O Dark 30

Over here in the O'Dark corner of the KUT Public Media Studios, we're gearing up for the big three-day weekend. Our bags are packed, we've got the family truckster all gassed up, and we're all ready to go except for one key thing: some sweet sounds for the road. Lucky for us that we've got this brand-new podcast ready to go. And lucky for you, too; you're welcome to download this bad boy and play it on your own weekend road trip. Your journey will start with a new installment of How Sound, the show that gives you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the radio production game. And hoo boy, this one ("Four Feet Under") is a doozy. If you're a fan of uncomfortable silences, you are going to love the heck out of this thing. Then get ready to spend an hour with John Coltrane, because he's the focus of a new edition of Views and Brews Remix. KUT's own Rebecca McInroy hosts the show, along with rabbi and jazz historian Neil Blumofe. Rebecca and Neil will lead a conversation about "Jazz and the Spiritual Journey," and Blumofe and a great trio (Brannen Temple, drums; William Menefield, piano; Christopher Thomas, bass) will play a little Coltrane for you. And then, even though that's plenty of show right there, we'll keep things going with one more little piece: a new installment of the always-fascinating 99% Invisible.

Hey guys and gals! Are you looking for some French popular music to put up in your ears? Then you've come to the right place at the right time. Allow us to serve us a liaison between you fine people and the delightful Charles Spira, who's not just a retired Belgian physicist but also a purveyor of the aforementioned French popular music. We'll bring you the latest installment of Spira's Bonjour Chanson, and you will like it. And we're not gonna stop there! That thing will just get us warmed up! We'll continue on with installment number five of a new (to us) podcast called Sounds Familiar. Producer Blake Cooper is the man behind that 'cast, and he'll be examining "Sex, Death and Morals in Horror" on this edition. Fascinating stuff, even if you're not a horror movie expert. And that'll leave us just enough time for a quick little something from O'Dark buddy Jake Warga. In Specialist Bowers, Jake talks with SPC Bowers on the ground in Iraq, as she describes her personal theme song.

You might have heard by now that KUT's going to double in size, going from one station to whatever double that is. Two? That sounds right. We're not in on all those bigtime decisions down in the O'Dark cubicle, but we assume that the idea behind this is to get more O'Dark on the air. Nothing else really makes sense to us. But until that all happens, you'll have to make do with three hours a week on air and all the podcasts you can cram onto your iPod. Which brings us to today's 'cast, which you should cram into your ears as soon as possible. This one's kind of like podcast comfort food, seeing as how it features some old friends and some stuff produced right here in A-town. We'll kick things off with a brand new Mikie Show, the show that fills all your Mikie needs. In this installment, our old pal Mikie will be chatting it up with Hector and Linda. Who are Hector and Linda, you might ask? Tune in and find out! And who else do we love around here? How about Aengus "Aengus with an E" Anderson? Our favorite road-tripping, motorcycle-riding independent producer? Dig on in to the new installment of Aengus' The Decisions Project! Then we'll wrap things up with a little something produced right here in Austin by a group of youth reporters at Kealing Middle School. Those fine young people will give you an audio look at the Cathedral of Junk.

What ho, interweb friends? Just stopping by for a bit of the old ear candy? Well, we're happy to oblige! We'll start the festivities with The Class Menagerie, from new (to O'Dark) producer Mary Helen Miller. Have you ever wondered what might happen if you bought yourself an old school to live in, and then filled it with a few dozen dogs? Then start listening now! We've also got another installment of the behind-the-scenes-of-public-radio show Salt Cast (you might remember this show better as How Sound, which is exactly the same show with a new name). In this installment, producer Rob Rosenthal takes a look at how producers find the focus of their stories. What? Radio producers sometimes have trouble focusing? News to us.

Here it is, folks: the podcast version of the final O'Dark episode. We've gathered up every piece we're allowed to podcast from that last episode, and we're podcasting them now. You're gonna want to download this one, put it in a nice frame, and hang it on the wall. We've got Haunted Cabin, the most-aired piece of audio in the long and storied history of the show. We've got Planet Buddy, a wonderful piece from our close personal friend (and former KUT host) Graham Shelby. We've got La Llorona: An Evolving Myth, personally selected by Junior Double Secret Senior Executive Producer David "The Butterfly of Michoacan/Chorizo del Campo" Alvarez for inclusion on the final O'Dark. We've got "Lizzie Borden," our favorite entrant in the Halloween Haunts show. We've got one final installation of Liner Notes from O'Dark alum Rebecca McInroy. We've got Road Trip -- West Coast from O'Dark Hall-of-Fame Jake Warga. And we've got "Seizure's Lament" from the beloved How Sound series. It's a treasure trove of O'Dark goodness, so we hope you like it. Thanks for everything, good people of the interwebs.

As we wound down the big big show, we took the last couple of episodes to say goodbye to some longtime O'Dark favorites. Today's cast is culled from the penultimate episode, so you'll get to hear the last O'Dark visits from some of our hall-of-fame producers. We'll start things off with one last visit from the nicest retired Belgian physicist we personally know, Charles Spira. Listeners to the big show will fondly remember Spira's Bonjour Chanson and delight to its final O'Dark appearance. Then it's an encore presentation of Eric Winick's great and touching piece How Are You Who You Are?, a piece we liked so much we aired it at least twice on the big show. And then it's the O'Dark series wrap from Montana's Barrett Golding, who goes out with his piece Yellowstone Geysers.

O'Dark 30 has shuffled off this mortal coil, but the podcast remains, like a spooky shadow of the show that was. So, in a way, the show that was obsessed with ghost stories has itself become a ghost story. Pretty wild, huh? You might assume after that bit of insight that we'd be bringing you a ghost story or two on today's podcast, but you know what happens when you assume, don't you? You're sometimes wrong, that's what. Today's podcast will bring you a couple of kind of interesting things, including a new installment of How Sound and the latest episode of Views & Brews Remix, produced by O'Dark alum Rebecca McInroy. It's a pretty O'Darky episode of Views & Brews, too, 'cause it's hosted by our own Mike "Meat Cat" Lee. He's talking with improv comic Kareem Badr of the Hideout Theater and Lars Nilsen of the Austin Film Society about fandom and what it means to be really into the stuff you're into. It was a pretty fun night at the Cactus Café, especially if you enjoy guys with beards talking about Star Wars.

Time is catching up with the old O'Dark Podcast. In this 'cast, we'll be bringing you some of our favorite bits from the penultimate episode of the big big show, so it'll be a tearful walk down memory lane as we bring you, one last time (we think), The Mikie Show and Delta State. Mikie Show, you were with us for a pretty long time and we'll miss you dearly. Delta State, we hardly knew ye. Although we did know your producer, Spike Gillespie, pretty well and we assume she'll just find some new way to get her ramblings onto our airwaves. We'll also bring you the Horace Silver episode of Liner Notes and the really cool (and locally relevant) Sweet Illusion for the Bitter Tuition.

Today, while most of you are taking a day off work to celebrate a long Independence Day weekend, we here in what used to be the O'Dark office are presenting a podcast that's all about Father's Day. Why? 'Cause that's the kind of nonsense we like to pull around here, which is probably why they cancelled us. If you're inclined to listen to this thing, you're gonna hear Father's Day from Jake Warga, Family and Dads from B-Side Radio, and Father's Day (which seems to be a really popular though really obvious name for Father's Day pieces) from Paul Currington.

Rumors of our demise have been surprisingly accurate. But while the show is no more, the podcast lives on! For a little while, anyway. We've still got some material that was aired way back when O'Dark 30 was a show on the radio instead of just a hazy memory, and we're going to continue to squeeze that material into pod-shaped chunks until we run out of it. So what's on today's pod-shaped chunk? A few things, actually. We've got Lean and Hungry Theater's radio show version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is perfect 'cause it's more or less midsummer right now. We've got a Views & Brews Liner Notes about Cab Calloway, which isn't perfect but tries really hard, and we've got a new installment of Clever Apes, which is perfect 'cause who doesn't like apes?

It's the last podcast before O'Dark's big farewell episode this Sunday night, but it's not the last podcast ever. We've still got a few episodes worth of material that hasn't been cast into pod form as yet, so we'll keep this thing going for a while yet, even though the show itself is soon to be no more. Well, no more until the brass around KUT start begging us to come out of retirement to do a holiday special or something, which you know they will. So start your O'Dark finale weekend plans with this dandy little 'cast, featuring three separate and distinct pieces of radio goodness. We've got another exciting installment of Views & Brews Remix (it's the "Smart Thinking" episode), a weird little something called The Animal Orchestra is Quieting, and the short and sweet Talking Top Ramen. Eat up!

Tuesday Podcast 6/25/13 Hey, we almost forgot to post a podcast today! Must be a case of senioritis. We on the O'Dark team are pretty much outta here, and we're kinda blowing off our homework. But "almost forgot" is basically the same thing as "remembered," so here's the podcast we remembered to post today. It's got the Mikiest show we know about, The Mikie Show. It's got the best physicist-hosted show about French music we've ever heard, Bonjour Chanson! and it's got a great piece from O'Dark buddy Eric Winnick, The Bittersweetness of God's Love. Enjoy!

It's the first day of summer, so say goodbye to those springtime 97 degree temperatures of yesterday and embrace the summertime 97 degree temperatures of today. And, if you feel like it, listen to this podcast, too. We've got a handful of bite-size pieces for you today, starting with Portrait of an Educator: M.Scott Tatum produced right here at KUT by young Savannah Breckenridge of the Ann Richards School. Wonderful. Then we'll move on to a conversation with author Tim O'Brien and KUT alum Graham Shelby. Graham's a great dude and we're always happy to get an audio visit from him. Tim O'Brien also seems like a pretty good guy, but we don't know him personally. We'll follow up this piece with the Tim O'Brien - inspired The Things They Carry. And then we'll have had enough of Tim O'Brien, good guy or not. We'll move on to another friend-of-the-show, Austin's own Spike Gillespie. What's on Spike's cranky mind? Tune in and find out!

This is a podcast. It includes three audio pieces. Those pieces are Decode DC: Documenting Immigrants, HowSound: Balance and the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, and Liner Notes: Clifford Brown. We hope you enjoy some or all of them.

Hey, you guys like podcasts? If so, this will work out great. If not, get the heck out of here! We don't need your negativity! So now that the jerks have left, let's you and us enjoy us a nice podcast, okay? We've got a couple of humdingers for you today on the 'cast, starting off with our own homegrown little KUT show Views and Brews Remix, which is a "remixed" (by which we actually mean "edited for time") version of the live Views & Brews show we do at the Cactus every month or so. In this episode, we've got dueling organs! Exciting! And then it's something from Minnesota Public Radio News' Youth Series. From the young producer Kao Choua Vue, it's A Good Hmong Daughter. Enjoy!