Say It This Way

Informações:

Sinopsis

audio from my blog --> http://hammad.we.bsEach month, a new story about people doing something funny, exciting, inspiring, or provocative. People like you and me, but up close and personal.

Episodios

  • Sell your silverware

    25/07/2008 Duración: 05min

    Take note, all you dumpster divers and free furniture junkies: metal prices are on the rise. And that means competition at junkyards is getting tougher. As if competing with grandmothers and bargain shoppers wasn't hard enough, now visitors at Harvard's weekly free furniture giveaway have a new rival... scrap metal scavengers who kidnap filing cabinets, and snip off power cords just for the copper. This is pissing some people off, especially those who just want to re-use the stuff rather than see it recycled as scrap. But is the situation as simple as re-users vs. recyclers? Only one way to find out. You'll have to listen to this, my first field piece produced for NPR.

  • Smokestacks and Annals

    01/07/2008 Duración: 04min

    "How utterly the alabaster spreads / to shade the coming light." Good poetry gets better with background sound and music. Here are two poems: "Schuylkill Smoketacks at Sunrise," and "The Town Historian," written by my friend Edward Stephens, and remixed by me.

  • Lost in Ritual

    10/06/2008 Duración: 03min

    Muslims pray five times a day, even if they happen to be stuck in Harvard Square on a hot June day. My aunts use the sun to figure out the direction towards Mecca. "Basically, it usually rises to your left. -No, it sets on your left. -No, towards your left is the east, and towards your right is the west. -That was in England. -But England is also in the east...I could be wrong." Their daughters are not religious--at first glance. But. What they say about finding a "side room" sounds very similar to how their mother describes the "essence" of prayer. Hear four distinct Muslim women sound off in this three-minute soundworld.

  • Float to the Bottom

    30/05/2008 Duración: 04min

    A sound journey: escape from a burning office building into the peaceful grip of asphyxia. "The devil doesn't buy individual souls anymore. Now, he buys pieces of souls. Soul-backed securities, diversified bundles of souls. It's less risky, you know?"

  • Facebook vs. the RIAA

    02/05/2008 Duración: 11min

    Just hope you don't get caught. When the record companies sent Jared an email asking for three thousand dollars for music he’d downloaded online, he was dumbstruck. "Someone suggested I start selling illegal pirated music and movies. Pornography. They’re like well they’ve accused you of doing it so why don’t you do it? I was like, uh, maybe." He actually ended up using facebook to ask people for money. And it worked. Big time.

  • Can't touch this

    08/04/2008 Duración: 11min

    But you can touch this. "I walked a couple of streets and then I called 911." I remember seeing Selvaraj the night he was mugged. He was shaking and a wad of tissue was plugged up his bloody nostril. That same night, a police officer lined up four suspects and asked Selvaraj to identify the attacker. He was seventy percent sure he saw the guy.

  • Early Music

    08/03/2008 Duración: 04min

    You can hear it all over the place. "People into meditation and stuff have discovered it. I would say musicians and probably... older ‘folk.’ (laughs) So, why does old music draw old people?" After singing songs from the 1500s for an hour, the choir members peel off their flowing purple robes and rush out the doors for dinner. They're starving. But I pull some aside in the few minutes they can spare and I ask them why they sing what they sing, what it means, and who the audience tends to be.

  • Mr. Anonymous

    08/03/2008 Duración: 11min

    You've got a secret admirer. "At the conversation kept going, something came over me. Talking to Mr. Anonymous... it felt like home." Crushes are all the same in some ways—admiration from a distance, secret longing, nervous encounters, and eventually, either reciprocation or rejection. In Erica Davis' case, her crush was far out of reach. So she put him in a story she was writing to give herself a reason to interview him.

  • Evil Chubbetta

    08/03/2008 Duración: 10min

    See this story's evil twin. "Chubbetta would sneak up behind the bald man and rub his head, vigorously... I would say 'Chubbetta, stop it!' But she would say, 'Evil Chubbetta listens to no one.' " An evil twin can come in the smallest package. Like a baby doll. Courtney Matson got away with so much mischief as a child because she could always blame it on her naughty, naughty doll, who she appropriately named, “The Evil Chubbetta.” At times, she even embarrassed her parents in public with Chubbetta's bad manners.

  • Black Islam

    08/03/2008 Duración: 20min

    Take off your shoes before stepping in. "Damn, Brother! I didn't know you was pretty like that. What you going through the sisters' side for, boy? Huh? You pretty? You pretty boy?" I met Abdul Shabazz at a flea market in New Haven; he was distributing the latest issue of the Muslim Times. A month later, I went with him to Muhammad Islamic Center, a predominantly black mosque. It had been years since I had let go of my own Pakistani Muslim faith, but in this setting I talked with people about the history of black Islam and the problems facing urban youth, and I became re-acquainted with Islam through a new community.

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