.
BILLBOARD (:59)
Incue: From PRX and WJCT...
Outcue: After the news.
News Hole: 1:00-6:00
SEGMENT A (12:29)
Incue: From WJCT in Jacksonville, Florida
Outcue: on State of the Re:Union.
Laura meets Issa Ibrahim in 2004, at a Creedmoor arts program called The Living Museum. Issa won’t tell Laura the reason he was sent to Creedmoor. All she knows is that he has no contact with his family, and he’s been at Creedmoor for over a decade. But then he gives Laura a cd of his songs, recorded in his room on the ward, and the puzzle starts to come together: maybe Issa is at Creedmoor because he is his own worst enemy? Six years after they meet, Issa finally reveals his past to Laura. His story begins at his childhood home in Queens, when he was the child of an artist and a musician. The whole Ibrahim family was banking on Issa’s talent as an artist. But his chaotic but promising childhood turned dark when Issa’s father, a jazz musician, passed away. We hear from Issa’s brother Ishak and sister Karen on his decline into delusion and paranoia.
SEGMENT B (18:59)
Incue: I'm Al Letson
Outcue: on State of the Re:Union.
Issa’s story continues with a fateful night in February 1990 when he hears voices for the first time, and what they are telling him leads him to do something unthinkable. In a fit of psychosis, Issa kills his own mother. When Issa ends up in front of a judge in a courtroom, he takes a plea: not guilty by reason of insanity. He eventually ends up at Creedmoor, where he has no sentence and no release date. We hear from several doctors who assessed Issa as his story unfolds. As Issa struggles to learn the rules, he feels the pull of his destiny returning: maybe he can still be a great artist. But making art, much of it provocative, and seeking out romantic relationships… attempting to live a semblance of a normal life inside the hospital… only buries him deeper. And just as Issa begins to forgive himself for his crime, his case at the hospital has ground to a halt. He has little hope of release.
SEGMENT C (18:59)
Incue: I'm Al Letson and you're listening to
Outcue: to bring them back together. (music tail)
By 2002, Issa had been locked away for over ten years. When a new forensic director started working at Creedmoor, and was asked to do a brand-new assessment of him, he saw a potential turn-around in his case. But the assessment labeled him ‘dangerous’, and despite years of good behavior, Issa’s future seems as hopeless as ever. Left with no other options, Issa uses the money he’s saved from selling his paintings from inside the hospital to hire his own doctor, and after years of pushing, he finally gets his day in court. We hear from several doctors and the presiding judge about the court hearings where Issa petitions for his freedom. In 2009, the judge grants Issa a conditional release from Creedmoor, and he lives at a halfway house on the hospital grounds for four years before winning permission to move into his own apartment for the first time in his adult life. Then, Issa must contend with life in the outside world. Will his family ever forgive him? Can Issa ever really forgive himself?
PROGRAM OUT @ 59:00
The Hospital Always Wins is available on PRX without charge to all public radio stations, and may be aired an unlimited number of times prior to January 31, 2017. The program may be streamed live on station websites but not archived. Excerpting is permitted for promotional purposes only.
State of the Re:Union is presented by WJCT and distributed by PRX. Major funding for the State of the Re:Union comes from CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Delores Barr Weaver Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.
Thanks for your consideration of State of the Re:Union with Al Letson.