The Selects Podcast

This week we're sharing a banger documentary from Kelly McEvers which may leave you standing, staring at a wall by the end.  The podcast version of a driveway moment.  

Ten years before McEvers' show Embedded hit the air, you can hear the idea for it beginning to form.  Diary of a Bad Year is a bold and compelling look at why journalists risk it all for the story.  

Today we're presenting a documentary about an icon, Tony Schwartz, and made by icons, The Kitchen Sisters.  

For thirty years (1945-1976), Schwartz created and produced a radio program for WNYC featuring the people and sounds of New York City.  He amassed an archive of recordings (now housed in the Library of Congress) that are expertly mixed together in this documentary so listeners can hear the world as Tony Schwartz did. 

This week we're sharing the story "A Level Playing Field" from John Biewen's series Contested, the first season of his iconic show Scene on Radio.  

Contested considers the American relationship to sports, and this episode looks at the way money permeates sport and how it distorts reality to create unrealistic expectations for young athletes and communities of color. 

Today we present a documentary by The Heart that is astonishing.  

"When I was younger, someone took a knife to my clitoris and cut out a small, but significant part of me."

Based on writer Mariya Karimjee's 2015 essay "Damage," we hear a deeply intimate portrait of Mariya's a journey from her childhood in Pakistan, to her adolescence in Texas, through college, all the way to where she is now, back in Pakistan as she navigates family, love, her body and her personal relationships, all despite the physical and emotional trauma that she has suffered.

Today we're sharing the 1998 documentary The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, as well as the 2006 documentary The Imaginary Village  by Sandy Tolan and Melissa Robbins.  

The Lemon Tree explores the relationship between a Palestinian man named Bashir and Dalia, a Bulgarian-born Israeli who moved into his childhood home in the West Bank.  The piece was turned into an award-winning book of the same name.  

The Imaginary Village explores the longing for land and home by Palestinian refugees.

They were released together in a 2008 special to mark the 60th anniversary of the Arab-Israeli war and...

Today we present an all time favorite of the team at Selects.  This iconic work by Dave Isay and Stacy Abramson is a vivid portrait of New York City’s Bowery, before it got swallowed by a museum and high end retail and luxury real estate.  In the late 90’s The Sunshine Hotel remained one of the last flophouses left on the Bowery, New York’s skid row. As you meet the cast of characters at the Sunshine hotel you will be transported to another time in New York City history.  

This small collection of oral histories from one...

This week we're featuring one episode of The Big Read, a series that is essentially a national book club for the radio.  

In 2007, America decided it was having a literary crisis (and Sold a Story wouldn’t come out for another 15 years).  So, in response, the National Endowment for the Arts launched The Big Read, a program to bring people together to read some of the most acclaimed works of fiction by American authors.  Alongside grassroots local events, the NEA produced a series of audio documentaries for The Big Read, each featuring writers, actors and luminaries discussing a par...

Today we're publishing a new collection for subscribers featuring three eyewitness accounts to historical events we often know solely through images or history books. These Radio Diaries are gripping and immersive, with incredible tape that transports a listener from a cursory understanding to one that is rich with individual experience.  We're sharing one of those here: a personal account of surviving the Tulsa Race Riot. 

The art of unscripted audio documentary has been perfected by Joe Richman and the team at Radio Diaries.  For 30 years, this team has encouraged and empowered individuals to report on their own liv...

This week, we follow Dmae Lo Roberts and her mother, Chu-Yin, as they travel to Taiwan together.  Dmae seeks an opportunity to grow closer with her mother, but the trip ends with them not speaking.  

First produced in 1989, Roberts’ Peabody Award-winning documentary is highly personal and groundbreaking -- weaving interviews and dramatizations to tell the story of a conflicted daughter and her mother who suffered abuse, starvation and the horrors of World War Two.

This week we've got a new collection for subscribers and we're excited to share one of them with you today.   

Tossing Away the Keys is a documentary by Dave Isay and Sound Portraits, and a masterclass in audio documentary.  It expertly uses the medium to take listeners somewhere they may never be, and let them hear something they'll never forget.  Give it a listen and check out the whole Early True Crime collection with a free trial of the Selects channel.

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...

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. L...

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.

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.

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.