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Weekend: Long-Form

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New Album: Paradise Valley out now: http://smarturl.it/whoyoulove

Paradise Valley

Who You Love (feat. Katy Perry)

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NASA's Voyager spacecraft has landed: meet the aliens who found it. Performed by Chet Siegel and Peter McNerney. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Voyager Found

What happens when you curse your own country? In this version of the classic Americana tale your host is sentenced to live out the rest of his days in a hot air balloon.  In part one we hear the story of what happened when he fought the "three strikes you are out forever" law and lost. Plus Howard Zinn on the myth of American Exceptionalism.

The American writer Edward Everett Hale first published his story The Man Without a Country in the pages of the Atlantic in December 1863. It is the story of an army lieutenant named Philip Nolan, who in his youth cursed America. The judge sentenced him to live out the rest of his life consigned to a US navy ship - never to set foot or eyes on his native land, and this sentence was carried out to the letter. In this version your host curses America and is sentenced to live out the rest of his days on a hot air balloon. 

This is the definitive version of a story I have been working on for many years. It includes a historical examination of various versions of the tale that have been produced over the last hundred years as well as audio from a conversation I had with Howard Zinn in 2005, and the one and only Glynn Washington (host of the radio show Snap Judgement) shares his own story of growing up black in a Christian white-supremacist cult. 



Man Without a Country (1 of 3)

Shapenote singing is a tradition developed in the late 1700's and early 1800's that helped everyday people sing music even if they couldn't sight-read standard musical notation. Shapenote and the Sacred Harp songbook are still allowing people to share a musical experience until this day. Learn more about this tradition from Anne Heider, Robert from the Chicago Shapenote Singers, and Ruth Reveal.

You can learn more about Shapenote, the Sacred Harp, and find singings in your area at http://fasola.org.

Also, thanks to Kate Lumpkin for her help with this episodes.

54: Shapenote

It will always be hard

A psychic love story. Performed by Alex Marino, Christina Dabney, Blanche Ames, and T.J. Mannix. Written by Louis Kornfeld, and produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Cold Read

Author, journalist and letterpress printer Alix Christie discusses her debut novel, Gutenberg's Apprentice (on-sale: September 23, 2014), with @HarperAudio_US producer Erin Wicks. This episode also includes an excerpt from the audio edition read by Robert Petkoff.

ABOUT GUTENBERG'S APPRENTICE 

An enthralling literary debut that evokes one of the most momentous events in history, the birth of printing in medieval Germany—a story of invention, intrigue, and betrayal.

Youthful, ambitious Peter Schoeffer is on the verge of professional success as a scribe in Paris when his foster father, the wealthy merchant and bookseller Johann Fust, summons him home to corruption- riddled, feud-plagued Mainz to meet "a most amazing man."

Johann Gutenberg, a driven and caustic inventor, has devised a revolutionary—and, to some, blasphemous—method of bookmaking: a machine he calls a printing press. Fust is financing Gutenberg's workshop, and he orders Peter to become Gutenberg's apprentice. Resentful at having to abandon a prestigious career as a scribe, Peter begins his education in the "darkest art."

As his skill grows, so too does his admiration for Gutenberg and his dedication to their daring venture: printing copies of the Holy Bible. But when outside forces align against them, Peter finds himself torn between two father figures—the generous Fust and the brilliant, mercurial Gutenberg, who inspires Peter to achieve his own mastery.

Caught between the genius and the merchant, the old ways and the new, Peter and the men he admires must work together to prevail against overwhelming obstacles in a battle that will change history . . . and irrevocably transform them all.

Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie

What do you do when you find out that you are most definitely the offspring of the world's elite genius pool?

Big thanks to David Plotz, author of "The Genius Factory, The Curious History of The Nobel Prize Sperm Bank."

Producer: Ana Adlerstein
Sound Design: Renzo Gorrio

Genius Sperm / Snap Judgment, "Mystery Man"

Like the audio? You'll love love the video. Watch this and other live shows on http://doubletoasted.com/

Brad Pitt commands a tank carrying crazy Shane from the Walking Dead, crazy Michael Peña straight out of East L.A., and crazy Shia LeBeouf. The Nazis don't stand a chance.

FURY - Double Toasted Audio Review

AFTER DARK 1

Radio/Podcast host:
"Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything" a proud member of PRX's Radiotopia collective. http://radiotopia.fm 
"Too Much Information" WFMU (2009 - 2013)
"The Big Ideas Podcast" The Guardian UK (2011 - 2012) 