Low Fidelity

Journalist Bella Bathurst describes how she lost her hearing while conducting interviews with the last generation of Scottish lighthouse keepers and then how it felt, twelve years later, to regain it. For this episode of The Organist, I edited, sound designed, mixed, and scored this interview between Bathurst and journalist Jason Boog.  (Starts at 8:30)

Ravening for Delight

H. P. Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic horror have long inspired obsessive fandom. His short stories, in the hundred years since they were first published, have extended their tentacular influence to Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, the Alien movies, Dungeons & Dragons, and beyond. Paul La Farge’s new novel, The Night Ocean, traces Lovecraft’s unusual friendship with a 16-year-old fan… Continue reading Ravening for Delight

How the Rorschach Got Its Blots

For The Organist (KCRW & McSweeney’s), I produced this story on the surprising backstory of the Rorschach test, that all-purpose metaphor we use for “means whatever you want it to mean.” As Damion Searls, the author of a new biography of Hermann Rorschach explains, that’s not what the test is really about at all. Check… Continue reading How the Rorschach Got Its Blots

The Music Collector

Roger Smith/Flickr

When a friend showed Nathan Salsburg some old records he had come across while clearing out an abandoned house, Salsburg at first wasn’t interested. He’s the curator for the Alan Lomax Archive, so he knows most old records are junk. But when he saw a rare 78-rpm Mississippi John Hurt, he knew his friend was onto something. That… Continue reading The Music Collector