BW - EP155—001: New York And The 1944 Radio World—Why I'm Here—Breaking Walls' 10th Anniversary

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting

https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers I’ve mentioned a few times before within Breaking Walls episodes that I try to be as unbiased as possible. I want Breaking Walls to be a true documentary, so I leave the op-eds for everyone else. But this is my tenth anniversary as a podcaster so I’ll share. I spent the first ten years of my life living in a house where the people there were born between 1918 and 1989. It was in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. There was a park across the street. Around 1900 that park wouldn’t have been there. It would have been Indian Pond. Who knows how many thousands of years people congregated at that pond. My great-grandmother was in my life until I was 24. She grew up on Cherry Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side. By the time I came along everyone had heard her stories ten times over, but I loved sitting with her, playing cards and sharing bagels with Country Crock Shedspread, while she told me about her Italian immigrant parents, living through the depression and World War II. She had mixed feelings about Mussolini, but was a deep supporter of FDR. She loved Lawrence Welk and watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Her father was a believer in women’s rights and a huge New York Giants baseball fan. He died of a heart attack on June 26th, 1951, one hundred days before Bobby Thompson’s shot heard round the world. The interesting thing is, I have no recollection of talking to her about the radio shows she loved to listen to in the 1930s and 40s. Her second daughter is my grandmother. Tough, outspoken, smart, she takes no guff from anyone and can curse with the best of them. Her husband, my grandfather, was the person I spent the most time with, playing baseball, going to Coney Island, and eventually, introducing me to radio shows on Christmas Day 1999. He was the 9th of 11 kids from an Irish Catholic family in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. What was his favorite radio show growing up? Thanks to him, I’ve spent the past twenty-five years listening to radio shows from the “Golden Age of Radio” be they comedy, drama, detective, western, soap opera, news broadcasts or otherwise. Occasionally, someone with my last name would crop up, like on the Saturday, May 12th, 1951 episode of Broadway is My Beat. I’ve spent the past seven years making monthly documentaries on radio history; More than eighty of them now. One a month, without fail. I’ve also found the time to write new audio fiction, like Burning Gotham, the historical fiction audio soap opera set in 1835 New York City. It was a 2022 Tribeca Film Festival audio selection. People often don’t know how to introduce me at professional functions. Am I a radio historian? Audio fiction developer? Director? Narrator? Actor? Like a lot of people who figure something out on their own, I’m a little bit of everything. I’m now as much a New York historian as I am a radio historian. I guess all roads do lead home. I’ve won awards, been complimented and critiqued, passed up social and other life opportunities, and you know what, I found direction, not just through a hobby, but with some kind of desire that burns deep inside of myself. It’s what I wanted ten years ago. Or maybe it’s because I can’t share these documentaries with my grandfather anymore. He’s out there in the ether somewhere. I hope he tunes in once in a while. The flame doesn’t always burn with the same degree of brightness. I’m a New Yorker. Ambitious unmonetized hobbies are like masochistic anchors. Would stopping this be an act of cowardice or would it lighten the load? Any time I want to pack up and move on I think, how can I? I want to help preserve and grow this medium, both creatively and financially. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. If I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. Would my 2014 self be proud seeing where I’ve come to? Ultimately, yes. That’s the thing about running on the treadmill to oblivion, you don’t always go where you want to, but you get in shape doing it.