Emily Botein

Some very persuasive arguments about why you should vote, from people who should know - Mario Cuomo and Aunt Alice, among others. Plus a walk around the rock and roll block with record producer Jim Dickinson, and another round of "What's Your Word" with word diva Erin McKean.
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We travel over land and water to collect spooky stories and train lore. Also this week, Jonathan Katz takes talk-radio where no other host has ever gone, or would ever want to go. And writer Sean Elder examines the difference between being a celebrity and just looking like one.

In these anxious and extraordinary times, The Next Big Thing offers a much-needed dose of the ordinary — a profile of cockroaches, a report on lives lived uneventfully, and an improvisational take on therapy-gone-awry starring Janeane Garofalo and David Rakoff. Plus a studio visit from Suzanne Vega, guitar in hand. ...

Whether you are for or against cacophony, this week's show has something for you. We meet the man who started an anti-honking poetry movement and listen to the collected works of cutting edge audio artists. Also, we hear from men who made noise through their silence, by registering as conscientious ...

We've got a lot of meat on the table, starting with a jaunt through Cincinnati in search of the perfect chili, and followed by an exploration of the overlapping worlds of the Meatpacking District — a New York neighborhood undergoing a radical transformation. Stay tuned also for an audio postcard ...

The Next Big Thing unveils our new Department of Transportation, a series featuring stories, music, urban myths and truths about the New York Subway. We begin the series with an investigation of controversial social psychologist Stanley Milgram's little known "Subway Experiment." Also, a whirlwind of rhythmic brass with Romani flourishes ...

It's the world premiere of a new radio play by Rick Moody, about the characters, stories and theories that seem to gather at the base of a big, black cube in downtown Manhattan. Featuring, among others, Ethan Hawke, Miranda July and Larry Pine, this is no ordinary radio drama. It ...

We are visited by all kinds of unusual voices — from sound artist Miranda July, who makes up strange dialogues for ordinary people, to Jonathan Katz, who steals the show - literally. Also, the voices of women throughout China who, in the 1990s, dared to call and write daily talk ...

The Next Big Thing travels along the edges of September 11th, where things are a little quieter. We make stops at an open marketplace in Brazil - to listen to reports of the attack in medieval verse form - and then visit the collective unconscious in Meg Wolitzer's radio play ...

The Next Big Thing is work. And not just any work, but work in professions that are fast disappearing. Meet Frank Sabatino, one of the last commercial fishermen in New York City, and Charlie Zimmerman, who makes his living up on the roof, constructing water towers. We've also got a ...

Next Big Thing host Dean Olsher weaves together a tale of many voices and one big pool. Which pool? A giant WPA-era pool in north Brooklyn. Everyone in the neighborhood, it seems, has a story to tell about the major public work that, for better and for worse, was built ...

The Next Big Thing invites out-of-towners and locals alike to take a voice tour of New York City. We go back-stage at the Amato Opera, which, it turns out, isn't all that far from the back row. We follow playwright and poet Carl Hancock Rux down the hallway of one ...

The Next Big Thing is music, music, music, from the Dominican Republic, Italy, Norway, the Phillipines and West Africa, all by way of New York.

Beautiful People Meet Beautiful Music
Classical music finds a new venue and a new audience when concert pianist Leif Ove Andsnes ...

The Next Big Thing is relief from the heat... comic, and otherwise. We (briefly) cede the airwaves to an uninvited talk show host named Jonathan Katz, visit with the founders of a camp for Cabbage Patch dolls, and call up the ghosts of anarchists past.

Sit ...

The Next Big Thing is August — therapists on leave, and REAL tomatoes from a farmer who left behind the place, but not the pace, of New York City. It's also a guided tour of Chinatown's side streets, and a look at Alzheimer's as something more than the latest statistic. ...

Music, Make-Believe Movies and Made-Up Stories

Sunday, July 21 2002


Voices from the slave gallery of a New York City church, music and memories from the vast collection of an 86-year-old ethnomusicologist, make-believe movies, and made-up stories...by you, our listeners.
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Words, words, and more words in this week's show. Political words twisted, poetic words remembered, and new words not (yet) in the dictionary. Also, an exploration of patriotic bug art and a new drama from novelist Meg Wolitzer.

Bush Redux

President Bush came ...

The Next Big Thing is death, longing, love ... in other words: Fado, music from Portugal that will take your breath away. It's being haunted by the old neighborhood with writer Philip Lopate. It's news that's not news, and how you feel when you're about to eat cake.
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In the midst of thunder storms and soaring temperatures, strange things seem to be happening on the airwaves. We've got interference from... Jonathan Katz? Plus a boarding school tale by up-and-coming author Touré.

The Latest Scoop

Mark and Bruce Becker have had their share ...

The science of Louis Armstrong, the vocabulary of a cab driver

Friday, June 14 2002


The Next Big Thing is the science of Louis Armstrong and the vocabulary of a cab driver. It's what to do when you think your lover is ...