The Summer of 2001 Through 2024 Ears

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Basically said you don't really need this to make podcasts.

Well, one, it would help if I made podcasts.

And two, he has a good point.

I probably don't need this.

But one way to encourage myself to do recordings is to get a new recorder.

Invest in my, I almost said talent.

That's not it.

But hello, here I am in Haarlem, H-A-A-R-L-E-M, in the Netherlands.

Bicycle Mark.

For those that don't remember me, I'm a podcaster.

Or at least I identify as a podcaster.

And in this day and age, that means something, I think, how you identify.

And so that's how I've always identified myself.

Even if the work I'm doing on a daily basis, especially the last few years, is not podcasting.

Hang on, I'm getting something.

So, I'm in my kitchen, which is where I spend around three hours a day cooking.

Cleaning.

Sometimes eating.

I stand here and I decide not to go to the kitchen table if everyone is busy.

But indeed, I am a good, try to be a good dad and a good cook for the house.

And try to help keep things organized.

And I've been relatively successful, I think, because my child is healthy.

My partner is healthy.

And they're both pretty funny.

I don't.

There's already credit for that, but I consider that a good sign.

If you can still be funny, no matter what, that's good.

And there haven't been many podcasts, but there's been a lot of interest in making podcasts.

And I'm gonna, as I talk to you, I'm gonna slice some tomatoes.

One way that I spend way too much time in the kitchen is making my tomato sauce.

Which takes...

Which takes far too long.

I'm also just slow by nature.

And so, you put me in a kitchen, this whole slow food movement, it comes to me very naturally.

So I'm gonna make some tomato sauce, and to do that, I'm gonna start with some tomatoes.

This is not a cooking program, this is a sort of life update.

I've got the float recorder in the cabinet, with the cabinet door open, which is near my head, so that I have both hands free.

Uh, now.

Now, this time of year, in the Netherlands, this is, uh, what are we, May?

Getting into mid-May, uh, in the Netherlands.

And we got one of those semi-heat waves, which for us means, oh, whatever, 20 degrees.

Which in, um, Fahrenheit, for those who use Fahrenheit, is like, uh, 65.

It's, it's wonderful, but it's, it's sort of a heat wave for us.

We do get crazy heat waves that would make anyone uncomfortable, but this is one of those no-problem heat waves.

Um, so the windows are open, and as a result, especially in a small city where many people have come to raise their kids,

instead of in the bigger cities, let's say, there are kids everywhere.

So I just opened my window and I hear families, uh, laughing, yelling, uh, uh, playing, I guess that's part of laughing.

And right now, it's dinner time, so a lot of families are sitting down or trying to sit down.

down trying to wrangle their 1.5 kids to the table. I don't actually know if the 1.5 is accurate

for the Netherlands. I would guess it were a little higher. My household is a one, one child

household, and it's going to stay that way, I'm pretty sure, but you never know. And my neighbors,

many of them are two, two children households. Some even go further than that, but on my particular

street, it's a lot of two children. Take a sip of some chai, and let's see, if you're going to

make tomato sauce, you're going to have to, you're going to have to have more stuff. Hang on, I'll

spare you this, this bit.

So as I gather my ingredients here,

and I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just,

I try not to stray too far. Oh, I'm straying. I'm straying. I'm getting something. All right,

I'm back. I wanted to share a bit, because this podcast used to be about sharing about life,

and that included conversations with friends. But of course, lately, there is no podcast to speak of,

just lots of archive programs that are, I think, great to listen to. But you know, who really goes

back in archives? Well, that leads me to the main thing I wanted to talk about. As much as there are

plenty of things to talk about in the current events of our, of our time, I'm not going to

talk about that. I'm going to talk about something that I've been experiencing by choice, let's say.

Some of you may know, there, there are a lot of podcasts out there, but there are also

services, or, or, or little,

I don't know what you call them, applets, that allow you to listen to radio shows from the past.

This is primarily done through archive.org. And I use, what is it called? Forble, like the number

four, A-B-L-E, something like that. And what I like about Forble is they, they basically have

a lot of radio shows that have been uploaded,

to archive.org. And what they make out of those things is they make them into podcast feeds.

And then you can subscribe to them, but you don't have to just, in your podcast player, get

hundreds of radio shows, if a radio show has hundreds of episodes. No, you can choose how

often you want to get a new episode, or the next episode, we should say, in your podcast player.

So, I've been playing with this, some names might not be familiar to, for example, non-Americans,

or even young Americans, but you may know Abbott and Costello, a comedy team from the

50s, I, I think. I grew up with them. They were reruns on the, on the TV in New York, New Jersey.

Whoa! Whoa, peanut butter!

Costello, Costello, what in the world have you got there?

Oh, what do you think it is?

It's a horse, isn't it?

Certainly it's a horse. What does it look like, a hip-hop puppet to have my arm in a bus?

No. Costello, tell me the truth, now. Where did you get that horse?

Oh, Abbott, I bought it for a dollar and a half from a fellow that was wearing a white suit.

And in anything, this horse is a hero.

What do you mean?

He won the Distinguished Service Cross. Look, it says right on his blanket, DSC.

Distinguished Service Cross?

Yeah, he won it.

That means Department of Street Cleaning.

You mean that fellow in the white suit was a street cleaner?

Certainly.

No wonder when I first spoke to him, he gave me the brush.

Costello, you've got to cut out this nonsense. Now, last week you bought a dog, this week you bought a horse.

Now, the next thing you know, you'll buy an elephant.

I did buy an elephant.

Huh?

I bought an elephant, Abbott.

What do you mean?

But I had to give him back.

Why?

They wouldn't let me bring him home on a streetcar.

Oh, Costello, take that horse out of here right now and give him back to the man. Go ahead.

No, Abbott, come on.

And so I said it to, once a week, give me an Abbott and Costello.

And so I said it to, once a week, give me an Abbott and Costello episode of their radio show.

So I'm somewhere in like, I don't know, 1951 or something.

And this is like a 20-minute program, just as it was.

There are commercials for cigarettes and all kinds of other stupidity of that era.

But it's a pleasure, really, to decide.

At the same time, I decide when I get it, but at the other hand, I have no idea what I'm getting.

So this is a service I've been playing with.

Now, also, this is a service I've been playing with.

Also, this is a service I've been playing with.

So there, there are many, many radio shows.

I noticed radio shows from my college years, high school and college years,

when talk radio, comedy talk, really took off in New York.

And we had WNEW at the time, which just was all day long comedy talk.

Some of it was Shock Jocks.

You may know Opie and Anthony.

Kind of like Howard Stern.

Howard Stern was part of this for a little while.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

But there were lots of types of comedy shows on there, usually based around the idea of an interview,

but also with people coming in and out, interns that would get hazed and become part of the joke.

Things you can't do anymore, obviously.

I might say that a few times today, because it's just it was a different era.

And what was acceptable then is not acceptable now.

But so on that list of radio shows from my college years, I saw Ron and Fez.

I think there's very few people listening right now who would know what Ron and Fez was.

In fact, Ron Bennington, Ron in this formula, he's still on the radio with his daughter now as his comedy partner.

I've never really, well, I might have heard a show or two.

I don't have any kind of subscription to satellite radio,

nor do I have any links anymore to the underground.

I listened to Ron and Fez underground for many years when I lived when I moved to Europe.

Anyway, so I found a feed or a feed of episodes daily because they were on five days a week for three hours.

And I subscribed once a week, maybe twice a week.

I'm not sure. It feels like I listen once a week to.

To hear Ron and Fez.

And it's all started whoever set up this archive by coincidence, I think.

Or maybe it was when the show was still pretty young.

Anyway, it's 2001.

Specifically, I look at my player and I listen to the program and I see it's the summer of 2001.

And I remember the summer of 2001 pretty well.

I had just graduated college.

I just finished an internship at the newspaper.

Like of my dreams in New York at the Village Voice.

I had also been studying in Portugal in the summer.

Like a lot was going on.

That was very exciting.

My life was very exciting, which is, I think, a good thing.

But of course, it's the summer of 2001.

What's going to happen in September?

So I started doing this, I don't know, a couple of months ago.

And it must have been July 2001.

And I thought to myself, oh, wow.

So as I go forward in episodes, I'm getting closer to 9-11.

And for some reason, I wanted to listen.

And what I had in mind was what life was like before 9-11.

Or what comedy, what was funny, what was in the news.

And then I also wanted to hear the day of and the day after.

Because those talk shows were on the air that day.

And the days to follow.

They didn't take time off.

They were in the city.

They were uptown.

And what they did back then was, I remember this too.

They just allowed people to call in.

No more jokes.

Just tell me how you're doing.

And people were angry.

And people were sad.

And people were crying.

Every other phone call was about someone lost someone.

So every week for the last few, I guess, months, I've been listening to Ron and Fez.

I got through.

Last month, I finished all of them.

August.

And this month, I arrived at September.

And man, I really took time to listen to the three hours on September 10th, Monday.

Just to hear how people were.

And of course, you know, they have no idea what's going to happen the next day.

And now, yesterday and the day before, I've been listening here and there.

You know, after work, while cooking usually.

I've been listening to the September 11th show.

Which is really not just sad.

It's fascinating.

Because I remember people talking this way.

And having these thoughts.

And coming, the conversations that they had with me also were just like this.

And as I'm sitting there watching this on TV.

And literally, you know, rubbing my eyes.

And the next building explodes.

And you see the, I literally, I turn around to my wife.

And I go, Ron.

We're under attack.

Yeah.

It was like the thing, Pearl Harbor.

For me, myself, my first thing from there is, I've got to get my kids.

Right.

And I'm sure a lot of people who have children in Manhattan.

Probably in any borough.

And even Jersey and all.

Because here's what you can almost, you know, the television doesn't pick.

Is the, you know, people watching this from around the country.

We didn't know what was going on, when it was going to end.

Yeah.

And I mean, an hour later, you're still hearing news stories of explosions.

Whether it's the Pentagon.

Or that other plane in Pennsylvania.

And what a surreal day in New York City.

I walked down the street from where I live.

To get a better view of the World Trade Center.

Because you can see it from my neighborhood.

Yeah.

And then I would walk back to my apartment.

And you turn the TV back on.

And something else had been attacked.

Yeah.

You learn the Pentagon had been attacked.

Then there was all kinds of rumors.

You know, that Camp David had been attacked.

Well.

We will keep an eye on any news stories that will break.

And we'll cut away for them.

Whether it's the 10-10 wins.

Or whether it's the President.

Or if the Pentagon makes it.

But we thought we'd just spend the rest of the night talking with you folks.

Talking with people about what they went through today.

Yeah.

Because everyone just, yeah, everyone's going to be touched by this.

Hey, Tom.

You're on the Ron and Fez show.

How you doing, buddy?

Hi, Tom.

All right.

Hold on.

We're working on our first phone call.

Yeah.

There you are, Tom.

Yeah.

Well.

By the way, your delay's not working.

Well, we didn't want to tonight.

Right.

In case some kind of news came through.

So everybody's on their best behavior tonight.

Oh, yeah.

Listen.

A member of the local law enforcement community.

Yeah.

Not NYPD.

But a lot of good guys went to their deaths today.

No doubt about that, Tom.

Yeah.

At this point, we have no idea how many.

No.

And…

And it's just amazing to know what we know now.

In terms of what happened after, in terms of how the whole event is treated and what

it changed in the world.

People's emotions at the time, and emotions since then.

What is remembered?

What is forgotten?

Of course, you have tons of conspiracies which weren't a thing at all on these particular

days.

the first and second day. So it's been really fascinating. And I don't necessarily recommend

it. I don't know if anyone would ever have the patience or the interest to take your mind back

to 9-11. And I'm doing this while I'm like cooking dinner, later I'm playing with my kid. But you

know, I just, I know it's like watching a movie. I know I'm, or a documentary in this case, but I

know that it's not happening now. And I think I'm okay. You know, I think I'm able to separate that.

But this has been a little exercise I'm doing. I almost want to write about it.

But of course, you know, for who? No one necessarily cares. 9-11 is 9-11. And so much

has happened since. And there's so much more disaster and sadness and horror that it's just,

you know, on our list. So this was something that I really wanted to talk about. The anger

is particularly,

disappointing in some ways, the way people talk. I mean, it's radio. So, you know, they just call

up and they say, we need to bomb. We need to bomb people. We need revenge. Revenge is used very

often. But also sadness, also, well, love. And it's funny where love has gone, right? Especially

since COVID, love has become co-opted, like freedom for, it's synonymous with like, right-wing

politics.

It's like, you know, white hatred or whatever you want to call it, like mainstream evil.

And so back then, you know, these themes were just ways of coping with immense loss. You know,

take care of your neighbor, look out for one another, appreciate your freedoms and so on and

so forth. But wow, how that's changed. And wow, the things that people were saying then,

and they echo now, but in a different way. I don't know.

It's just a little adventure I'm on and I'm not done. I'm going to keep going. I want to see

when jokes return, at least to this show. And I'm interested in what people think is going

on in the world or think is going to happen as compared to what actually happened. I think a

lot about Afghanistan and this whole formula because they speak about it, especially the

second day now I'm listening about going there, about getting the terrorists. And of course,

I got to go.

Well, over 10 years later, after everything that was going to happen, happened. And the way they

talk about Afghanistan is the way a lot of people talked about Afghanistan back then. And odd how it

all ended in Afghanistan, at least the experiment in democracy or whatever you want to call it.

But, you know, this was all before that. This was Taliban was still in charge. And

I mean, Karzai was riding a motorcycle in Pakistan or across the,

across the border. It's just crazy, you know, knowing what you know, as compared to listening

to people try to figure out things, sometimes admitting what they don't know, sometimes

daring to act like they know what should happen or they know what's right. It's unfortunate,

you know, like humans haven't, of course, I'm not changed very much. We still are very

emotional and, and want solutions fast and judge.

so quickly and um maybe even more so now oh that's the other funny element right the internet

is so primitive um 2001 you know there are websites but no one expects to get breaking news

on the internet and no one expects to get video on the internet uh or at least uh they just turn

to tv and radio uh they play the radio station the news station there in new york 10 10 wins i grew

up of course with that as well and sometimes they say let's listen to 10 10 wins for a while and you

just get to hear 10 10 wins as they go through the news which is all about what happened at the world

trade center what happened at the pentagon what is the world saying what is the country saying

bill would not speculate or give any indication he said they're going to check the rosters and

see where they are now let's go live to a 10 10 wins reporter eileen lapomer well ralph right now

i'm on church street just about six or seven blocks north of where the world trade center

used to stand right now the street here resembles a construction

building

there are dozens of dump trucks dump trucks just standing around parked here bulldozers are

continuing to roll past there are also several members of the national guard down here directing

the construction crews telling them to go south to begin the cleanup there was a number of doctors

been scrubs walking around as well as firefighters everyone's just covered in the white soot that fell

that billowed out from the buildings that collapsed there are very few civilians left

here most people have made their way north and gotten out of here but craig is a security guard

who's staying on detail at a building on worth street

he was on his way to work he was just moments from entering the world trade center at a time when the first plane snapped into it

every morning every morning i go through the world trade center and about five minutes i mean as i would have made it through those doors in the lobby that would have been it i would have been a victim because um everybody i see every day i know they wouldn't say through that big glass

again right now people are just standing around trying to take in and understand what happened here today

The World Trade Center is no longer existing.

The enormous jet toll.

Eileen LaPalmer, 1010 Winds, live on Church Street.

Well, as Eileen pointed out, they're gone.

In effect, gone.

There might be some shards standing up.

And for basically, the two twin towers of the World Trade Center are gone.

First struck by the plane, huge gaping holes, all that smoke and the fire.

And then they collapse, one after the other.

They're gone, as is building number seven.

And again, the mayor urging people not to go south of 14th Street tomorrow,

telling people not to go south of 14th Street tomorrow,

and police evacuating the south part of Manhattan below Canal Street tonight.

And there's a major power outage there because of the fire at the number seven building.

Okay, so I just wanted to share that.

And I'll let you know what more I want to do with it or what more I want to say about it.

But it's such a bizarre thing that I'm doing when I have time, which is very little time anyway.

But I'm doing it because I'm on trains.

I have to commute about three hours when I have to go to work.

Because I can work from home on other days.

But twice a week, yeah, I'm putting up about six hours a week on a train.

So I can listen to six hours of New York radio from 2001.

A little crazy, you know.

And the other thing with my partner, speaking of going backwards, we're watching The Wire.

And everyone who knows this show knows that I love The Wire, loved The Wire.

And I've seen all five seasons, probably.

Six, seven times in my life.

Because it's from the late 90s and early 2000s.

And they're at this part now where a politician who is kind of loved by some and hated by others

and is a little corrupt is going to be facing trial.

And people putting him on trial are very confident that he's done.

You know, he's finally been figured out for his stealing of money.

And I'm watching this and I'm thinking,

there's such a parallel here with Trump.

Yes, I said the name.

Because I'm watching these trials and reading these articles as well.

And I don't think it's going as they thought it would go.

And I mean, they, the prosecutors and the people who would very much like to see Trump,

not just arrested, but, you know, exposed and humiliated.

But it doesn't quite work that way, does it?

It doesn't.

It almost might backfire.

And I'm watching this in the wire and it does backfire.

And the politician has a second life in a way from almost arrested to hero.

And they can't believe it.

They were convinced they had all this proof of his corruption.

And yet the proof wasn't enough.

Amazing how visionary or maybe just description of the human condition that repeats over and over

again.

You know, fiction is basically a mirror of reality.

And the writers of The Wire knew that because they had not just seen it once,

but they'd seen it over and over again as journalists and police officers.

Yeah.

Clay Davis.

Remember, he would always say,

Well, we may have to say that if what I'm saying happens and that this whole,

all of these trials somehow benefit Trump, actually, in the end.

Which is not what I want either.

But I'm watching it happen.

I'm pretty sure aspects of this are happening.

Of course, maybe it's not going to be so black or white.

But the gray is, I think, more in favor of Trump than against him.

All right.

You don't need to hear that from me.

Maybe it's just more fun to talk about my radio adventures, listening to the past.

And I've stopped cooking because I'm thinking too much.

So I will call it quits now.

And the new recorder is still recording.

So that's nice.

38-bit float or 32-bit float or whatever.

Great.

Way too luxury.

Don't need it.

I know.

I'm wishing you all well.

And my intention is to have more podcasts because I love it.

I miss it.

And I'm thankful to whoever checks it out and whoever from the past is still listening

and whoever from the present dares dive in.

I wish you well wherever you are.

And yeah.

See you.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to CitizenReporter.org.