The Selects Podcast

This week, we offer a bittersweet Pride tradition from the memory palace.   This episode of the Memory Palace was written and produced by Nate DiMeo with engineering support from Kath Tu and research assistance by Andrea Miln.  It was originally released in 2016 in the days after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It is re-released every year on the anniversary of the incident.  

Today we're sharing a classic from the WNYC Archives - an unnamed reporter goes on the hunt to interview Beat poets in the Village, but has a hard time finding anyone willing to admit to being one.    Selects Live at Tribeca Festival (Limited seating, RSVP Required): eventbrite.co.uk/e/radiotopia-and-selects-present-new-york-stories-tickets-1989237542037 ******** The original WNYC Municipal Archiv...

Today we're sharing a piece from our Early True Crime collection, an early podcast from KRCC (now Colorado Public Radio) in 2015.  The story follows a retired detective corresponding with a suspected serial killer while looking back at his own career.   The Gods Must Be Bewildered was produced Jake Brownell and Noel Black.  With voice acting by Kurt Bunch and Mike Percell.  The Production Assistan...

Today we're featuring a selection from an episode of the groundbreaking show Hearing Voices.  With Montana-based producer Barrett Golding at the helm, the show was known for cross pollinating with performance and poetry to create a space for audio producers to experiment and grow. Each episode was adventurous, unpredictable and exciting.  We've also got a whole collection of Hearing Voices episode...

Today we're sharing a classic Sean Cole work from his time on the documentary team at WBUR's Inside Out.  It's a beautiful work of scene and memory, taking listeners to a reunion for a town that hasn't physically existed for generations. 

Today we're featuring a excerpt of a work that explores the relationship of art, documentary, and history through a search for class struggle in Appalachia.  Beyond the limited academic concept of oral history, I Can Almost See the Lights of Home: A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky is a essay-in-sound that weaves the words and stories of Harlan County residents with the sounds and music of th...

This week we're featuring a super interesting conversation with Eleanor McDowall, creator of Radio Atlas, about the world of the radio feature and the artistry of audio works that aren't in English. 

Note: this week's episode is a video podcast because it is a celebration of audio subtitles.  You'll need to experience it on a platform that supports video files. This week we're sharing a choice work from our new collection celebrating ten years of Radio Atlas, an English-language home for subtitled audio from around the world. A place to hear inventive documentaries, dramas and works of sound a...

Today we share a prescient work by Ross Sutherland from his long running, award winning show Imaginary Advice.  It's a darkly funny spiral and a fantastic listen.   ******* S.E.I.N.F.E.L.D. originally aired in 2016 on Imaginary Advice .  It was written, produced and voiced by Ross Sutherland and a robot voice.  

This week we're sharing a piece from The Big Read, a book club for public radio from the National Endowment for the Arts. This episode is about Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying.  Set in the fictional community of Bayonne, Louisiana, in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying tells the story of Jefferson, a twenty-one-year-old Black field worker wrongfully accused and convicted of the robbery and...

Today we're featuring one of our favorite series, American Icons, on a true work of art: I Love Lucy.  It's a hilarious and bittersweet documentary, exemplary of the incredibly thoughtful work that Studio 360 bestowed upon listeners for twenty years until its end in F2020.  Original Series Credits:  American Icons: I Love Lucy was produced by Jenny Lawton , with production assistance from Chloe Pl...

This week we share a story from the front lines.  Literally, from the front lines of a brutal war.  But also figuratively, from the front lines of a change in technology that would shape how civilians understand war: personal recording.    We've got two additional episodes in a new collection for subscribers including a special from Hearing Voices that is actually six individual pieces.   It's gre...

In this episode, we offer a few of our favorite shorts as sonic gifts.  We've got the humble farmer, an early work by Arlie Adlington, and one of the most formative works of contemporary audio: CAT NAMES.  

This week we bring you a rare longform piece by Radio Diaries featuring Bridgette McGee, our narrator as she uncovers the truth about her grandfather's death, through uncomfortable interviews, original reporting, and some of the most arresting archival tape.  We are with Bridgette for every step of her process, and in doing so, we share a history that could have otherwise been erased. Photo courte...

This week we're sharing a banger documentary from Kelly McEvers which may leave you standing, staring at a wall by the end.  The podcast version of a driveway moment.   Ten years before McEvers' show Embedded hit the air, you can hear the idea for it beginning to form.  Diary of a Bad Year is a bold and compelling look at why journalists risk it all for the story.   ***** Jay Allison financed, pro...

Today we're presenting a documentary about an icon, Tony Schwartz, and made by icons, The Kitchen Sisters.   For thirty years (1945-1976), Schwartz created and produced a radio program for WNYC featuring the people and sounds of New York City.  He amassed an archive of recordings (now housed in the Library of Congress) that are expertly mixed together in this documentary so listeners can hear the...

This week we're sharing the story "A Level Playing Field" from John Biewen's series Contested, the first season of his iconic show Scene on Radio.   Contested considers the American relationship to sports, and this episode looks at the way money permeates sport and how it distorts reality to create unrealistic expectations for young athletes and communities of color.  Original Series Credits: Scen...

Today we present a documentary by The Heart that is astonishing.   "When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small, but significant part of me." Based on writer Mariya Karimjee's 2015 essay "Damage," we hear a deeply intimate portrait of Mariya's a journey from her childhood in Pakistan, to her adolescence in Texas, through college, all the way to where she is now, bac...

Today we're sharing the 1998 documentary The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, as well as the 2006 documentary The Imaginary Village  by Sandy Tolan and Melissa Robbins.   The Lemon Tree explores the relationship between a Palestinian man named Bashir and Dalia, a Bulgarian-born Israeli who moved into his childhood home in the West Bank.  The piece was turned into an award-winning book of the same name....

Today we present an all time favorite of the team at Selects.  This iconic work by Dave Isay and Stacy Abramson is a vivid portrait of New York City’s Bowery, before it got swallowed by a museum and high end retail and luxury real estate.  In the late 90’s The Sunshine Hotel remained one of the last flophouses left on the Bowery, New York’s skid row. As you meet the cast of characters at the Sunsh...

This week we're featuring one episode of The Big Read, a series that is essentially a national book club for the radio.   In 2007, America decided it was having a literary crisis (and Sold a Story wouldn’t come out for another 15 years).  So, in response, the National Endowment for the Arts launched The Big Read, a program to bring people together to read some of the most acclaimed works of fictio...

Today we're publishing a new collection for subscribers featuring three eyewitness accounts to historical events we often know solely through images or history books. These Radio Diaries are gripping and immersive, with incredible tape that transports a listener from a cursory understanding to one that is rich with individual experience.  We're sharing one of those here: a personal account of surv...

This week, we follow Dmae Lo Roberts and her mother, Chu-Yin, as they travel to Taiwan together.  Dmae seeks an opportunity to grow closer with her mother, but the trip ends with them not speaking.   First produced in 1989, Roberts’ Peabody Award-winning documentary is highly personal and groundbreaking -- weaving interviews and dramatizations to tell the story of a conflicted daughter and her mot...

This week we've got a new collection for subscribers and we're excited to share one of them with you today.    Tossing Away the Keys is a documentary by Dave Isay and Sound Portraits, and a masterclass in audio documentary.  It expertly uses the medium to take listeners somewhere they may never be, and let them hear something they'll never forget.  Give it a listen and check out the whole Early Tr...

This Pride, we're proud to present a pointed and spicy documentary about fractures in the LGBTQ movement over the fight for gay marriage. This piece offers a nuanced and passionate analysis of something you rarely see put forward for public consumption: internal debate within a civil rights movement.  This is a classic driveway moment, but one of those driveways that the city painted in a rainbow...