Re:sound

This hour, stories that grab hold of our expectations and smash the binary. My Name Is Shawn and I Prefer He by Judy Campbell & Amy Standed for The Leap from KQED (2015) Shawn Demmons is a 50-year-old man now, but when he was growing up, he was Shawna Demmons. Lately we’ve heard a lot of stories about people who, after years in the closet, found the courage to come out as transgender. But for Shawn, courage was never the problem. His leap was a four decade journey to realize he was a man. And then he had to decide just what kind of man he wanted to be. Twirl by Kaitlin Prest for The Heart (2017) Todd once loved a woman. And she loved him back, but there was one thing that she just couldn’t get over, he twirls. This piece explores what it means to be effeminate when you’re a straight cis-dude. Kaitlin talks to men who embrace and resist their femininity. The Accidental Gay Parents by Hillary Frank for The Longest Shortest Time (2015) in this story, gender is just a small piece of a complicated situation our protagonists find themselves in. Theirs is a tale that turns assumptions upside down: it’s a passionate love story, a tense legal drama, and a complicated family affair, that starts when boy meets boy. This episode of Re:sound was produced by Dennis Funk

This hour two stories about what remains after the fighting stops. Guilty Landscape By Anik See for Earth Beat from Radio Netherlands Worldwide (2012) World War I started nearly one hundred years ago. As far as wars go, it was epic – ten million soldiers died in just four years. Over two million of them alone died on the Western Front near Ypres, and the landscape of Flanders was completely devastated. Not a living tree or blade of grass survived. But are the marks of war still visible? What’s it like there now? To find out, Anik went there with her young son. Saigon, 1965 By Malcolm Gladwell, Mia Lobel, Roxanne Scott and Jacob Smith Revisionist History (2016) In the early 1960s the Pentagon set up a top-secret research project in an old villa in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas in order to measure the effect of relentless U.S. bombing on their morale. Yet despite a wealth of great data, even the leaders of the study couldn’t agree on what it...

This hour stories dedicated to our furry and not-so-furry friends. Flash! (parts I & II) by Daimiano Marchetti with Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt (Reply All, 2016 & 2017) Craigslist: Santa Rosa, California. Lost & found. Post title: Lost tortoise. Flash has escaped. Charles Mingus Toilet Trained His Cat. We Put His Method to the Test by Jody Avigran (Studio360 [WNYC], 2014) The jazz musician Charles Mingus was a celebrated band leader and one of the most important composers of his generation. But at the same time he was recording The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, he was working on another masterpiece of sorts. He figured out how to get his cat, Nightlife, to poop in a toilet — and he decided he’d share his method with the world. Snowdrift by Jennifer Wing (Sound Effect [KNKX], 2015) The story of a lost cat that didn’t actually want to be found. Are Animals Creative? by Sean Cole (Studio360 [WNYC], 2006) What separates humans from animals? It used to be tools - and then...

This hour, Mother’s Day, in all it’s beautiful, complicated glory. Deliverance by Francesca Panetta and Lucy Greenwell with presenter Lemn Sissay for Between the Ears (BBC Radio 3, 2015) A sound poem made from the audio diaries of five women in their final days of pregnancy. International Brotherhood of Mothers By Nate DiMeo for The Memory Palace (2009) The story of the founding of Mother’s Day and the holiday’s social justice origins turned commercial. Private Black Motherhood and Public White Protest By Stacia Brown for Hope Chest (2017) Stacia knows all too well that some adults start treating young black girls as women as early as age 7. In this personal essay - which weaves together Stacia's prose with the perfect measure of interview, music and found sound - we hear about the fears and joys of black motherhood especially in this Trumpian era of blatant racism. On Death and Space Clouds By Tally Abecassis for First Day Back (2016) After your mom is gone, and all that remains is her voice in your...

This hour stories that dive below the surface to help us understand issues of race, the environment and immigration. How Race Was Made (Seeing White Part 2) [excerpt] by John Biewen ( Scene on Radio , 2017) When producer John Biewen was in high school in the late 1970s, he learned from his textbooks that people could be divided into three distinct races — mongoloid, caucasoid and negroid. Decades later he wondered when and how this now debunked theory of race took hold. In this episode, John looks at those distinctions arose. This excerpt is the second episode of a multi-part series John is producing on race called 'Seeing White'. You can listen to all of the episodes on the Scene on Radio website (http://podcast.cdsporch.org/) or subscribe to the podcast. How the Environment Got Political [excerpt] by Brooke Gladstone ( On the Media from WNYC Studios, 2017) In the 1960's the issues pertaining to the environment were not nearly as divisive as they are today (e.g. Global Warming). Back then, the...

Earlier this week Third Coast held a public discussion in Chicago about the big podcast of the moment, S-Town. We recorded this event live at Ipsento606 with about 50 S-Town super fans. To join in on the discussion, visit facebook.com/groups/stownhall

This hour redefinition, reflection... and the new you. The Understudy By Sophie Townsend with Mira Burt-Wintonick and Cristal Duhaime for Love Me (CBC, 2016) Sophie Townsend has been a widow for a year and a half. She is too busy taking care of her children to entertain the idea of dating, until a man compliments her shoes. Katie V Katie By Nancy Lopez for Snap Judgement (2017) When Katie Crouch learned there was another Katie Crouch who lived in the same city and apparently had the same professional interests as her she thought, huh, what else do we have in common? She would soon find out. Not All Who Wander Are Lost…But Some Definitely Are By James Spring for This American Life (2014) A car is a classic place to realize: "oh, I’m lost." But sometimes the realization of being lost comes first, and the car is the solution. Drive, keep driving, get un-lost. James Spring has this story about a road trip as life plan. This episode of Re:sound was produced by Dennis Funk

This hour, “I do” or “do I?” the calculus for marriage, for better and for worse. Majd’s Diary: Two Years in the Life of a Saudi Girl by Joe Richman and Sarah Kramer (Radio Diaries, 2016) A few years ago, Radio diaries teamed up with Cowbird, a public storytelling website and held a competition to find a fresh voice. They discovered Majd Abdulghani, a muslim teenager in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a young woman under pressure from her parents to consider an arranged marriage. How Will I Know? by Andrea Silenzi (Why Oh Why, 2016) Andrea Silenzi, host of the relationship podcast Why Oh Why, looks back at the role the show has played in her personal life. Travel through the past three years as Andrea talks to her editor, Hillary Frank, about what’s going on in her relationship. Choose Responsibly by Dennis Funk (Re:sound debut, 2017) Choosing a partner is just a game, or is it? The Wedding Song by Yenting Hsu (ARTE Radio, 2011) At the time of her marriage, a Paiwan princess bids farewell to her family...

This hour we’re coming to you from inside the Third Coast Institute of Sound — a fictional museum we’ve dreamed up where all of the exhibits and artifacts are dedicated to things that make sound and noise. The Cat Piano (on loan from The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments) By Victoria Ferran with Sound Engineer Chris O’Shaughnessy for Soundproof (ABC RN, 2016) The history of the cat piano goes back centuries and raises unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions about the relationship between music and noise, human and animal. Vox Ex Machina By Delaney Hall and Roman Mars for 99% Invisible In 1939, an astonishing new machine debuted at the New York World’s Fair. An operator sat at the organ-like device’s curved wooden console with a giant speaker towering behind her. She faced an expectant audience, placed her hands on a keyboard in front of her, and then played something the world had never really heard before — a synthesized voice. Mr Pumpernickle's Musical Gas (on loan from The Museum of...

This hour, rabbit holes — stories that start exploring one small thing and unexpectedly end up telling a much richer story. No Place Like Home by Phoebe Judge and Lauren Sporher (Criminal, 2015) In the early 90s, a wealthy magazine publisher was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 18 months in a minimum security prison in Louisiana. But white collar criminals weren’t the only people living there, and the other people inside had basically been forgotten about by the outside world, some of them for decades. Shipped to Timbuktu by PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman and Alex Blumberg (Reply All, 2015) A missent email from the world of professional cookie advisers sends PJ hurtling down a path to WWII Japan. We'll Drive Till We Find An Exit [EXCERPT] presented by PJ Vogt at the 2016 Third Coast Conference A session about the joy and fear of pursuing stories without any idea of how they're going to succeed, or if they're going to succeed at all. Reply All’s PJ Vogt shares some tricks for making these kinds of...