15 Friday Sep 2017
Posted in Books, Life, Performance, Writing
Tags
Arts Express, book, books, Connie Norgren, Constance Norgren, interview, Late In The Day, poems, poetry, radio, WBAI, writing
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I was happy to welcome back poet Constance Norgren yesterday to the Arts Express radio program on WBAI 99.5 NY to read from her latest collection of previously unpublished poems, Late In The Day. Click on the grey triangle above for some wonderful short poems.
25 Friday Aug 2017
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Writing
Tags
Arts Express, Ashokan Summer Hoot, family, folk, interview, Mike and Ruthy, Mike Meranda, music, radio, Ruthy Ungar, songwriting, The Mammals, WBAI
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Mike Meranda and Ruthy Ungar, musicians extraordinare, talked with me about making a meaningful life in art.
Click on the grey triangle above to learn how a family survives and thrives carrying on the humanistic music path trod by Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and then goes on to make their own distinctive mark in music.
The interview was broadcast yesterday on the Arts Express program on radio station WBAI.
For more about the Ashokan Summer Hoot click here at Hoot.Love.
14 Friday Jul 2017
Posted in Performance, Theatre, Writing
Tags
acting, Ali Silva, Arts Express, Fireside Mystery Theater, Gus Rodriguez, interview, performance, radio, theater, theatre, voice acting, WBAI, writing
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The suspenseful Fireside Mystery Theater has become an unexpected podcast success, with over a million downloads of its contemporary radio performances of macabre and off-center scripts, reminiscent of the Golden Age of Radio. You can listen to an interview broadcast yesterday on the Arts Express radio program over WBAI FM that I did with the two creators of the company, Ali Silva and Gus Rodriguez, by clicking on the grey triangle above.
30 Friday Jun 2017
Tags
Arts Express, book, books, capitalism, exterminism, Four Futures, interview, Peter Frase, politics, socialism, WBAI
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Yesterday, WBAI-FM radio’s Arts Express broadcast part two of my interview with Peter Frase, author of the new book Four Futures.
Frase has an intriguing set of ideas about what the future might look like after capitalism destructs, given the ecological constraints of abundance/scarcity and the political constraints of equality/inequality. In this final segment we talk about what might happen if the world’s resources turn out to be strictly limited.
Click on the grey triangle above to tune in.
You can listen to Part One here:
https://jackshalom.net/2017/06/23/peter-frase-four-futures-life-after-capitalism-part-one/
23 Friday Jun 2017
Tags
Arts Express, book, books, capitalism, communism, exterminism, Four Futures, futurism, interview, Peter Frase, radio, rentism, socialism, Verso, WBAI
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Yesterday, WBAI-FM radio’s Arts Express broadcast part one of my interview with Peter Frase, author of the new book Four Futures. Frase has an intriguing set of ideas about what the future might look like after capitalism destructs, given the ecological constraints of abundance/scarcity and the political constraints of equality/inequality.
Click on the grey triangle above to tune in.
You can listen to Part Two here:
https://jackshalom.net/2017/06/30/four-futures-part-two-peter-frase/
09 Friday Jun 2017
Posted in Life, Performance, Photography, Writing
Tags
Arts Express, children, education, essay, Memorial Day, militarism, photography, radio, WBAI
(Click to enlarge)
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Yesterday, the Arts Express radio program on WBAI broadcast my audio essay concerning a surreal day in the park this past Memorial Day weekend.
You can listen by clicking on the grey triangle above.
12 Friday May 2017
Tags
Arts Express, Langston Hughes, Pacifica, Pacifica archives, poem, poetry, radio, Voices That Changed The World, WBAI, writing
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I had long known of Langston Hughes’s poems, but I didn’t know until very recently what a delightful speaker and storyteller he was. In this audio clip he is talking to a group of graduate students in Berkeley about his upbringing. What a lovely man. Click on the grey triangle above to hear.
The audio clip is just the beginning of a one-hour Hughes talk from an astounding collection of over 1300 hours of audio from the archives of Pacifica Radio. The collection is called Voices That Change The World. It’s not cheap, but on the 64GB flash drive (you get two for the price of one) there is an extraordinary range of audio from the most remarkable people of the last fifty years—singers, poets, writers, politicians, artists, scientists, religious figures, audio books. It’s an amazing resource.
More here: http://www.give2wbai.org/product_p/fd0007-w17.htm
And if you buy one, please mark down that you’re donating for the Arts Express program.
07 Friday Apr 2017
Posted in Life, Performance, Theatre, Writing
Tags
Arts Express, Inside, performance, PopUp Theatrics, radio, review, St. John the Divine, theater, theatre, WBAI
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Yesterday the Arts Express radio program ran my audio essay on a new site-specific performance piece called Inside by PopUp Theatrics. The more I tried to write a conventional review, the more I realized I had to do it in another way. Sometimes when a work of art leaves you feeling unsettled, it’s a good thing. For a meditation on the power of memories and stories, and the way they blur the line between truth and fiction, click on the grey triangle above.
27 Friday Jan 2017
Posted in Comedy, Life, Performance
Tags
Arts Express, film, movie, performance, radio, review, Robert DeNiro, The Comedian, WBAI
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The Comedian is the new Robert De Niro movie in which he plays a washed-up comedian trying to make a come-back years after his initial fame. It has a great cast including Danny DeVito and Patti LuPone, and a raft of cameos. Is it worth seeing? You can hear my review of the film, which was broadcast yesterday on radio station WBAI, by clicking on the grey triangle above.
30 Friday Dec 2016
Tags
anarchism, Arts Express, book, books, communism, Crowds and Party, individualism, interview, Jodi Dean, liberalism, Occupy Wall Street, party, politics, radio, WBAI
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Crowds and Party by Jodi Dean is a fascinating must read for anyone interested in how political change happens, and what the left must do now. In this book, Professor Dean talks about those “beautiful moments” that have happened throughout history—think The Paris Commune and Occupy Wall Street—where The Crowd has created a disruption in the usual fabric of capitalist society. But those “beautiful moments” are short-lived, ephemeral, and seem to disappear into forgotten hope. How can a movement hold onto and build on these precious historical moments? Jodi Dean tackles crowd theory and the concept of a working people’s political party, reviews the relevant literature, and presents her analysis in her new book, Crowds and Party.
The book is not always easy reading, so I was happy to have the opportunity to engage in a spirited conversation with Professor Dean, broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM NY radio yesterday on the Arts Express program. Dean was so interesting that we decided to do two parts to the interview, broadcast one week after the other.
You can listen to Part One by clicking on the grey triangle above.
25 Friday Nov 2016
Posted in Life, Performance, Theatre, Writing
Tags
Anna Deveare Smith, Arts Express, education, Notes from the field, prison, radio, review, school, teachers, theaater, theatre, WBAI
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Anna Deveare Smith portrays 17 different people—students, teachers, parents, judges, Congessmen, social justice workers—in her new, almost one-woman play, Notes from the Field. Your intrepid reporter reviewed it for WBAI radio yesterday.
Click on the gray triangle to listen.
19 Saturday Nov 2016
Posted in Life, Magic, Performance
Tags
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Magician Lance Burton retired five years ago, after an astounding 15,000 performances, but he’s still a busy man. Last Thursday, WBAI radio broadcast my interview with him. Due to time constraints, they played an edited version of the interview, but the audience of this blog is more magic-oriented, so I thought you might like to hear the uncut version.
In the interview Lance talks about Johnny Carson, growing up with magician Mac King, life in Las Vegas, working with doves, and what he considers the most important thing he knows about magic. Click on the grey triangle to catch up with magician Lance Burton.
14 Friday Oct 2016
Posted in Comedy, Life, Performance, Theatre, Writing
Tags
Arts Express, comedy, MAry Murphy, performance, promos, radio, WBAI
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My colleague Mary Murphy and I had such fun making the WBAI membership promos, that we created three more amusing promos, specifically for the Arts Express radio magazine show.
You can hear the three one-minute promos by clicking on the grey triangle above.
30 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in Books, Life, Performance, Writing
Tags
Ambrose Bierce, Arts Express, MAry Murphy, Oil of Dog, performance, radio, short stories, theater, theatre, WBAI, writing
“Mrs. Dennison’s Head,”and “Oil of Dog” are two delightful macabre short stories by Ambrose Bierce which the the marvelous actor Mary Murphy and I performed on the Arts Express radio program yesterday.
Click on the grey triangles below to listen.
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Click here for “Mrs. Dennison’s Head,” read by Mary Murphy:
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Click here for “Oil of Dog,” read by Jack Shalom
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09 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in Life, Performance
Tags
Arts Express, hot dogs, interview, Joey Chestnut, Major League Eating, Nathan's, performance, radio, WBAI
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Possibly the Greatest Major League Eater of all time—70 hot dogs and buns downed in 10 minutes just scratches the surface—Joey “Jaws” Chestnut talks to your intrepid reporter on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York.
Click on the grey triangle to hear the interview.
01 Friday Jul 2016
Posted in Books, Life, Performance, Theatre, Writing
Tags
acting, Arts Express, books, interview, Jerry Levy, Karl Marx, performance, play, radio, The Third Coming, theater, theatre, WBAI, writing
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Yesterday, radio station WBAI’s Arts Express program played my interview with Karl Marx. Well, not Karl Marx exactly, but with actor Jerry Levy who plays Marx in a new one-man play that Levy wrote called The Third Coming.
Click on the grey triangle above to hear Levy talk about Marx, anarchism, Howard Zinn, and how he prepared to act the role of a lifetime.
24 Friday Jun 2016
Tags
Arts Express, book, books, In the Unlikely Event, interview, Judy Blume, radio, WBAI, writing
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My interview with author Judy Blume was broadcast yesterday on WBAI radio. The gracious writer talked about her new novel, her first attempts at writing, her writing process, and finally, her wise advice for would-be novelists. Listen to the warm voice of Judy Blume speaking about her art and craft by clicking on the grey triangle above.
21 Tuesday Jun 2016
Posted in Comedy, Life, Performance, Theatre
Tags
Arts Express, comedy, Jerry Levy, Karl Marx, performance, promo, radio, The Third Coming, theater, theatre
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Recently for WBAI radio’s Arts Express program, I interviewed actor Jerry Levy who plays Karl Marx in Jerry’s one-man play, The Third Coming. We collared him for an interview, and he was also kind enough to do an amusing promo for the show that I put together.
You can hear the 30-second spot by clicking on the grey triangle above.
10 Friday Jun 2016
Tags
Arts Express, education, Frankenstein, interview, MIdwood High School, radio, teaching, Todd Friedman, WBAI
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Popular high school English teacher Todd Friedman was put on administrative leave from his job after 29 years of acclaimed teaching. Why? Ostensibly, for selling discount copies of Frankenstein to his English classes. Find out the real reasons, and his continuing fight for justice, in this radio interview I conducted with Friedman, broadcast yesterday on Arts Express, WBAI radio, 99.5 FM NYC.
Click on the gray triangle above to hear the full monstrous tale.
15 Friday Jan 2016
Posted in Life, Music, Performance, Theatre
Tags
Arts Express, dance, interview, Maurice HInes, music, musical, performance, radio, singing, song, tap, Tappin' Thru Life, theater, theatre
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Yesterday, radio station WBAI 99.5 FM in NY aired my interview with tap-dancing legend, Maurice Hines. Together with his brother Gregory, he re-invented tap dance for modern audiences.
Maurice guested on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson over 35 times and had a featured role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club. The star of several shows on Broadway, he just opened Off-Broadway in a new autobiographical song and dancer called Tappin’ Thru Life.
In the show, 72 year old Maurice sings, dances and dishes about the greats he’s worked with, including Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and on and on. I had the pleasure of talking with him in his dressing room a few hours before his Wednesday evening performance.
Click on the grey triangle to hear the warm giving voice of Maurice Hines talking about his life and times.
