Show Notes: The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt - Love and Radio Choir Boy - Love and Radio Love and Radio on How Sound Salvatore Scibona reads Denis Johnson - New Yorker Fiction Podcast Music: Silence Kid - Pavement You’re Killing Me - Pavement Prefect Depth - Pavement The Bus at Dawn - Blue Dot Sessions Orchard Lime - Blue Dot Sessions Nine Count by Bl…

Rob and Britta share a discussion they had in 2019 (but never released) about the classic This American Life episode "Notes on Camp." Topics include their own camp experiences, the power of scary stories, Rob's favorite thing ever recorded by any radio show ever, and the wild back story of the beloved camp counselor David Himmel, aka Mr. Popluar. S…

On the second of a two-part series about the podast Startup, Rob and Britta talk about how the mini-seasons of the podcast Startup about the growth of Gimlet revealed all kinds of details about the troubles at the company, the ill-fated sale to Spotify, and what all this means for the state of narrative audio. Show Notes: Skye Pillsbury's newslette…

On the first episode of the new season Rob and Britta talk about what made them want to restart a show about narrative audio. And they discuss the complicated legacy of a podcast that's having its tenth anniversary this year. Show Notes: Music: Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell "Arabic Tallow" and "At Our Best Alone" from Blue Dot Sessions Gentle Cha…

After more than five years of silence, new episodes of this podcast finally are on their way. Season 2 starts September 5, 2024.Door Rob McGinley Myers

Rob and Britta discuss This American Life Episode 37 - The Job that Takes Over Your Life, as well as Britta’s former job fixing scandals for big companies, and Rob’s former job working for Garrison Keillor. Other topics include the great radio reporter Scott Carrier and his masterpiece of a story The Test, and Rob interviews Peter Clowney, one of t…

Rob and Britta discuss whether this episode is TAL’s first real masterpiece, the role of David Sedaris in the show’s early years, why “The Man in the Well” is the rare example of great audio fiction, the bone-chilling music of the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, and why an effort to keep children from excluding each other makes Rob weirdly…

Rob and Britta discuss This American Life Episode 14: Accidental Documentaries, including their own experience creating accidental documentaries. The main focus of the discussion is the centerpiece of this episode, a documentary edited out of reel to reel tapes that a family sent back and forth to each other back in 1967. And Rob talks to Joe Silov…

A discussion of This American Life Episode 10: Double Lives. Topics include Rob and Britta's own experiences leading double lives, Rob's childhood habit of breaking into schools at night, why this episode feels like the birth of This American Life, why parents so often hide secrets from their children, what Britta’s parents have been hiding from he…

Rob and Britta discuss the very first episode of This American Life, as well as why the show is worth discussing, how they and others became fans of the show, and why they love Ira Glass’s mother. Clips from following were used in this episode: Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell Episode of Tape with Jonathan Menjivar Episode of Tape with Ben Calhoun I…

Episode 0 Show Notes Clips from following were used in this episode: This American Life, Episode 1: New Beginnings This American Life, Episode 17: Name Change/No Theme Longform Podcast, Episode 159: Ira Glass Coffaro’s Theme by Bill Frisell

A man obsessed with time builds a house that's a giant clock.Door ryan_scammell@hotmail.com

Finally you can watch the entirety of "IMMUNE!" now released in all 4 parts (plus a prologue) at: www.immunethefilm.com Part fiction, part narrative, part superhero origin story (kinda), part personal narrative, part graphic novel, the film takes a deep look at the reasons we all might want to believe in superheroes, and the dangerous places we end…

Blind people playing baseball? Yeah. That's right. All you need is a ball that beeps. (photo credit: "baseball" by theseanster93 via flickr creative commons)

As a small change of pace from the rest of the podcast, here's a short music video I put together made entirely out of letters. The video was created for a two-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as part of a live show I was doing alongside comedian and performance artist Ryan Good. Initially the video was meant to serve as a background eleme…

The alternate title for this was going to be the Isaac Hayes-esque "Girl, I Wanna Get You In My Belly Button T-Shirt Hole" but the mp3 title field wouldn't fit it. But now that you know that, I mean, c'mon, aren't you curious....?

so yea, a test thingy to get this on itunes, real episode soon guys! i do not own this song, it is property of the dead keneddys

Because this is a much longer piece than I normally produce, and because in writing it, it naturally broke down into seven distinct parts, I wanted to give the listener the option of listening to the piece as a whole or to each section individually. So I created an enhanced podcast, which allows you to interact with it the same way you do a CD. You…

This project started because I was interested in the hundreds of towns around America that have been evacuated and then purposely flooded in order to make reservoirs. In many cases, the streets, the buildings, still exist underwater. When droughts happen, these town resurface and the people who lived in these towns often come back to see what’s lef…

I mean, seriously... The piece is 3 1/2 minutes. With a title like that, do I really have to write a description to convince you to listen to it? (Non-fiction?)

Ryan Scammell finds some pages from a young girls' diary (?) in the closet in his apartment building. He reads us something she had written about the deaf man who lived across the street from her and what happened when she finally tried to talk to him. (Fiction)

When a woman finds the wind-chimes she made in 8th grade shop class, she calls an old friend to talk about the thing they did and why she still can't forgive herself. If you're interested, please visit the website for information about the origins of this piece.

As a special Thanksgiving episode, this is a story about fathers, sons, the woods, and the never-ending quest to figure out what it means to be a man. (Non-fiction)

One of a series of short-short pieces about things lost and things found. A couple receives a letter from a friend who has been dead for almost a year. (Fiction)

We like to believe that we have control on our lives. That we can sculpt perfect moments around us. That if we put ourselves in the right setting with the right people everything can be everything we want it to be. A few weeks ago, two of my best friends, Nell and Pete, came in from out of town for what started as a perfect weekend. But as the week…

Or: How not to commune with foreign cultures. -- I lived in Australia for seven months in 2003 and 2004, almost half of which I spent travelling in a car with my friend Dave and a german girl named Susanne. This is a story about an experience I had at a beautiful place in Litchfield National Park called The Buley Rock Pools. That's actually a pictu…

What it means to be 20 years old. (Non-fiction)

This is not a radio piece. It's actually the last film that I made. (Which means if you don't have a video ipod you may want to watch this online at ryanscammell.com) For the last two years, it's been sitting in a drawer being watched only by dust-bunnies. For some reason, though I spent about half a year working on it, I showed to almost no one af…

There's a million ways to fall in love, and a million ways to fall apart. Sometimes all it takes is an email. (Non-fiction)

Liza Minnelli is downing red wine in her tour bus. The stagehands all together look like a Judas Priest cover band. Coney Island is a Ferris Wheel slowing to a stop. Andy Warhol! Incubated babies! Lawsuits! Lions in flames! It all comes together at a Liza concert in 2005. (Non-fiction)