Studs Talks To Poets - Airs April 23rd & 30th

Studs Terkel in Conversation with American Poets from WFMT and The Poetry Foundation
That's right, you angel-headed hipsters who listen to hydrogen jukeboxes, it's National Poetry Month again! To celebrate this year, we'll be airing airing several selections from the Studs Turkel Radio Archives over these last two weeks of April.
First, we'll hear Studs exploring how poetry enables people to channel the voices of others -- featuring excerpts from interviews with Elma Stuckey and John Ciardi. Then strap in for adventure, we're travelling to Africa with James Baldwin and are headed on an interplanetary rocket-poem trip with Allen Ginsberg and other Beats.
In part two of our program, Studs delves into the realm of memory as Howard Nemerov and Gwendolyn Brooks read poems about childhood and the fleeting nature of time. Plus, we will also hear poems by J. Otis Powell!, Walt Whitman, and Wyatt Prunty speaking on Poetry Off The Shelf.

Cum on Feel the Noize - Airs April 16th

Tuning the Body from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening
In the Middle Ages sound played a key role in the battle between Good and Evil. There were horrible sins of the tongue - idle words, boasting, flattery, lying, and blaspheming – as well as sins of the ear: eavesdropping and the seduction of devilish words. The ears were the gateway not just to the body, but also the soul. Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex considers the importance of noise to Medieval morality.

Heavenly Sounds from Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening
Worshippers in the Middle Ages would have been struck not just by the visual spectacle of great churches and grand cathedrals, but also their sound. Medieval churches in the west had very different acoustics to the low-roofed, wattle and daub homes where most of their congregation lived. David explores how preachers and singers created sounds that fitted these holy spaces beautifully, from Romanesque churches, to the musical pillars of Hampi, and an extraordinary 16th century experiment in stereo in St Mark's in Venice.

Black Gold Boom - Aired April 9

The Listening Lounge supports the work of independent producers nationwide, including the Listening Lounge's very own Todd Melby. For the past two years, Melby has been wandering around western North Dakota, documenting the stories of oilfield workers, itinerant knife sellers, food truck owners, guys that sell pickup truck stickers (James Gores, pictured) and all kinds of people who are participating in one of America's biggest oil booms. The project is called Black Gold Boom -- it's a big public media project with an interactive documentary, videos, aerial photography and more. But at the heart of it is radio. Engaging audio stories about people and their lives. Listen in to hear a few of Todd's stories. (Photo by Ben Garvin)

Recent Favorites - Aired April 2nd

KFAI is community-supported radio: the programs you hear everyday are made possible by listener-members! Please show your support by visiting KFAI today! For pledge drive, we've curated a greatest-hits-style episode of favorite stories we've played over the past six months: 

From our "Computer Love" episode: TI-99/4A from The Optimist
What could be more fun than a Texas Instruments home computer, a dot matrix printer, and a text adventure game on a cassette drive!? Well, all of this and some poorly written BASIC programming awaits you. We join author Tom Pappalardo as he waxes nostalgic for way back when he actually understood how his computer worked. 

From our "Lands of Make Believe" episode: The World Within the World from The Memory Palace
A NYU PhD candidate's studies go off the rails sending him on a lonely quest to prove the world is hollow. An idea based on ancient legends that there are entire civilizations which thrive in subterranean cities. Obviously these dwellers of the world beneath are more technologically advanced than we are on the surface. He also believed that they were poised to help us immensely, if only we could find them. 

From our "Five Stories of War" episode: Fighter Pilot by Kathy Tu
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Michael McGee talk about the experience of being a fighter pilot during one of his first missions in the Gulf War, one he will never forget. Plus, go behind-the-scenes with HowSound host Rob Rosenthal to learn how rookie producer Tu made this impressive, sound-rich piece.