 |
Application Questions Send a suggestion for a piece of fiction or literary non-fiction to be read on This American Life. Edit at will. Include both the entire piece and the portion you would excerpt. Keep in mind that dialogue, scenes, even entire characters can be edited. I chose to edit "Experiment" by Julian Barnes. A photocopied version of the story with my edits has been sent along with this application. I'm concerned that it would be a bit too racy for public radio, but I like the combination of the strange sex experiment with the Uncle Freddy character and the goofy French Surrealists. Besides this, it twists and ends in an unexpectedly ambiguous way. I removed sections that were too sexually graphic. A recording of me reading "Experiment" can be found on the web at: www.auscillate.com/josh/tal/Experiment.mp3. The file is about 26MB and around 24 minutes long. I wrote the music at the end of the recording. The piece is called "Disorienting Conversations." More of my music can be found at www.auscillate.com/josh/closedwindow/. Suggest a small documentary/ reporter piece for This American Life. Please explain the story as a whole, along with possible characters and scenes that could be developed. "Indy Rock" Austin, Texas advertises itself as "The Live Music Capital of the World." Whether true or not, Austin does boast a huge number of local independent musicians, producing everything from jazz to punk to electronica to swing to country to rock. Most of these artists don't profit financially from their music. The most idealistic work for different reasons: to build a culture and community of their own, or just out of the sheer enjoyment of sound itself. Smaller indy bands often play shows at their houses or in thinly packed clubs, they give out CD-Rs to friends and put mp3s on their websites for the world to (potentially) listen to. But they don't necessarily do it with any less creativity or energy than their higher-income counterparts. In fact, they often creatively and energetically surpass more popular bands. I would be able to track the progress of a small indy rock band -- one without an official release or label of any sort -- trying to figure out why they spend their energy and money creating their music. What do they hope to get in return? Fame? Sex? A chance to act crazy in public? Maybe the simple act of refined music-making is its own reward. And how do they respond to the drama of life as a musician: when almost no one turns out for a show, when the first album gets recorded, or when the first non-friend fans begin to turn up, for example? I could also explore how these artists felt their lives have changed and how different their lives might be without their band. I bet in many ways starting a band is like getting married: Your friends become the friends of everyone in the band, or you can't go out with other friends many nights because you've got to stay home and practice with the band. Maybe I'm biased because I, too, am an independent musician, but I think this subject could be mined for all sorts of great stories. Suggest 2-3 possible show themes. In one or two sentences, explain how that theme could be explored. (I apologize for the wordiness here; I hope the ideas are worth it.) "Living Together" Different sorts of intentional communities (cooperative houses, usually) have been operating in the United States for nearly two hundred years. They're usually associated with people who choose to live somewhat off the usual cultural grid, the sorts of people who have open marriages, grow their own vegetables, and read radical literature in the kitchen with no clothes on. Recently, though, the co-op housing movement has grown quite strong in college towns where young people view them as an exciting alternative to dorm or apartment life. So what happens when fifteen, twenty, or thirty people -- mostly non-family members and oftentimes who don't even know each other before moving in -- enter into a group living situation with shared chores, shared meals, shared spaces, and shared lives? It's like MTV's The Real World, but really real, and could be explored by taking a look at a student co-op house, a co-op house of adults (possibly with children), an historical segment about an especially radical approach to living together, and a segment about someone who is totally satisfied living totally alone. "Meeting Places" Bars, churches, parks -- it's easy enough to list different places people meet to do different things, to behave in different ways. Sometimes these places take on a unique culture of their own and sometimes the strangest of places can become meeting places. For this segment, I would choose segments about the student co-op house I lived in with 25 others for three years; Mojo's Daily Grind, a bustling local coffeeshop that has become, in their own words, "A Hub of Subculture, Creating Community for the Disenfranchised;" and the downtown Texaco I frequent, where the middle-aged cashiers and their friends hang out, discuss events, and even put their photographs on the walls. Write about 2-3 of your favorite This American Life shows or pieces and briefly explain why. "Monogamy" (Ep. 95) People feel required to adhere to all sorts of societal norms, whether the norms are right for them or not. It's great to hear realistic thinking and questioning of one of the most common: that a person should get married and stay monogamous, that that is the best way. The first segment -- the Governor of Colorado Roy Romer defending his choice to have a mistress -- is a beautiful example of the struggle to reconcile differences between personal moral rules and societal ones. It's one of This American Life's most moving segments. "Sentencing" (Ep. 143) This episode is a great example of radio journalism. Between "Sentencing," "Lockdown" (Ep. 119) and the final segment of "We Didn't" (Ep. 134, "Saying No for 75 Years"), I feel I've learned more about how the American criminal justice system works than I did from all the government classes I took in high school and college. My heart goes out to individuals who have been senselessly sentenced to life-shattering jail terms (especially in those cases involving drugs). And I feel angered listening to how these sentencing laws come about in the first place. The criminal justice system in this country sorely needs to be reconsidered and pieces such as these that present the matter with such clarity can really get that message out. Write about 2-3 shows or pieces that did not work quite as well and explain why. I usually listen to This American Life episodes over the web rather than on the radio, and I normally avoid listening to episodes that don't look interesting based on the short descriptions on the website. Shows I so far haven't listened to for this reason have include: "A Teenager's Guide to God" (Ep. 147) "Bob Dole" (Ep. 29) "Cicero" (Ep. 179) I find it difficult to concentrate on episodes that focus on a single, long segment such as "Cicero," "The House at Loon Lake" (Ep. 199), and "Trail of Tears" (Ep. 107 -- though I have read "Trail of Tears" and thought it well done). This doesn't reflect on the content of the program at all, unfortunately, just the nature of the environments I'm in when I listen (usually in the car driving somewhere or at work). Fifteen-minute segments seem to work the best. List five magazines or newspapers you read regularly and five more you wish you read regularly. I do read: I would like to read: List five of your favorite books. Of the five, choose two and explain briefly why you like them (a hundred words or less for each book). Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Jerry Mander) A friend recommended this one to me last summer. The book's a detailed argument describing how television harms the brain, the body, and the local culture in different ways. Jerry Mander didn't convince me to stop watching television completely, but I became much more aware of how different aspects of television affect the way I act and think. He also does an excellent job pondering what a real experience "is" and discussing how television fails to provide this. Reading the book allowed me to consider what makes for a good and bad media experience, which has, I hope, made me a savvier media consumer and media creator. The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon) I fell in love with Oedipa Maas the first time I read this book. She's a strong, thinking woman, somehow above the forces that keep the other characters insane and running around in circles. The shadowy nature of the whole book, with the sprawling connections to pop culture and European history through Oedipa's strange acquaintances and the W.A.S.T.E. conspiracy sent tingles up and down my spine the first time I read it. And they still do, like I'm reading the account of a dream that reflects on many of the elements of 1960's American culture but stews them around into something sinister. Also: What is your familiarity with word processing, computers, recording equipment, and analog or digital editing? Please list any foreign languages spoken and proficiency in each. I'm perfectly comfortable with computers and word processing software of all sorts. Through my hobby of producing electronic music, I also have plenty of experience with recording equipment and digital editing, including with using ProTools. I also have experience with graphic design, web development, and using various programming languages. I speak and write German proficiently and know the basics of Russian. Write two short paragraphs: one describing any research experience you may have had, the other detailing your organizational abilities. Use specific examples from your experience to demonstrate your ability to juggle several projects at once and to meet deadlines. My research experience has mostly been for college classes. As a Plan II Honors student, I was required to take three research-heavy seminar courses that culminated in large projects. For an American studies seminar called "Drug Wars and Prohibition," for example, I wrote a twenty-page piece looking at different aspects of dextromethorphan hydrobromide, the active cough-suppressant ingredient in Robitussin (and other products) that happens to have psychedelic properties when taken in large enough doses. I looked at the chemistry of the drug, how the drug affects the brain, different groups whom it recreationally, and how and why the government schedules drugs and presents information about them to the public. The other two seminars I took were "Arthur of Avalon" and "Hitler, the Holocaust, and Memory." I also wrote articles for The Daily Texan (the University of Texas student newspaper) for several months. My only for-pay research experience had to do with baseball and is described in the next section. Evidence of my ability to handle multiple projects at once can be found by looking at the past couple weeks of my life. Besides working about thirty hours a week, I have volunteered about thirty hours of my time to the Austin Museum of Digital Art. For them, I am interviewing a local musician for our website, putting together a compilation CD of music by local electronic musicians, working with a team to redesign the AMODA website, and heading up the gathering and editing of information from the various AMODA departments to be included on the new website. The website will be rolled out mid-February and we're hoping to have compilation CDs available by SXSW in March. On top of this, this semester I'm finishing my undergraduate thesis. This requires not only actually finding time to write, but also meeting regularly with my advisors. I also manage the largest Austin-area electronic music e-mail discussion list (about 100 members). And these past couple of weeks I've found time to finish the application you're looking at now! Briefly describe any of your previous radio, documentary journalism or writing experiences. One past research experience had an odd twist to it. Last summer a man from Midland, Texas named Don Bishop hired me to write an article for his family about his wife's father, Lev "Fuzz" Windham. Fuzz used to tell the family about his days with the University of Texas Longhorn Baseball team back in the early 1930s, and Don wanted an article about what Fuzz's experiences living in Austin and playing baseball at that time must have been like. To figure this out, I dug around in the Austin city archives, the University of Texas Center for American History document archives, and I even got a copy of Fuzz's college transcript and a copy of a UT course catalogue from 1932. I found surprises nearly every time I opened a book, it seemed, though the biggest surprise came after finding almost no information about Fuzz playing baseball for UT: Perhaps Fuzz Windham exaggerated a bit in telling his baseball tales to the family. As far as we could figure, he never actually played on UT's baseball team.
|
[ Home. ]
e-josh
Created February 4, 2002