Tag Archives: Arts Express

“James Joyce Destroyed My Romance” By Frank McCourt

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“The minute I stepped inside the Washington Heights branch of the public library, I fell in love with Miss Anna Gilfinane, assistant librarian. I fell in love with her glinting green eyes, with her shimmering auburn hair, with her luscious red lips – I was nineteen…”

Last week, I posted my conversation with Tom Allon, the editor of the new book, Sez I To Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt. This week, with permission, I did a reading over the air from one of my favorite short pieces in the book called, “James Joyce Destroyed My Romance,” written by Frank McCourt.

Click on the small white triangle or mp3 link above to hear my reading of the story, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio show, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation

Sez I To Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt

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If you’re a longtime listener to WBAI, you’re probably quite familiar with the name of the late actor, writer, and Radio Free Eireann raconteur, Malachy McCourt. And contrariwise, you may be even more familiar with the name of Malachy’s older brother Frank McCourt, author of the extraordinary memoir Angela’s Ashes and more. But both Frank and Malachy were more than book writers, they both had careers as newspaper and magazine columnists. And now for the first time, a delicious selection of the brothers’ essays have been collected in a new book called Sez I to Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt. I was happy to speak with the co-editor of that collection, Tom Allon.

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Tom Allon on the Arts Express radio show this week, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.

In Case You Missed It 7-29-26

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Yet another installment of our semi-occasional weekly round-up of the most absurd and head shaking news!

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link to hear it as broadcast on the Arts Express program this week on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

Reverse Centaurs Kick Back! Cory Doctorow On How Artists Can Fight Back Against AI

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Portrait of Vincent van Gogh sitting with boxing gloves in an artist's studio.
AI portrait of Vincent van Gogh wearing boxing gloves

What are the implications for Artificial Intelligence in art, and what’s the best way to fight it? That’s what Cory Doctorow, author of the new book the Reverse Centaur’s guide to Life After AI, will talk about today. Last week we began a conversation with him where he explained how AI is a stock-driven growth bubble, fueled by tech bros who hype up AI’s ability in order to seduce bosses who have wet dreams of replacing all workers and gaining world-destroying power. However, AI is also a Ponzi scheme scooping up unimaginable amounts of investor money in a bubble that is bound to burst. So now let’s pick up our conversation with Cory Doctorow, as I ask him, should we be worried about AI art?

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear part two of my interview with Cory Doctorow on the Arts Express radio show this week, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.

Part one can be found here:

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI

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Do you take after that mythological half-human, half-horse creature the centaur, or are you a reverse centaur? In the age of Artificial Intelligence, you’re either one or the other, says our guest today. I was happy to welcome blogger, journalist, science fiction writer, and activist, Cory Doctorow, whose most recent book was Enshittification, here to talk about his new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Cory Doctorow on the Arts Express radio show this week, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.

In Case You Missed It! 6-24-26

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Elephant with Republican Party Convention banner walking inside a crowded GOP event hall

Yet another installment of our semi-occasional weekly round-up of the most absurd and head shaking news!

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link to hear it as broadcast on the Arts Express program this week on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

In Case You Missed It!

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Our semi-occasional weekly round-up of the most absurd and head shaking news!

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link to hear it as broadcast on the Arts Express program this week on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation

Mitchel Cohen Archive: Assata Shakur From Cuba 1992

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“Last week I gave my personal remembrances on the death of political activist, organizer, thinker and writer Mitchel Cohen. I was able to find a really extraordinary recording that was made by Mitchel and Robert Gold on a trip they took to Cuba in 1992. While they were there, they got to attend a kind of informal talk given by Assata Shakur, who, of course, was an American Black Panther, arrested by the police for murder, put in prison and then freed in a daring escape. From there she went to Cuba which welcomed her with open arms…”

Click on the mp3 link or small triangle above to hear the talk as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the country.

Remembering Mitchel Cohen in Spirit and Song

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“This past week, we lost Mitchel Cohen, a passionate radical Marxist activist, thinker, writer, environmentalist, organizer, poet, and Phil Ochs fan, who was seemingly everywhere, connected to everyone on the left, including here on WBAI and Pacifica. It seemed like there was hardly a protest, demonstration, civil disobedience, or conference that he wasn’t a part of in one way or another…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear our remembrance of Mitchel, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

The Iranian President’s Letter To The American People

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During these past weeks of the American-Israeli War on Iran, we’ve been deluged by the unhinged words and actions of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. It’s been much rarer to hear the direct words of those from the Iranian administration, but In a bold statement, the President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, posted a letter on social media directly addressed to the American people. Pezeshkian, who before going into politics was a heart surgeon trained at the Tabriz University of Medical Science and who served as a doctor in the Iran-Iraq War, has a wide historical perspective. I thought you might be interested in hearing the letter that he wrote, so I’ll read it in full now…

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear the letter as read on the Arts Express program, heard on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org, and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

Crucible: John Sayles’s New Historical Novel About Henry Ford, Labor and Cars

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“John Sayles, filmmaker and novelist, known especially for his labor films, including the celebrated Matewan, has a new novel out. In his latest historical fiction, Crucible, Sayles furthers the story of the struggle of American labor, when organized labor in Michigan took on that force of nature–or better, force of capitalism–Henry Ford…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with John Sayles as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program, as heard on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation

Teaching in Prisons and More: Andy Teirstein Part 2

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“Hi this is Jack Shalom, Last week we began our conversation with composer, professor, performer, activist Andy Teirstein. I had met Andy through our mutual immigration rights work at the NYC immigration courts for the New Sanctuary Coalition. In the process of getting to know him I learned that he had taught music and theater at a couple of upstate prisons. We left off our conversation as Andy was describing what it was like for both him and the men in prison to learn in that setting. So here’s Andy…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear Part two of my interview with Andy Teirstein on the Arts Express radio program broadcast on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

You can find Part One here:

https://jackshalom.net/2026/02/19/of-immigration-court-and-teaching-in-prisons-part-one-andy-teirstein/

Of Immigration Court And Teaching in Prisons, Part One: Andy Teirstein

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“We’re going to do something a little bit different today. My guest is someone who I just only recently met a few Fridays ago at an immigration court accompaniment, under the auspices of the New Sanctuary Coalition here in NYC. We started talking and I found him to be a fascinating guy with a really eclectic, creative, and political background including all kinds of awards and honors. So, I’m happy to be speaking today with actor, musician, composer, professor and political activist, Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts, and also BMI Woody Guthrie Fellow, Andy Teirstein…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my wide ranging conversation with Andy, as heard on the Arts Express radio program broadcast on WBAI FM, WBAI.org and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

And you can find Part Two here:

Teaching in Prisons and More: Andy Teirstein Part 2

Bird City: Part 2!

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“Last week we began our delightful conversation with Ryan Goldberg, author of Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds. Ryan talked about how the social and even political structure of New York city has been shaped by, and shaped, New York’s birds from beaches to parks, cemeteries to garbage dumps, airports to salt marshes. We left off our conversation where I had asked Ryan about the New York City so-called celebrity birds that from time to time blow up on social media…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear the continuation of my interview with Ryan Goldberg, author of Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI-FM NYC, WBAI.org, and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

(You can find Part 1 of our conversation here)

Bird City

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“When most New Yorkers look up they see skyscrapers, but award winning journalist Ryan Goldberg sees birds. In fact, he sees birds everywhere: New York City beaches, parks, cemeteries, even garbage landfills–and discovers how  birds help tell the social, cultural and even political story of our city…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my interview with Ryan Goldberg, author of Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI-FM NYC, WBAI.org, and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

(You can find Part 2 of our conversation here)

Renee Good: On Learning To Dissect Fetal Pigs

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“Renee Good, among other accomplishments, was an award winning poet and was deeply interested in questions of faith. She grew up as an evangelical Christian, but in 2016, now married, at the age of 28 she started college, and the clash of religious ideas versus science and secular ideas was explosive for her. In 2020, she wrote a poem about her trying to reconcile the two ways of experiencing the world, which foreshadowed the change in her political beliefs. The poem was called “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” and it won the Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. I’m going to read it now…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link to hear a reading of the poem as broadcast on the Arts Express radio show, as heard on WBAI FM NYC, WBAI.org, and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

“Something That Was Once Potentially Good”

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How do you write fiction in a world that is perhaps post-fiction? When the horrors of the present world outstrip what our imaginations imagine? Arts Express favorite, Luke O’Neil, author of Welcome to Hell World and A Creature Wanting Form, writes stories that are full of the pain of men and women–but mostly men–who are trying to figure out how to deal with the helplessness and terror that make a mockery out of any John Wayne or Ernest Hemingway definition of manhood.

Now O’Neil has come out with his third collection of short stories called We Had It Coming, published by O/R Books.. We’ve always resonated with his work, but in this new collection especially, O’Neil’s short pieces are to our time what Raymond Carver’s short stories were to his. Stories of the soul and body struggling to make sense of the senseless cages in which capitalism has trapped us.

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my reading of “Something That Was Once Potentially Good,” from We Had It Coming, as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

Venezuela: A European Perspective With Dennis Broe

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“If you’re anything like me you woke up this past Saturday with shock and horror that Nicholas Maduro, the elected president of Venezuela, was kidnapped by US forces on the flimsiest of pretexts. Caracas was bombed and at least 40 people were murdered. And now Maduro is incarcerated in Brooklyn, ostensibly to be tried as a drug criminal, in the same prison where Luigi Mangione is being held . I’m really happy to have with us on Zoom our Paris correspondent and cultural critic, Dennis Broe, to give some of his insights from a European perspective…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to listen to my conversation with Dennis Broe, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.

We Did Okay, Kid: Anthony Hopkins

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“Earlier this year we had the great Al Pacino’s memoirs published, and now we have the new memoir of another great actor available, Anthony Hopkins, who as a child had to hear his schoolmates call him “Elephant Head.”  And while both Pacino and Hopkins grew up in working class circumstances with difficult upbringings, their writing voices, like their acting voices, could not be more different…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above for my commentary on the new Hopkins memoir, We Did Okay, Kid, as broadcast this week on the Arts Express radio show, heard on WBAI-FM and Pacifica stations across the nation.

Culture and Barbarism With Dennis Broe

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Part One:

Part Two:

I was happy to have this cross-continental conversation with cultural critic, novelist, and Arts Express Paris Correspondent, Dennis Broe. I think you’ll have fun listening to our wide-ranging conversation with topics from the French street uprisings to media consolidation to AI to Robin Hood to Zohran Mamdani. We broadcast it last week and this week on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the country.

This was conceived originally as a fundraiser for listener-sponsored radio station WBAI, home of Arts Express, but we edited the conversation for the affiliates (and this blog!) to eliminate most of the pitching.

Click on the small triangle or mp3 links to play.

Ensh*ttification

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“Crap, crap crap crap crap. I’m saying crap because that’s the euphemism I’m going to have to use now for the new book by Cory Doctorow whose name will not pass FCC rules, so I’ll just call the book Encrappification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What You Can Do About It, though of course  the real title rhymes with Ensittification. If you’re wondering why everything, especially the internet and Big Tech, which Doctorow primarily focuses on, is in the crapper, this is the book for you…”

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear my commentary as broadcast on the Arts Express radio show this week, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation

The Black Cat

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And now a little Halloween cheer with the short story, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted for Arts Express Radio.

Click on the mp3 link or small triangle above to hear the tale as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

The Last Extinction

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“Among geologists and paleontologists, The Dinosaur Wars have been known as a fearsome conflagration of powerful beings. No, I’m not talking about battles among those long extinct creatures, but among human beings, mostly male, at scientific war in the present day, lined up against a female scientist whose ideas threatened their theories and privilege. And I’m happy to have as our guest today, the woman who has been at the center of this controversy for decades, Dr. Gerta Keller, Professor Emerita at Princeton University, and the author of the new book about her groundbreaking work and discoveries, titled The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs.“

Click on the mp3 link or small triangle above to listen to my interview with Gerta Keller as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

Newport And The Great Folk Dream PT 2

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We’re back this week with more of our conversation with Robert Gordon and Joe Lauro, director and producers of the film Newport and the Great Folk Dream, about the Newport Folk Festival in the years 1963 to 1966. The festival, started by George Wein and Pete Seeger–where all artists got paid the same–led to an incredible diversity in the music showcased there.

Click on the mp3 link or small triangle above to listen to the interview as broadcast on the Arts Express radio program, heard on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica stations across the nation.

Newport And The Great Folk Dream

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In the cultural and political explosion that became known as the 60s, music was an incredible unifier, and arguably the most important cultural and political form of expression. But what culminated in Woodstock in 1968 had its precursor in the Newport Folk Festival from the early 60s. Now, a new documentary about the Newport Folk Festival based on archival footage that hasn’t been seen in sixty years has been released called Newport and the Great Folk Dream. I was happy to talk with the director and producers of the film, Robert Gordon and Joe Lauro.

Click on the small triangle or mp3 link above to hear the interview, as heard this week on the Arts Express radio program, broadcast on WBAI FM NYC and Pacifica affiliates across the nation.

And you can find Part 2 here:

Newport And The Great Folk Dream PT 2