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  andy 12:42 pm on March 21, 2021 Permalink  

  Wagner and Wagnerism 

  Richard Wagner, man and musician, was the embodiment of excess—too much of a good thing if you loved him, something worse if you didn’t. Those weren’t just operas he was writing, but total works of art: multi-media folklore festivals, orgies of mind-bending sound, frenzied and addictive. It took him 25 years to compose his Ring cycle, and it takes a long weekend of late nights to perform it. For the World War II generations, it ruined Wagner for a while that Hitler loved his music. Still, Wagner’s presence is palpable everywhere, not for his musical genius alone but for his imprint on culture for a century now, up to and including Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and the sound of Hollywood.

  One of the signature sounds of Richard Wagner is the battle hymn of the mythical winged warrior sisters, the Valkyries, and we know that it’s something more than music. But what? It’s a clue to what Alex Ross of the New Yorker magazine calls “Wagnerism,” meaning the bizarre visions and irresistible influence, the spell that one musical genius cast on the world, maybe forever.

  Wagner’s musical mega-shows in the 1860s were a far cry from the old Mozart and Verdi operas. His were longer, deeper, spell-binding fantasies of forbidden love and longing, wounded gods out of a jumble of world religions, German romanticism and ethno-nationalism all mixed up, naked river maidens in the Rhine and swooning beauty facing death in Tristan and Isolde.

  Episode link here.

   
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  andy 12:06 pm on March 13, 2021 Permalink  

  The CRISPR Challenge 

  CRISPR, since we last talked about it, has won a Nobel prize for the two scientists who first figured out how to apply the miracle molecule to the human genome and the human condition. And just this week, from our guest, the tireless biographer Walter Isaacson, CRISPR gets heroic treatment in hard covers for the same breakthrough biologists. For most of us, the acronym CRISPR is code for the deepest issues we don’t know how to talk about. But Walter Isaacson could change that some, as the irresistible storyteller about the kinds of people Apple puts on its “Think Different” billboards: Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, Apple’s own Steve Jobs, and back a few centuries Leonardo da Vinci, the original Renaissance man. The new Isaacson epic, titled The Code Breaker, centers on the first woman and only the second living person in Isaacson’s Hall of Fame. His subtitle is Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

  Episode link here.

   
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  andy 5:04 pm on March 5, 2021 Permalink  

  Plague Year Two 

  A year in pandemic fog has challenged or changed our lives entirely: how we work, worship, worry, socialize, study, celebrate. On the first anniversary of our COVID consciousness, it’s easy to feel we’re drowning in information. At the same time, we’re bereft of understanding about the trouble we’re in and best ways out of it. So the mission this radio hour is to reach out of the fog for composite understanding of what’s unfolding in and around us.

  Episode link here.

   
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  andy 1:22 pm on February 28, 2021 Permalink  

  Billie Holiday at 100 

  Five fine singers — Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dominique Eade, Marissa Nadler, Janice Pendarvis, and Rebecca Sullivan — are guiding us through their favorite Holiday songs: her vocal tricks and the social, emotional resonances of her music. Re-listening with them, we begin to understand and experience not just the Billie Holiday story, but the atmosphere of Harlem streets, nightclubs, and living rooms. We hear an “unflinching” voice and a “sophisticated” new sound in music.

  The greatest jazz singer? The perfect jazz singer? Perhaps the only jazz singer that ever lived.

  Episode link here.

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    andy 1:23 pm on February 28, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    Looking forward to listening to this episode!

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    davewiner 7:32 am on March 1, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    I am interested in discussing this podcast and many others.

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  andy 11:05 pm on February 25, 2021 Permalink  

  Write Like the Russians 

  The invitation this hour, or maybe the dream, is to learn how to write short stories with the poignancy and power of the old Russian Masters, and how to become better versions of ourselves in the process. Anton Chekhov is our model writer; the modern American master George Saunders is our model reader and teacher, condensing his famous course for aspiring writers at Syracuse University. The Saunders idea—not quite a promise—is that Dr. Chekhov’s stories expand us morally. Follow his tricks and turns closely enough, and you’ll change your life. It’s something like the thought that just listening to Mozart’s sonatas can make a child smarter. Chekhov’s stories could make grown-ups less lonely, more effective, happier people.

  Episode link here

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    andy 4:27 pm on February 26, 2021 Permalink | Reply

    This is a comment.