Phone Messages

Phone Messages

By Paul Mason FotschSociety & Culture
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Phone Messages episodes

  • 81 That's My Kitty Kat (Joel 4)
    Some historians claim the mass killing of cats in medieval Europe led to the Black Death. These days, researchers have found domestic cats fail at urban rat control while harming billions of native birds.
    5 min
  • 80 Someone is right (Sikay 4)
    Chinese restaurants came to the United States in the 19th century with
    Cantonese migrants who worked in mines and built railroads. But Chinese restaurants that were also Vegetarian did not emerge until the 1980s.
    9 min
  • 79 I Am Sweating (outgoing 17)
    For the AACM 20th anniversary celebration, Cecil Taylor performed at Mandel Hall with Roscoe Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors and Steve McCall. After the concert he recorded a station ID for WHPK.
    7 min
  • 75 The Point (Liz 2)
    In 1980s Chicago, Hyde Park's Promontory Point had a semblance of racial integration, but most of the city was marked by a history of severe segregation imposed by violence and racist institutions.
    9 min
  • 74 At Jason's Radio Show (outgoing 15)
    The University of Chicago's first radio station began broadcasting to Burton Judson Courts in 1945. In 1951 they extended to the entire campus as WUCB, in 1968 moved to the FM dial as WHPK and in 1985 increased their power from 10 to 100 watts.
    7 min
  • 73 In Minnesota (Chris 15)
    In the late 80s, the artist Garry Hayes brought a couple of lucky kids to the happiest place on earth: a legendary Minneapolis bar called the Gay 90s.
    9 min
  • 72 He is Mine (Jason 4)
    In the Spring of 1989, a fatwa by the Iranian Leader called for the killing of Salman Rushdie. During his first few months in hiding, Rushdie moved dozens of times. Could one of these hideouts have been my studio apartment in Hyde Park?
    6 min

About Phone Messages

From the publisher's feed

This podcast will play and discuss old phone answering machine messages. In the late 1980s, while living in Chicago, I selected certain messages to be duplicated using a double cassette recorder. Playing them back leads me to explore the intersection of personal history and the larger social and cultural context through the lens of an outdated technology.