Transmissions
Every Voice: The Magic Flute: From Morehouse … to the opera house with Monostatos
David Norville + Terrance McKnight (US 2023)
David Norville + Terrance McKnight (US 2023)
22min Episode 1 of 5
Every Voice spotlights the vibrant stories and perspectives that reflect the whole of the American musical experience. There are many different kinds of classical music, depending on where you are in the world. While this music typically preserves the traditions of a given society, classical music in America remains wedded to its Western European roots. This show explores why — and what America’s classical music really sounds like. Through interviews, historical investigation, and personal storytelling, Terrance McKnight unearths the hidden voices that have been shaping our musical traditions all along. This debut season examines the representation of Blackness in opera. While character flaws are universal, stereotypes often fall along racial lines. We look at the loneliness, jealousy, self-loathing, and cultural appropriation associated with African characters in 18th and 19th century operas by Mozart and Verdi, introducing the African-American personalities found in the operas of Atlanta-based composer Dr. Sharon Willis.
Hosted by Terrance McKnight
Produced by David Norville
Contributing Strategic Advisor Tony Phillips
Dwelling: Squats, protest and Olive Morris
Marnie Woodmeade (UK 2023)
Marnie Woodmeade (UK 2023)
30min Episode 1 of 5
As the housing crisis deepens, home is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Join host Marnie Woodmeade as we speak to the people seeking alternatives. From abandoned buildings to lost rivers, they redefine what a home can be. But as restrictions on alternative lifestyles tighten, how can they protect their sanctuaries, sites of resistance and dwelling?
Squats have been demonised by the media, but how have empty buildings supported the feminist, environmental and black power movement?
Hosted and produced by: Marnie Woodmeade
Powered by Transmission Roundhouse
Discarded: Addicted to Convenience
Gloria Riviera, Alie Kilts, (US 2023)
Gloria Riviera and Alie Kilts (US 2023)
42 min Episode 1 of 4
The invention of plastic changed the way we live — and now we’re hooked. The journey starts in Louisiana, where plastic is born, to New Jersey, where plastic goes to die… or live again. This episode explores greenwashing, wish-cycling, and our collective culpability as we try to understand how we became so reliant on plastic — despite knowing its harm to the earth and the communities closely impacted.
This is the story of a modern-day Erin Brockovich, set on the Mississippi River in an area known as “Cancer Alley.” Her name is Sharon Lavigne, her community is St. James Parish in Louisiana, and her fight is to keep out one of the largest plastic manufacturing companies in the world. In this investigative four-part series, hosted by Emmy award-winning journalist Gloria Riviera, we discover how our plastic world came to be. Because plastic is everywhere – it has advanced our world, but it has damaged our environment and our health. So what do we do? We look at what’s next for all of us, and how we can learn from communities like St. James to make a difference in our own backyards.
This series is presented in partnership with Only One, the action platform for the planet.
A Lemonada Media original
Hosted by Gloria Riviera
Produced by Alie Kilts
The Syria Trials: The Doctors Who Resisted
Sasha Edye-Lindner (UK 2022)
Sasha Edye-Lindner - 75 Podcasts (UK 2022)
29 min Episode 3 of 11
While many doctors and medical staff sided with the Syrian regime after the protests began in Syria in 2011, there were, of course, many doctors, nurses and medical students who sided with the protestors calling for freedom and democracy. Field medical teams to help injured protestors, and later field medical hospitals and checkpoints to care for those wounded in the escalating war, were set up - only to become targets of the regime’s increasingly more violent tactics.
Please take care when listening - this episode talks about violence and war.
The Syria Trials takes the listener on a trip through the stories around the scattered landscape of justice and accountability efforts for the atrocious crimes committed by the regime in Syria, since it violently suppressed the peaceful revolution in 2011. Less than a year after the Koblenz trial, the world’s first criminal trial to convict a Syrian official, they explore the other trials now underway, as well as the cases being built, that all set out to bring about justice for Syria. Where are we now on the long and complicated road to justice? What does the road ahead look like? What can the law and international justice do - and what can’t it do - for Syria?
Hosted by: Fritz Streiff
Produced by Sasha Edye-Lindner
Created by 75 Podcasts
Radio Ballad: The Travelling People (1964)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1963)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This ballad gives voice to travellers in the UK as well as the people who have a distrust or fear of this group. Note this was recorded in 1963 and some people featured are quite outspoken about their racist beliefs.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
Phantom Power: The Sound World of Harriet Tubman
Maya Cunningham + Ravi Krishnaswami (US 2023)
Maya Cunningham + Ravi Krishnaswami (US 2023)
41 min Episode 7 of 7
Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham reads “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology
She uses field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. You’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. The sounds and music from today’s show can be heard on Maya’s Spotify playlist
Produced for Phantom Power
Written and narrated by Maya Cunningham
Produced by Ravi Krishnaswami
A Fluorescent Feeling: How pain is received
Georgia Mill, Beth Atkinson-Quinton (AUS 2021)
Georgia Mill + Beth Atkinson-Quinton for Broadwave (AUS 2021)
24 min Episode 2 of 3
A Fluorescent Feeling explores pain and our bodies – how we talk about them and live inside them.
Over three million Australians live with chronic pain. Being in pain can be lonely, boring, scary and frustrating. But what if it could also be beautiful, colourful and textural? What if we could share it with others? This audio mini-series introduces you to people with lived experiences of pain, illness and disability. Featuring artists, writers, designers and video journalists,
This episode focuses on gaslighting and patronising behaviour as well as the importance of representation when it comes to chronic pain. You’ll hear from London-based filmmaker and video journalist Jameisha Prescod who is the creator and founder of ‘You Look Okay to Me’ – an online space for chronic illness; and listen to an edited excerpt of I’m Not a Good Girl, a performance by Melbourne-based artist Sam Petersen..
Produced and hosted by: Georgia Mill
Produced by Beth Atkinson-Quinton
Sound design: Michelle Macklem
Understanding Gwyn
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
10 min,
What happens when we reframe our journey with grief as a relationship? 'Understanding Gwyn' is an immersive unscripted story that brings this question to life as Christina Watson recounts her 34 year relationship with 'Gwyn'.
The piece was collaboratively co-created through a series of facilitated workshops and interviews, from which Christina created the character 'Gwyn'; a living, breathing manifestation of her grief.
Inspired by counselling & psychotherapy techniques that ‘bring to life’ adverse experiences through characterisation, adapted by the producer into a device for documentary storytelling.
This piece demonstrates just how powerful naming and anthropomorphising an emotion can be in order to accept it for what it is.
Audio Produced by Christina Hardinge
Co-created by Christina Watson
Music by Noemie Ducimetiere
A Falling Tree Production
The Gospel of Harm Reduction
Haley Paskalides (US 2022)
Haley Paskalides (US 2022)
10min
In this traditional 'NPR' style radio reporting, Haley Paskalides meets Jesse Harvey who created the Church of Safe Injection to give drug users in Maine the resources and support they needed. This story is about how the organisation decided to move forward in the wake of his passing and the women who kept his dream alive.
PLEASE NOTE: This story contains references to substance misuse disorder and sexual abuse. Please take care while listening.
Produced and hosted by: Haley Paskalides
Produced for the Salt Institute
Tales of the Town: The Great Migrations
Delency Parham and Abbas Muntaqim (US 2022)
Delency Parham and Abbas Muntaqim (US 2022)
34min Episode 1 of 12
The first epsiode in a 12 part grassroots series telling over 100 years of Oakland history. There’s over 30 interviews, from elders, ancestors, and peers, that tell the tales of the town. The series starts with the 1st and 2nd Great Migrations that brought Black Southerners in influx to the Bay Area - looking at the circumstances that made these people travel across the country in search of “freedom” and opportunities and the struggles they encountered upon arrival.
Produced and hosted by: Delency Parham and Abbas Muntaqim
Audio Production: Maya Cueva