Shady's Back + Rec: "The Lemon Tree" (45 mins)
Like Electric Bugaloo, Jordan, 2 Fast 2 Furious, etc. And an actual listening recommendation, yay.
Hello old friends!
If you're new here, hi! Thank you for subscribing sometime in the last 11 months since I last wrote.
If you're old here, also hi, I've missed you. It’s been a long while since I was last in your inbox. And wow Substack has grown up a lot.
Question: If we haven’t talked since last June, you might have been wondering, "Where'd ya go, Claire?"
Answer: I over-use the phrase 'to be honest,' but honesty is a core part of my personal being and professional identity. So I'll be honest: I fell out of love with listening for a while there and had to take a big break.
Here's why: As a lot of you know, the audio part of the media industry is/was/will be going through a major reckoning. It’s financial, structural, philosophical.
A couple different things happened that affected how I feel about all the work-life stuff: the layoffs affected my close ones and a major client went under without paying me for the work I completed. It still stings.
With all of the stuff about AI and protests in higher-ed, plus climate change and my own internal mental weather, I couldn't open an app or sit down to do anything other than what was required for money work (teaching and producing). I walked, did chores, and spent free time listening to nothing other than the natural ambience in my ears. It was pretty great. Sometimes it was an audiobook. But I mostly looked at birds a lot and tried to hear them above the din of the nearby interstate.
For those paid subscribers here, I refunded $ since I wasn’t keeping my year-long-commitment (I ran near-weekly from Dec - June and then stopped). I also turned off paid subscriptions for the newsletter, even though now I wish I hadn't done that.
On a positive note, I started working full-time for The Disagreement. It's a great project, though obviously I'm biased.
Last, I’m getting married in June - woo hoo. I'm pretty private but I feel like you'd all want to know for your own enjoyment and I like happy things, so there you go. 🎉 Fun note about my future husband, he ran a popular music blog in the 00’s (lol) and actually made money on it. He frequently edits this newsletter out of the kindness of his own heart’s dedication to detail. (On an audio-related note, we’re recording everything so I can produce a documentary some day. If you have ideas, please holler. Also, he’s open for mix work if you need a very nice engineer.)
“Ok, that’s nice but can we have some recommendations please?”
Yes! I have some recommendations I want to share with you. I need them, you need them, the world needs them.
How often will I be doing this now? Let's see. One of the mentors I worked with on a previous project had a former life as a musician in a band you'd know, and he was really good at helping collaborators feel the vibe. I'm trying to do that more. So let's just feel it out for a bit. For right now, I have good stuff coming to you - this is just the first installment of a few good things I want to share over the next couple’a weeks/months.
I was sitting down to coffee last week with a friend recently and found myself recommending The Lemon Tree for the nth time. My extended family is Catholic on both sides and I have a lot of thoughts on politics, religion, and the pope. My friend's family is spread across a different religious-political divide and we got to talking about one of the most special things I listened to all last year. It’s The Lemon Tree.
The Lemon Tree 🍋
Recommendation Type: Episode
Length: ~45 minutes
Format/Style: Radio Documentary
Release Date: April 24, 1998
Publication: NPR’s Fresh Air
The Lemon Tree is a radio documentary produced by legend Sandy Tolan (now at USC). It aired back in 1998. Believe it or not, I WAS using the internet then (I think).
Last year, I had the opportunity to hear Sandy speak about his approach to audio reportage when he was kind enough to come visit my students at NYU.
As context, Sandy made it very clear that the ground has moved so much in the decades since the piece was reported. That feels important to pass along to you.
Here’s the Fresh Air description: “"The Lemon Tree" is a special documentary marking the 50th Anniversary of the State of Israel and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war[…]Bashir, a Palestinian man, and Dalia, an Israeli woman, … tell how their 31 year friendship reveals much of the painful history of the last 50 years experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis. The story begins with Dalia knocking on the door of the home that used to be his, near Tel Aviv.”
For those of you potentially thinking, ‘ughhhh no, Claire.’ Just try? Please? And tell me what you think, even if you didn’t like it.
When I heard the piece, it struck me in so many ways. I listened at least twice. I shared it with my students. (There was rage, there was surprise, there were other feelings, too.) I even bought a copy of the book at Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, IL. It was on a sale cart and felt like kismet. And now I’m recommending it to everyone.
So there it is. That's the rec. Take a listen and let me know what you think.
The Lemon Tree is also a One Good Listen inception recommendation. It's audio recommended to me by another producer, Benjamin Riskin. Ben runs a really special project called Selects. It's essentially a Criterion-channel-esque initiative sharing the best of radio archives all around the world.
Special thanks to Benjamin Riskin for re-sharing this series, to Sandy for producing it, and all the hands, minds, and hearts that brought this project to life. I tried to find the full credits but wasn’t able to. If you find them, lmk!
Episode Listen Link
You can listen through the Apple Podcasts app by using the channel Selects here.
If you like nostalgia or that link isn’t working for some reason, here's Fresh Air: https://freshairarchive.org/segments/sandy-tolans-lemon-tree
What else should I recommend? Tell me. (Bop it, below.)
P.S. You might love Plants.lol Substack. Lindsay is a treasure.
Can’t wait to listen 💛