Profile: Yo-Yo Ma, Peaceful Virtuoso (VOA 2009)

A profile of the great (and eminently personable) cellist Yo-Yo Ma based on personal interviews and archival recordings.


Posted in Arts, Music, Profile Tags: , , , , ,

The Ink Dark Moon: Buddhist Love/Sex Poetry from Courtly Japan (written by women)

This is a story about some of the most beautiful short poetry I have ever come across. Edited by the poet Jane Hirshfield (see “Given Sugar, Given Salt” elsewhere in this blog), it is a collection of short erotic haiku-like poems written by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, who were part of the Japanese medieval court.  The themes – transience, love, loneliness, and erotic longing – are eternal, but the words come across both artful and vividly personal (not to mention steamy) across the centuries.


Posted in Arts, Buddhism, Poetry, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Loopy Art of English “Changeringing” (NPR 1989?)

English eccentricity, tradition, esthetics, mathematics, and a bit of obsessive-compulsiveness combine in the English art of changeringing or bellringing. I traveled to County Somerset in the heart of King Arthur country to get the lowdown and had a blast.


Posted in Arts, Music, Travel outside the USA Tags: , , , , , ,

The Romance and Poetry of Space (VOA 1995)

In which Adam explores the biological and the spiritual pull toward the great “Out There” through interviews with an astronaut, Terence McKenna, astophysicists, and many others.  Cameo appearance by his son Noah as an infant.


Posted in Americana, Arts, History, Science, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Sacred Heart: An Atlas of the Body Seen Through Invasive Surgery (Book)

This is a extended, edited excerpt from my intervierw with (now Dr.)  Max Aguilera-Hellweg, who saw and photographed the strange and difficult beauty of the body as it undergoes radical surgery.  While this is a long form audio story, I hoped to give a sense of the ways the spirit, the “hotness” of fleshy life and medical skill come together in the operating room, and which were compassionately exalted in his remarkable 1997 book.


Posted in Arts, Books, Health, Long form docs (15" and up), Science, Spirituality

The Spiritual Music of Hawaii

Even given its colonial past and present day kitsch, Hawaii remains both an earthly paradise and a place of natural numinous power.  This is evident in its variety of spiritual musical idioms. Here is a taste of some of them,culled from a Smithsonian Festival a few years back.  Aloha!


Posted in Americana, Arts, History, Immigrants and Ethnic Life, Music, Religion, Spirituality

Young Broadway Hopefuls

Every year, hundreds, or even thousands of talented young people come to New York to study, audition and do their damnedest to make it big on the stage whose ultimate Holy Grail is Broadway.  In this story, I speak to some of these starry-eyed youth as they prepare for the Big Time in Musical Theater school, rehearsal and beyond.  Go for it!


Posted in Americana, Arts, New York Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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