A look at radio great Jean Shepherd's humorous critiques (from the 1950s) of Americans' phoniness, consumerism, and false sense of "progress."
KD reads Shepherd's essay, "The Night People vs. 'Creeping Meatballism.'" Then (on the same theme) we hear parts of one of Shep's radio shows. He talks about credit cards, Green Stamps, a used atom-smasher for sale, "progress," how many ice cream flavors Howard Johnson's restaurants ACTUALLY have*, and the brief but glorious crime wave of Ronald Medsker.
Shepherd recording courtesy of www.flicklives.com. Many thanks.
"New World Notes" is produced under the auspices (Latin for "leaky roof") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.
* Howard Johnson's flavors: Claimed = 28. Highest number observed = 26, at the HoJo's at the New Bedford exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The Shepherd radio material heard here was broadcast on WOR AM & FM, New York City, May 2, 1959.
If you have trouble downloading this program from radio4all.net, you can download it from The Internet Archive (www.archive.org). The Program Information page at archive.org is here: https://archive.org/details/NewWorldNotes359-JeanShepherdVsCreepingMeatballism . To download from that page, right-click on one of the two links ("38.7 MB" or "12.9 MB") under the column heading "VBR MP3." The page also has players for online listening.
More details, photos, nice links, & other good stuff on the show's Web site: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com
SERIES OVERVIEW -- Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for. "Date recorded," below, = date of first scheduled broadcast.
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