Best PopUpArchive Podcasts (2024)

1
The Case of the Missing Checks 5:06

9y ago5:06

5:06

"High is a different thing for different folks. I don’t smoke pot but I’m awful high tonight." Community organizer Elsie Easley said this about the state of welfare to students at University of Illinois in 1972. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, welfare recipients who relied on government aid to feed their families were often subject to extreme delays a…

1
Zero Mostel and the truth of the absurd 9:07

9y ago9:07

9:07

When Zero Mostel was under trial by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1955, the committee asked what he was doing at an anti-HUAC meeting. Mostel replied: "What if I did an imitation of a butterfly at rest? There is no crime in making anybody laugh." In this Popcast, hear about Mostel's dedication to the absurd. He exposed real life absu…

1
When the Negro was in vogue 9:01

9y ago9:01

9:01

At the Cotton Club, Harlem's premier nightclub of the 1920s and 30s, 16-year-old Lena Horne performed as a chorus girl alongside legends like Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. The only catch? The audience was whites-only. In Popcast, hear Horne talk with mixed emotions about her time at the Cotton Club with clips from a 1966 recording from the Pac…

1
Seamus Heaney and the Long Dead 7:59

9y ago7:59

7:59

How do you write a love poem to a 2,000 year old stranger? On Popcast, hear about Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney's obsession with "bog bodies." These centuries-old human remains were found in boglands of Northern Europe, and were often killed in violent, ritualistic ways – something that resonated with Heaney, living in war-torn Belfast. Bioarch…

1
Welcome to Womanhouse 7:13

9y ago7:13

7:13

The rooms were full of menstrual blood and Kotex, rubber breasts and stumbling brides, fragmented bodies in linen closets and simulacra of babies being born. It was 1972, and this was Womanhouse: a rickety Victorian house turned into a home for radical feminist installations by the students of Judy Chicago’s Feminist Art program at CalArts. A conve…

1
The Freedom Singers, and the three simple words that gave strength to a movement 5:25

9y ago5:25

5:25

It was the early days of the civil rights movement. Across the South, black students staged sit-ins, marches, demonstrations and protests that were violently repressed. In this podcast, two voices from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) talk about the song “We Shall Overcome” – three simple words that became an anthem of strength …

1
Freud in the Night Kitchen 4:30

9+ y ago4:30

4:30

When Maurice Sendak’s now classic children’s book In the Night Kitchen was released in 1970, it caused a scandal. Its protagonist, a young boy, is bare naked throughout the book, amidst a landscape phallic milk bottles and free-flowing liquids. Parents cried pornography. Armchair psychologists jumped to analyze its Freudian subtext. But the kids? T…

1
The Song Banned by NASA 5:43

9+ y ago5:43

5:43

Astronauts don’t have days and nights like we do on earth, so they need some help regulating their sleep. Turns out, it takes a whole team of engineers down on earth to rouse NASA’s elite from their slumbers. In this Popcast, hear about the NASA tradition of "wake up songs" from Mission Control, including the one song that went too far.Written and …

1
Bob Hope and Atomic Bill 6:26

9+ y ago6:26

6:26

It was 1950, just five years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union had just built their own bomb. And what did Americans, huddled around their radios, most want to hear? Comedian Bob Hope, joking about the world "blowing itself up." In this Popcast, Eliza Smith talks about "The Quick and the Dead," a 1950 NBC…

1
Folksong and Potboilers 5:10

9+ y ago5:10

5:10

In the early 1900s, journalist and renaissance man Charles Lummis set out to capture and preserve the Spanish folk songs of California, including the voice of one talent in particular: Manuela García. Listen to the story behind the Charles Fletcher Lummis wax cylinder collection at the Autry National Center. Find "La Cara Negra" and dozens of other…

1
And of course, she was a Scorpio 4:42

9+ y ago4:42

4:42

Describing Sylvia Plath in 1972, Plath's editor Fran McCullough says: "instances of her bitchiness and snobbery [were] quite astonishing. And of course she was a Scorpio." Jumping off from there, host Eliza Smith uses the lens of astrology to understand Plath's work, asking Bay Area astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo to analyze Plath's star chart. What fo…

1
O my Homunculus: The proto-podcast about Sylvia Plath 4:38

9+ y ago4:38

4:38

With all the talk of a "golden age" of audio, it can be easy to forget that producers have been putting together intimate, conversational audio pieces for decades. In this Popcast, hear about the surprising podcast-like feel of a 1972 radio documentary about Sylvia Plath.Listen on Pop Up Archive, along with a full machine transcript: https://www.po…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

PopUpArchive Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
Popcast

Pop Up Archive

1
The Case of the Missing Checks 5:06

1
Zero Mostel and the truth of the absurd 9:07

1
When the Negro was in vogue 9:01

1
Seamus Heaney and the Long Dead 7:59

1
Welcome to Womanhouse 7:13

1
The Freedom Singers, and the three simple words that gave strength to a movement 5:25

1
Freud in the Night Kitchen 4:30

1
The Song Banned by NASA 5:43

1
Bob Hope and Atomic Bill 6:26

1
Folksong and Potboilers 5:10

1
And of course, she was a Scorpio 4:42

1
O my Homunculus: The proto-podcast about Sylvia Plath 4:38

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