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 flag...

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Original Series Credits:

Beyond Gay Marriage was hosted and produced by Lisa Dettmer and co-produced bt Elena Botkin-Levy. Financial support was provided by Astraea Foundation and Making Contact at the National Radio Project. Lisa Dettmer is a radio producer with the feminist radio show "Women’s Magazine" at KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California, which can be heard at kpfa.org/program/womens-magazine.  You can contact Lisa Dettmer at [email protected].  

If you want to read an article based on this radio documentary go to www.academia.edu/11699431/Beyond_Gay_Marriage_Assimilation_within_the_Queer_community?sm=b

Mitra speaks with Sonja Williams, one of the producers of Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was about her career in audio, and in particular her relationship with archival audio and scholarship.  

It’s the first thing you learn as a radio reporter. Check your levels by asking an interview subject the question “what did you have for breakfast?” It’s disarming. But it’s also revealing.  In this piece by Annie Cheney and Jay Allison, the question becomes the story vehicle and we're treated to a story about the complicated relationship between food, eating, family, and friendship.

More about Concerning Breakfast can be found on Transom: https://transom.org/2015/concerning-breakfast/

Concerning Breakfast was part of a series of pieces produced by Jay Allison with Christina Egloff called The Life Stories Collection. 

At the end of last month, we lost an audio icon: Larry Massett.  As a sort of tribute, we want to share one of the Four Stories About Travel we just put on the Selects Channel.  This piece originally aired on Hearing Voices.  Larry is a legendary producer and host who describes himself as being present at the inception of public media. It's a trip down memory lane, literally and figuratively, with a fun payoff at the end.  

We have got four stories about travel for you. However, these are not your typical travel stories - we've got a story from Outer Voices about nomadic sheep herders in Mongolia, the diary of a foul mouthed teenager on a camping trip read live on Mortified, Producer Larry Massett on traveling with his mother, and an early work by Arlie Adlington featuring a watchmaker considering time travel.  These are transportive, funny and endearing works of audio. As summer approaches, maybe these stories will inspire you to take a visit to…somewhere…

This month we're proud to present one episode of the six-part series Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was (1996), created by PRX and the Smithsonian telling the story of radio’s role in the 20th century transformation of the African American community.

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Original Series Credits:

Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was was a 12-episode radio series hosted by Lou Rawls and produced for the Smithsonian in 1996. Series Producer: Jacquie Gales Webb. Episode Producers: Sonja Williams and Lex Gillespie. Production Manager: John Tyler. Post-Production Engineers: John Paulson and Matthew Sakakeeny. EP: Wesley Horner. 

Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was was made possible in 1996 by a major grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with additional support from the James Smithson Society and the Public Radio International Program Fund, whose contributors included the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

PRX reformatted and redistributed Black Radio in 2021 for its 25th anniversary. Re-formatting by Genevieve Sponsler and Se'era Spragley-Ricks

We've got a new show available for Selects members!  These four selections of the American Icons series are astounding listens, and made by some of the most influential audio producers working (and not working) today.  

You can listen on our Apple Podcasts Channel or by going to Selects.fm

In this special bonus episode, Mitra interviews Sean Cole about his early career, the time he spent at This American Life, and what's next.  You'll cry tears of quality. 

For our inaugural episode of Selects, we're proud to present Sean Cole's piece Call NOW! originally created for Life of the Law.  

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Original Credits for the Series:

Production Credits:

Reporter/Producer: Sean Cole
Producer: Kaitlin Prest
Music: Kyle Kaplan, Todd MacDonald, Matthew Darr
Additional Production: Shannon Heffernan, Ashleyanne Krigbaum
Additional Music – Andrea Hendrickson
Social Media Editor – Rachael Cain
Executive Producer – Nancy Mullane
Executive Director – Tony Gannon