Berlin Stories Podcast

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/07/BST125-Ambika-Thompson.mp3 Having spent much of her life searching the various landscapes of Canada for the perfect home and the (almost) perfect public transportation system, Ambika Thompson decided to try another country and moved to Berlin in 2003. Nowadays she spends her time playing in the band The Anna Thompsons, training with the Bear City Roller Derby league, and writing. Her short story, A Slightly Sexually Provocative Short Story, was one of the winners of The Reader Berlin 2012 writing competition and will be published as part of a collection in summer 2013.

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/07/BST121-Ryan-Eyers.mp3 Ryan Eyers is a writer from New Zealand living in Berlin. Recently, his writing has appeared at Kill Screen and The Bygone Bureau. For more, visit ryaneyers.wordpress.com.

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/07/BST120-Pipa-Anais-Gaubert.mp3 Pippa Anais Gaubert is a writer, artist and antiques enthusiast based in Berlin. Her short stories can be found in several small publications and she is currently working on a novel. Her website is: www.pippaanaisgaubert.com.

Photo by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/07/BST119-William-MacDougall.mp3 William MacDougall was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His writing has appeared in a number of specialist interest fiction/non-fiction publications too obscure to mention. Despite his better efforts, he remains a full-time member of the German administrative labor market and only very occasional writer. To the best of his knowledge he has been the recipient of no significant awards, bursaries, grants, scholarships or stipends – literary or otherwise. He currently lives in Berlin-Tiergarten.

Photo of Heiko Horror Me by Yoko Kikuchi http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/06/AntiFolk_podcast.mp3 We proudly present a special one-hour Berlin Stories this weekend about Antifolk music in Germany, hosted by Deenah Vollmer and Cricket Arrison. For tracks, band links and more, please check out their fantastic tumblr here. Meanwhile, scroll down for some great pictures of the antifolk community. Deenah Vollmer is a Fulbright Journalist in Berlin this year, working for Berlin Stories on NPR Worldwide and the New Yorker. Sometimes she interviews famous people for Interview Magazine and her writing has also appeared in N+1, Bullett, and The Rumpus. She’s been involved with New York’s Antifolk scene since 2005, and currently plays in the band L.A. Boobs. Cricket Arrison is a radio producer and theatre artist. She spent three years as the producer of the Marc Steiner Show, a daily public affairs program on WEAA in Baltimore. A member of The Un Saddest Factory Theatre Company since 2010, Cricket has produced, written and appeared in numerous plays in Baltimore and other places on the East Coast. She currently lives in Berlin where she is completing a Fulbright Fellowship for young journalists. See her sing here. Follow her on Twitter here. Fourtrack on Stage organizers in Berlin (Sibsi, Heiko, Charlotte, Falk) Toby Goodshank and Adam Green have an art collective with Maculey Culkin. Phoebe Kreutz by Olga Baczynska Heiko in the U-Bahn, by Dibs Adam Green, Kimya Dawson & Paleface by Jon Berger

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/06/BST118-Abigail-Wick.mp3 Abigail Wick is a freelance writer and yoga instructor. She specializes in communications, brand-building, marketing and copywriting. She relocated from San Francisco to Berlin in the spring of 2011. Learn more about her at www.abigailwick.com.

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/06/BST114-Kira-Von-Eichel.mp3 Kira von Eichel is a German-Canadian writer and illustrator who was educated at Barnard College in New York. She is currently working on an essay about David Byrne and her first book. She has also contributed to The Paris Review here. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/05/BST108-Sarah-Blake.mp3 Sarah Blake is the author of the novels, Grange House and The Postmistress, and while living in Berlin 2012-2013 has been working on her third.

Photograph by Nick Simpson http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2013/05/BST107-Gideon-Lewis-Clark.mp3 Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written about books and culture for Harper’s, Wired, the New York Times magazine, n+1, McSweeney’s, the London Review of Books, and other magazines and newspapers. His first book, A Sense of Direction, from which his story is here excerpted, is now out in paperback from Riverhead Books. Watch the trailer here. After a few years on and off in Berlin, he now lives in New York.

Photograph by Elizabeth Skadden http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2012/06/FINAL_FINAL.mp3 If you missed our Summer episode on NPR Worldwide this past week, now you can listen to the whole thing here. Hosted by Anna Winger and Gisela Williams and produced by Bilal Qureshi, our second one-hour Berlin Stories looks at why it has been so hard to get Berlin’s new airport off the ground. We also explore the surprising role of blackface in contemporary German theater and find out what it’s like to spend a whole day naked on an FKK beach. Bilal Qureshi hears the Philharmonic’s Albrecht Mayer play at the legendary nightclub Berghain, Gisela Williams introduces a new restaurant review series, The Roundtable, and Anna Winger asks what the debate around the Günter Grass poem says about the role of German artists in public discourse. Tune in now!

Illustration by R. Jay Magill http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/bst20_rjaymagill.mp3 Berlin Stories contributor, writer and illustrator R. Jay Magill has a new book coming out this week from Norton, Sincerity: How a moral ideal born five hundred years ago inspired religious wars, modern art, hipster chic, and the curious notion that we all have something to say (no matter how dull), and it’s already getting rave reviews. Read an opinion piece he wrote recently about sincerity in the U.S. elections here. And if you missed his berlin story on NPR you can listen to it above!

The time has come! Berliners: tune in to 104.1FM tonight at 7pm (or Monday morning at 8am) to hear Summer episode of Berlin Stories for NPR, a one-hour special hosted by Anna Winger & Gisela Williams and produced by Bilal Qureshi. Below, a taste of what’s to come. http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2012/06/SummerBB-FINAL.mp3

Photograph by Maxime Ballesteros http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Fenster_final.mp3 FENSTER (Berlin via NYC) // Formed in 2010 by JJ Weihl, a New Yorker, Jonathan Jarzyna, a Berliner, and was later completed by percussionist Rémi Letournelle. Fenster makes de-constructed pop music, layering subtle distortions, melodic chords and city soundscapes under dream narratives and schadenfreude. Their lyrics often find inspiration in the world of ghosts, graveyards, trains, religious imagery, and broken machinery. Fenster build songs around errors, using circuit bended beats, slamming doors and trashy synths, utilizing the analog warmth of their instrumentation to underscore the interaction between the two vocalists, and the different universes from which they come – New York to Berlin and back again. They recorded their first album with their friend and producer Tadklimp before ever having played live together. The recordings took exactly eight days and were a magical time, where they almost completely lived at their basement studio in Steglitz in the dead of winter. A window fell on JJ’s head and shattered. FENSTER released their debut album “Bones” in march 2012 on Morr Music. Since then, they have been touring the USA where they played at SXSW and all along the east coast, followed by a European tour through Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy and Sweden. They will be playing festivals around Europe in the summer of 2012.

http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Pete-Starette_final.mp3 Pete Starrett has lived in Berlin since 2004. His dual life as a rock star and Blue Man is brought into delicious contrast with his life as a husband and father of two. His new theater piece, “SaveYouHateMe” premiered at the end of April in R.A.W.Tempelhof, Berlin. Click HERE to watch the Le Flonge concert video mentioned in the piece. And if you aren’t familiar with what it means to be a Blue Man, click HERE.

Photo by Michelle Cormier http://berlinstories.org/wordpress/wp-content/2012/05/10-Hilda-Hoy.mp3 Hilda Hoy grew up between the concrete jungles of Taiwan and the woods of central Ontario. A one-time hard-boiled news reporter for the Toronto Star and the Prague Post, she now fills her days working as the managing editor of sugarhigh, the Berlin email magazine she’s been heading since its founding in 2009. When not freelancing travel stories or translating from German to English, she’s working on working on a novel. Until that hits the shelves, follow her on Twitter @hildahoy10 Hilda Hoy