The Organist

Scott McClanahan is from West Virginia, which accounts for his twang, and also for his love/hate relationship with the American South. In his 2013 memoir, Crapalachia, McClanahan tells his origin story, growing up in the backwoods of the South. McClanahan is a lovable nihilist when he discusses his writing, as producer Eliza Smith discovered when she spoke with Scott about his work for the Organist. This episode also features “The Firestarter,†one of McClanahan’s short stories that Smith adapted into a radio play for the Organist, in which a man causes car accidents by virtue of his being there to witness them.

CREDITS Produced by Eliza Smith. Radio play adapted by Eliza Smith and Jacob Winik with original music by Carly Bond and Robert Shelton.

Robert Kensinger moved to L.A. in the late 70's. He was hoping to make it as a film director after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. He stumbled into a job as a personal assistant to the legendary actor, writer, and director Orson Welles. Kensinger worked for Welles off and on for several years before he left to write scripts for indie producer Roger Corman. Then he carved out a long career as a set decorator on many studio films.

People tend to think of Orson Welles as inactive or diminished during those final years â€" living off Laurel Canyon on Wonderland Avenue, earning a living starring in wine commercials and making the rounds of TV talk shows. But Kensinger remembers the director of Citizen Kane as vital and alive, working hard as ever on projects including his last film, The Other Side of the Wind. It remains unfinished to this day.

Today's Organist features Bob Kensinger, remembering Orson on Wonderland.

Produced by Gideon Brower and Kristine McKenna. Edited by Nick White. Mixing assistance by Mario Diaz.

Still from a TV magic show pilot Welles shot, in which Bob Kensinger appears as a waiter.

Documents from Bob Kensinger's tenure as Welles's assistant, including shopping lists and a personal note. Originally appeared in Grand Street.

Screen grab from Orson Welles's appearances in Paul Masson Wine TV spots from the early 80's

Screen grab from Orson Welles's appearances in Paul Masson Wine TV spots from the early 80's

The legendary polymath broadcaster Studs Terkel hosted a radio show on Chicago's WFMT for 45-years, interviewing an astonishing range of artists, thinkers, workers, and activists. The writer and publisher (and prolific interviewer in his own right) JC Gabel dips into Terkel's massive archive to highlight three moments where Terkel stumbles sidelong into moments of sublime illumination, including arm-wrestling with Zero Mostel, sparring with Muhammad Ali, and impromptu guerrilla street theater with the organizer Saul Alinsky.

Produced by JC Gabel and edited by Nick White.

Photo courtesy WFMT and the Studs Terkel Radio Archive

Barbara Maier Gustern is an 80-year-old classically trained singer in New York City. She teaches singing lessons out of her two-bedroom apartment in Chelsea. For decades, she's taught a wide range of singers: Argentinian and opera singers, aspiring cantors, the Grammy-nominated vocalist Roseanna Vitro. But she's become a favorite among the edgy and powerful voices of New York's downtown queer, performance and rock scenes: Her students include Debbie Harry, Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, John Kelly, Lady Rizo, Penny Arcade, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Miss Guy and Kathleen Hanna.

Barbra Maier Gustern

A shared love of dirty jokes and wild performances made her an unlikely matriarch to this talented and raunchy family of artists. The avant-garde composer and musician Diamanda Galas called Barbara, "the baddest bitch in New York City."

Machine Dazzle

Reported by Nicole Pasulka. Produced by Nicole Pasulka and Jenna Weiss-Berman.

Photo: Michael Blase

Writer Hua Hsu on the mystifying genius of the great New York hip-hop group Mobb Deep, the genius of obsessive German hip-hop fans on the Internet, and the unfathomable, haunting piano loop that connects them.

Photo courtesy Mobb Deep

Archivist, educator and filmmaker Rick Prelinger has a remarkable eye for the unexpected value of ephemera. A massive collection of educational and industrial films he collected under the auspices of the Prelinger Archives was acquired by the Library of Congress, and with his wife, Megan Prelinger, he co-founded the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, stuffed with printed material you’d be unlikely to find elsewhere. More recently he’s been working with old home movies â€" thousands of them, donated or otherwise acquired. This is basically material nobody else wanted, not even the descendants of whoever made them. He’s used it to build a remarkable series of films â€" one is made of footage from San Francisco, another from Detroit. Old home movies are mostly silent, and he adds no narration or even a score. Instead, he stands on stage at screenings, riffs about the clips, and encourages viewers to chime in from their seats. This actually works: the audience at Prelinger’s screenings are surprisingly vocal. Prelinger’s most recent is the more broadly themed No More Road Trips? Writer Rob Walker spoke with Prelinger about the film and his career in finding joy and insight in media most people eventually throw away.

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The stills, below are all from No More Road Trips? (2013), courtesy of Rick Prelinger.Â

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Produced by Rob Walker with Shelby El Otmani.

We unearth two gems from season one of the Organist: a funny and strange interview with the funny and strange songwriter and artist Devendra Banhart, followed by "Old-News Summary" with novelist Sam Lipsyte. CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.

Image courtesy Devendra Banhart

The wildly, diversely prolific artist Miranda July discusses her earliest, rarely seen punk plays, her radio work in the 90s, and her brand-new novel. CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.

Banner Image Credit: Miranda July

An exploration into the Aeolian tones of field recording, an art which uses contact microphones to summon alien compositions from the depths of seemingly benign ponds, bridges, and fence-posts.

Produced by Lawrence Dunn.

The Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos break down the process behind a song from their last record, revealing cut-up ping-pong blindfolds, looped handcuffs, isolation chambers, and telepathic Ganzfeld experiments. Plus Jenn Wasner, from the band Wye Oak.

Photo by Matmos