episode 26
• The recurring piece in the pre-race part is Team by Bon Iver. The part where the Olympic organizers go to the World’s Fair is the Main Title to the movie version of Meet Me In St. Louis (which is about the 1904 World’s Fair). There’s Divino Maravillhoso by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil in there, briefly. We also hear a song called Anma Arkadas by a Turkish psychedlic rock guy named Erkin Koray. Then we’ve got two from Moondog: “Theme” and “Symphonique #6″.
• I’ve read a lot about the ‘04 Olympics (in order to write this article for Slate). I’ll recommend two things: a book about the anthropological exhibits called Anthropology Goes to the Fair. But most fun is a first hand account by one of Hick’s coaches that’s available in all of its absurdity here: aafla.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1904/1904lucas.pdf
episode 25
• The martial song in the front is from the Horatio Hornblower soundtrack. The part that comes up in the middle of that and then picks up again after, is “Dmi We Meet Again?” from Jon Brion’s Synechdoche, New York soundtrack (slightly enhanced). The Porter part starts with a mix of “To Rest Near You” by Rachel’s and “Something You Can’t Return To,” also on the Synechdoche soundtrack. Then “Song for Jesse” from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Follow that up with a couple from the Marie Antoinette Soundtrack, “Opus 17″ by Dustin O’Halloran and “Avril 14″ by Aphex Twin, in that order.
• There’s a ton about Jones’ body (incidentally, this is the story I’ve gotten the most “I knew this story, but I like how you told it” sorts of emails about). For some reason, I was particularly charmed by a webpage straight out of Portsmouth, NH (R.I.P Yoken’s). They’ve got pictures of the preserved, dead Jones there too.
episode 24
• Acoustic guitar bit in the beginning is “Saint Cloud” by Six Organs of Admittance. Next up (and again at the end) is “Snookered” by Dan Deacon–a favorite song of 2009, if you care about that sort of thing. Also, “Harmonics” by Fridge.
• You can read the original articles in their entirety in several places online. (Why not go to the museum of hoaxes website to find it? it’s a fun site). The articles, incidentally, are wonderful. Really a work of genius of a particularly lovely sort.
episode 23
• Bookending music is “Shame” by Low. Two bits in the middle are by Mi and L’au: “They Marry,” and “Philosopher.”
• You can read lots and lots about Minik Wallace. (So much so that I felt a little lame about doing it). There’s even a quite good American Experience documentary. However, special commendation has to go out to Kenn Harper, a First Nations author (I believe) from up Canada Way, who not only wrote the (seemingly) definitive Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of MInik, the New York Eskimo” and was the guy who got Minik’s father Qisuk’s bones repatriated. Amazing.
episode 22
• First bit is “Minor Swing” by Django Reihardt. Then two from the dee-lightful soundtrack to Modesty Blaise (the super-campy mod spy flick). Then two pieces from the I Heart Huckabees soundtrack bookend “South American Getaway” from Burt Bacharach’s Butch/Sundance soundtrack. Oh: the bit at the beginning and end over the ad intro and out is “Old New Bicycle” by Helvetia.
• I love this story. I think my version’s pretty good, but the I love the story of John R. Brinkley. So much good stuff had to be left out to keep this podcast tight. There was a big biography that came out a few years ago called Charlatan that is very comprehensive. But I’d like to give a special shout out to a book called “Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves.” Hell, I’ll even give it an Amazon link. Because it is good (and tells all about Brinkley and the other people who followed his lead and broadcast from Mexico) and because one of its co-authors, a guy named Bill Crawford, gave me one of the best days I had in the last several years when he and a friend/colleague drove me down from Austin, past Brinkley’s Mansion in Del Rio, and down across the border to Acuna (where I interviewed the blind, current manager of a station that descended from Brinkley’s). Then back later that day through the high desert where we came up around this bend and I looked out and saw herds of animals grazing at sunset and learned that they were all Indian and African gazelles and Ibix and whatnot brought in to be hunted–turns out only native Texas animals are included in seasonal hunting laws. After which, I no longer mess with Texas.
episode 21
• First section’s music is from the Omen score. Creeeepy. Then you’ve got that instrumental from Magical Mystery Tour and a piece from the score from The Cove, that documentary about the cove in Japan where almost all of the show and research sea mammals come from, and the f’d up ways that the Japanese Gov’t hides its existence.
episode 20
• The music is from an album by Sonna. Who were from Baltimore, I think. I don’t know what the album is called (I’ve long since lost the cd case and it doesn’t have a name on the actual disc, as was the fashion, lo about 2000, when it came out on Temporary Residence). It’s a nice little cd. I had a lovely time once watching them play in my friend Bea’s living room.
• There is obviously tons and tons written about Poe and his death. The single most useful thing I found, however, was this sort of literature survey put out by an outfit called the Edgar Allan Poe Historical Society. m.
episode 19
• First piece is Max Richter’s “from 553 w elm st., logan, illinois (snow).” Second is (so far) the memory palace’s only repeat music: a loop taken from “triangles and rhombuses” by Boards of Canada (find the other one. it’ll be like some sort of not-particularly-fun, prizeless game).
• The Hoover Dam is rad. The sculpture is rad. The star map is super rad. And super ridiculous. Go see it. If it’s been awhile since you’ve gone to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s website, here’s an article about the sculpture.
• This piece was premiered (if you will) as a live reading at Issue 2 of Pop Up Magazine in San Francisco. It was very fun.
episode 18
• Start off with a piece from the creepy-ass soundtrack to the creepy-ass movie, The Descent. Move onto the intro to Caledonia by Crogmagnon (a favorite record of 1969 psychedelic nonsense of mine). Then, coincidentally, also from 1969, Gilberto Gil’s “Volks, Volkswagen Blue.” Then a couple things smushed together from Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Great Escape (why not). Then a nice piece from the score to whatdyacallit, that Errol Morris/Robert MacNamara documentary. Then Tuba Concerto II (which you can totally follow even if you didn’t see the first Tuba Concerto) by James Gourlay on the British Tuba Concertos album, but I don’t need to tell YOU that.
• Couple of notes: first, this escape inspired the movie The Great Escape. They of course, made it an allied escape. And, having produced this episode, I can relate: not only does no one want to sit through an hour and a half about clever Nazis, I found it a little weird empathizing (for the purposes of writing the podcast) with homesick members of the Third Reich–but I just love the thing about the river. I love that they screw themselves. Other thing: the captain in the story was eventually caught in Phoenix, though he lived successfully on the lam for some time. The kicker, however, is if you drank a St. Pauli beer back in the heyday of their questionable/skeezy “you never forget your first girl” ad campaigns with the buxom german barmaid, you helped pay Captain Wattenberg’s salary. He was the head of the St. Pauli brewery for decades.
episode 17
• We roll through a couple of movie score pieces (”piano 1″ from Jon Brion’s Synecdoche, New York soundtrack, “Tissue,” from Thomas Newman’s Little Children soundtrack). Then you’ve got “Temporary Loan” by Edith Frost (from her Calling Over Time record–which is so good, by the way), “Every Day a Sunrise, a Summer,” by Telegraph Melts, and The Hold Steady covering Springsteen’s Atlantic City on a benefit album from an an international organization called WarChild that works on child soldier issues.
• Accounts of Sam’s life vary pretty wildly and can be pretty tricky to sort out. One of the best accounts (it’s gotta be the most comprehensive), it seems, is Paul E. Johnson’s book, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper.
episode 16
• The bookending music is “Ptah, the El Daoud” from Alice Coltrane’s album of the same, very-1970 name. Then there are two, slightly chopped up songs from Broadcast (both on “Work and Non-Work”), Phantom and The Book Lovers.
• You can read about Acoustic Kitty (yes, that’s actually what they called the project) all over the place–there were lots of news articles when the files were declassified several years ago. However, my favorite thing on the web is an actual declassified document. Even after the cat dies and the mission’s a total failure, the scientists clearly feel pretty awesome: despite being “convinced that the program would not lend itself to [their] highly specialized needs,” they declare victory in the quest to train a cat to go short distances, even if they can’t control to where, and proclaim it “a remarkable scientific achievement.” To which I say: way to go. You spent millions of 1966 dollars. Sliced open live animals. Inserted wires and microphones and zapped them with electrical charges and now they can go short distances. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
episode 15
• That’s Running Thoughts, by Deerhoof up top followed by a chopped up, I’m Still Your Fag by Broken Social Scene. Two Psapp cuts (King Kong and Chapter). And then Jupiter, by Jersey Turnpike. (Jersey Turnpike make their second appearance in two episodes).
• Best thing I read about Walker? A book called “Fillibusters and Financiers: The Story of William Walker and His Associates” by Walter Oscar Scroggs, written in 1916. Thank you Google Books.
episode 14
· The first and last bit are from a song called “Sunder” from the album permafrost by Jersey Turnpike (it’s a lovely album)After that you’ve got Roadrunner, by Papa M and Triangles and Rhombuses by Boards of Canada (late-nineties style on those two). There’s a Erik Satie snippet in there and Can’t Return (for the Last Time) from the Synecdoche, New York soundtrack.
· I ran across the Ellen Craft story twice recently, most powerfully in James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom (which turns out to be a good audio book, incidentally).
episode 13
· There are two Erik Satie pieces in here: Denieres Pensees 1 & 2. Then you’ve got a little Rainbow, by Battles. And then at the end, En Gallop, by Joanna Newsom (which I felt lame about looping so heavily because I know it so well and know that it’ll be distracting to those who do. But then I convinced myself that a loop works a little bit like a Ferris Wheel and felt marginally better).
· I’m a full-on Columbian Exhibition of 1893 nerd. Have a ticket to it framed on our dining room wall. For all of your Chicago World’s Fair fact-needs, The Devil in the White City is the place to go. For your heartbreak and beauty needs, go to Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware.
episode 12
- Went back to Max Richter well on this one. Three pieces (”The Road is a Gray Tape,” “Broken Symmetries at Y,” followed by “A Sudden Manhattan of the Mind”) from the 24 Postcards in Full Color record.
- I’ve loved this story for years and years. I was spurred into doing it for the podcast after flipping through David Milner’s book, Perfecting Sound Forever.
episode 11
-The first two pieces are two different versions of Aphex Twin’s “Jynwythek Ylow.” The first is by a chamber ensemble called Alarm Will Sound from an album in which they do chamber music versions of Aphex Twin compositions–which sounds super-lame but is actually pretty great. The second version is the original of the Drukqs album. The piano piece is “Opus 23″ by Dustin O’Halloran.
-I’ve read about the Booths in several places (you kind of can’t avoid them), but I think I fell for Edwin’s story during the visit Sarah Vowell takes to see his statue in Gramercy Park in “Assasination Vacation.”
episode 10
- The two piano pieces that bookend the piece are by Max Richter from his 24 Postcards in Full Color record. The one in the middle is Maybelle by Ida. It popped up on shuffle the other day and stunned me. I hadn’t heard it in years. It’s really lovely.
- My friend, Tony Field produces a show called “Backstory with the History Guys.” A version of this story airs on their mother’s day special. www.backstoryradio.org
Episode 9
· That’s The Faire Folk by Lightning Bolt. Who are among of the best things about being from Providence, Rhode Island.
· I first heard about the British fear of Franklin when I interviewed a Harvard Professor named Joyce Chaplin about her book The First Scientific American for a public affairs show out here in L.A.. It’s archived: http://www.scpr.org/programs/zocalo/index.html
episode 8
· We’ve got three pieces from Jon Brion’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack. Since discovering it, I now worry that I’m going to get lazy and only use pieces from Jon Brion soundtracks because it turns out that they’re pretty great. The other song is Quartet for Four Tubas by some guy named P. Holmes (which sounds like a terrible hip hop name) and is played by The British Tuba Quartet. Which sounds like it would be a terrible piece of music but is actually kind of wonderful.
episode 7
· The bookending song is, indeed, “Reminisce Over You,” by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Deal with it. The middle section is “A Painting,” by Growing.
· For the second episode in a row, my plans got thwarted by facts. Bad Jobs #1 was supposed to be about these boys who sat in the dark in a tunnel dug into the seabed beneath Narragansett Bay between Newport and Jamestown, Rhode Island. The boys were working for the Navy during the War of 1812, sitting in the muddy tunnel in the middle of the night listening for subtle shifts in sound inside the narrow passage. If the sound changed there was a British Ship trying to slip into Newport Harbor under cover of night for a sneak attack. This story has fascinated me for at least a decade, since a friend told me about the boys one beautiful afternoon tooling around Fort Wetherill, an abandoned WWII gunnery on Jamestown (where they once looked for ships trying to slip into Newport Harbor for a sneak attack). Problem is, the story’s not true at all. Total fabrication, according to the folks at the Fort Adams historic site (well, not a total fabrication; it’s actually a couple of less-interesting phenomena conflated and enhanced with a healthy dose of freestyling). That’s the long way to say: tip of the hat to my friend Mose, who had an entirely true tale of other kids in tunnels at the ready while sitting at the movies the other day, waiting to be disappointed by The Watchmen.
episode 6
· The song is “Pastoral” by Moondog.
· I first read about the sad, sad Pierces in a book of Presidential profiles I got at a used bookstore. The book, upon further research, got a key detail wrong. I SO wish it were right, though: the way I first learned the story, Benny Pierce gets killed on the way to the inaugural. So, they’re on their way from New Hampshire; Jane is convinced that they are tempting the wrath of God; the train stops in Baltimore and Benny dies, proving it; she gets off the train; Franklin has to keep going because he’s about to be inaugurated as President of the United States. An epic, if apocryphal, story. Damn facts…
episode 5
· The music is the third track on Panda Bear’s Young Prayer record.
· Most of the details in this one come from Pretty-Much-the-Greatest-Book-Ever, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro. If you read only one thirty five year old, thousand-some-odd page biography of an urban planner this year, make it that one.
episode 4
· The first part is the Kronos Quartet rocking Henryk Gorecki’s Sting Quartet no. 2. Opus 64 “Quasi una Fantasia.”
· Second song is “Berlin by Overnight” by Max Richter.
episode 3
· The music for the first that band the Beatles, you should check them out some time. There’s also a Prince sample thrown in for comedy’s sake.
· The song under the nun story is called “Swiss Ex-Lover” by Fight Bite.
episode 2
· The music is on the album Live From a Shark Cage by Papa M, one of the noms d’rock of Dave Pajo.
episode 1
· That song in the background is Nina Simone doing “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” the Cole Porter Song, at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. It’s on the “Nina Simone at Newport Record.” It’s fantastic.
· Also fantastic? The New York Times online archives from 1849. I can nerd out on that biz for hours.
