Please Happy

Ira sounds more like Ira in this episode.

I love when he confesses his question-asking remorse.

“And as soon as I said this, I really, I regretted it,” he admits at 13:30.

Another favorite moment from Ira: “When is hell a possibility? Whenever you think it is it is.”

Yikes. This makes me think of Jake. One of Jake’s biggest complaints about religion is the invention of hell. So many kids spend days and years terrified, literally, thrown into a state of intense fear or desperation. Because of hell. They (we) live in fear of eternal pain. Eternal suffering. And not only pain that lasts forever, but also pain for which we are wholly responsible.

Then, there was Act Three:

How to weave music underneath stories.

For me, it’s hard not to feel manipulative when blending music into journalism. In a story I’m producing now about elderly and disabled folks who are losing access to health and social services, I want to incorporate their singing into the story. About 100 of them sing the Star Spangled Banner together every morning at this senior center type place they attend. But, how manipulative is that? People in wheelchairs, hands on their hearts, singing to The Flag then being axed from their state-funded health program? Ouch. It feels disingenuous even though that actually happened. So, I didn’t do that. But, I do want to experiment with music at some point. Music and storytelling. How can music move a story along. And what producers should I be listening to who do this beautifully? Maybe I’ll ask Rob Rosenthal to do a How Sound episode about this. Maybe he already has.

When to narrate, when to let characters speak their stories.

I suspect this’ll be a lifelong question. Ira speeds the story along with narration about how the hackers used their skillz to get celebrities’ home phone numbers. They call Julia Roberts. They call Queen Elizabeth, too, Ira says. Then Ira stops the narration and lets the guy, Eli, pick up the story about calling the Queen. Eli imitates the queen’s voice picking up the phone, “Hello?” and tells it in a quick, funny and heartbreaking way. (Like, what is one supposed to do after he gets the queen of England on the phone? Uh…). Then Ira continues his narration.

Make your characters step back from the details to reflect on big picture, universal themes.

From Eli:
“We’re not evil people”

and

“I was a criminal in the sense that Jesus Christ was a criminal, you know?

Over reporting.

Ira comments at the episode’s end that gang members he had spoken to said they eventually tired of their gang tired of doing the same things night after night. He brought it up as a response to Eli’s comment that destructive computer hacking was a thing of the past, a thing of his teenage self. Made me think about all the untold stories that have touched Ira’s ears that we’ll never hear. And made me think about all the ideas and details I have in my head for a story I’m working on that never make it into the final product. Hours of tape for a four minute story. More heartbreak.

Incorporating other media.

He’s just going for it. Why not read a passage from Clockwork Orange at the end of the radio show? Why not throw a poet into the middle?

This was produced before iTunes. Before Google.

Hated the radio play, but who cares?