Radiotopia Presents: We're Doing the Wiz

Behind the Series is a short-run series about the shows previously featured on this very podcast: Showcase from Radiotopia. This week, we revisit Secrets, a six-part series from 2018. When released, Secrets offered listeners a compelling mix of autobiography, private admissions ranging from espionage to photography fraud, and storytelling traditions from Sweden and the U.S.. Three years later, producers and hosts Mohamed El Abed and Martin Johnson lift the curtain to share the secrets behind Secrets: how they get people to tell private stories of their lives and what’s happened since Mohamed shared this part of his family’s story. 

 Behind the Series is hosted, written, and produced by Mark Pagán. Executive producers are Audrey Mardavich and Julie Shapiro. Music from JD Samson and Blue Dot Sessions.  

 Behind the Series is a production of Showcase, from PRX’s Radiotopia. Wanna learn more about your favorite shows, get audio recommendations, events updates, and podcast news? Sign up for the Radiotopia Citizen newsletter at radiotopia.fm/citizen.

It’s been awhile, we know, but we’ve got some exciting Showcase updates for you. Keep an ear right here to catch a brand new series coming your way April 28.
 
 Want audio recommendations and updates about your favorite Radiotopia shows? Sign up for the Citizen newsletter at radiotopia.fm/citizen.

Now is the time when you can help us keep Showcase and all of the many parts of Radiotopia thriving. Make your mark by donating today at radiotopia.fm.

And keep an ear right here for a new Showcase series coming in 2020!

A missing plane. A cabin full of suspects. A search for the truth. Passenger List is a new fictional mystery thriller from Radiotopia. Hear episode two and subscribe to the show at passengerlist.org. 

Occasionally between Showcase series, we’ll bring you surprise bonus episodes, like the one you’re about to hear. It’s a recording of a live conversation inspired by Ways of Hearing, the very first series we ever featured here on Showcase.

Since the series aired, writer, host, co-producer (and excellent musician) Damon Krukowski has taken the podcast to the page, with Ways of Hearing the book, published by MIT Press in May 2019. 
 
The conversation was recorded live before a studio audience on April 9 at the PRX Podcast Garage in Allston, Massachusetts and was mixed by Ian Coss. It was led by Damon, with Radiotopia Executive Producer Julie Shapiro, Ian Coss, who co-produced and sound designed the podcast, Matt Browne, who edited the book, and James Goggin, who designed the book.

In the final episode of Spacebridge, big TV-satellite “spacebridges” become popular in the USSR, but remain a logistical nightmare—and for American producers, especially—a labor of love that few can afford. Meanwhile, a new breed of citizen diplomat enters the scene, determined to do an end-run around the USSR’s ancient telephone system. They find ways to connect people via a new-fangled contraption, the modem. The consequences of those connections linger today.

Spacebridge is a production of Showcase from PRX’s Radiotopia with additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Our Russian content partner is the history site Arzamas.Academy.

Find out more and listen to the previous series, Ways of Hearing, The Polybius Conspiracy, Secrets, Errthang, The Great God of Depression and The Stoop at radiotopia.fm/showcase.

The Soviet Union faces a series of funerals for elderly heads of state; meanwhile the nation falls in love with a “citizen diplomat” from America, a young girl. Popular daytime TV host Phil Donahue agrees to co-host a spacebridge with Vladimir Pozner, a multi-lingual Soviet known for expounding his government’s views on US TV. Soviet and American audiences argue about everything from geopolitics to sex in the resulting “citizen summits,” which rivet participants but also put many careers on the line.
 
 Spacebridge is a production of Showcase from PRX’s Radiotopia with additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Our Russian content partner is the history site Arzamas.Academy.

Find out more at radiotopia.fm/showcase.

The first two-way satellite links between the US and USSR are strange, disorganized, and sometimes a little magical. Battling language and technological barriers, Soviet and American musicians, computing pioneers, scientists, and even kids find a way to stage a series of exchanges across the skies — at first awkward, but growing more meaningful as Cold War paranoia ratchets ever higher.
 
 Spacebridge is a production of Showcase from PRX’s Radiotopia with additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Our Russian content partner is the history site Arzamas.Academy.

Find out more and listen to the previous series, The Stoop, Ways of Hearing, The Polybius Conspiracy, Secrets, Errthang, and The Great God of Depression at radiotopia.fm/showcase.

At a low point in the Cold War, three men walk into a bureaucrat’s office at Gosteleradio, the state broadcaster of the Soviet Union. Two are Americans: an astronaut, and a researcher of psychic phenomena. The third is a Russian utopian with a notebook full of phone numbers he’s not supposed to know. The three want approval for something that’s never been tried before: a two-way, simultaneous satellite link between the enemy empires of the US and USSR.

Spacebridge is a production of Showcase from PRX’s Radiotopia with additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Our Russian content partner is the history site Arzamas.Academy.

Find out more and listen to the previous series Ways of Hearing, The Polybius Conspiracy, Secrets, Errthang, The Great God of Depression, and The Stoop at radiotopia.fm/showcase.

Spacebridge tells a largely-forgotten saga of the late Cold War, when despair about the prospects of a nuclear conflict gripped the world. Both Soviets and Americans grasped at emerging communication technology via satellite and early Internet “spacebridges” that brought together citizen diplomats ranging from New Agers to tech-enthusiasts to astronauts. The urge to “just connect” helped tilt the world from top-down broadcasting to the more horizontal, Internet-levelled society where we all now live…for better and/or for worse.

Co-hosted by Julia Barton and Charles Maynes, Spacebridge is a production of Showcase from PRX’s Radiotopia with additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Our Russian content partner is the history site Arzamas.Academy.

Find out more at radiotopia.fm/showcase.