The Lone Reader homes in on naturalist Sy Montgomery's paen to the giant pacific octopus, Soul of an Octopus.
Music: Beethoven, Ludwig van Symphony No. 6 in F Major "Pastoral," Skidmore College Orchestra.
The story of Laika, the Moscow mongrel turned cosmonaut, who was the first creature to orbit the earth.
Music: Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Laura Faley of Hidden Meadow Ranch in Mt. Vernon, WA talks about what it takes to successfully raise chickens within within cities and suburbs in the state of Washington.
Introduction by Kara Fox
Music: Symphony No. 6, by Ludwig van Beethoven, Skidmore College Orchestra.
Spotlighting the swing music in Everett Public Library's music collection.
Ron Averill is Mr. Neutron
The Lone Reader takes aim at Robert E. Ficken's Washington Territory: the farce and fury, fields and forests, mud and mania as wild Washington passes the veil into statehood.
Music: "Missouri Waltz"
Alan gives "the treament" to 2018's documentary sensation Three Identical Strangers, wherein three identical boys separated at birth, unaware of each other's existence, coincidentally reunite in college.
Ron ruminates about his favorite 2018 PNW albums.
An audio review of Montana Women Homesteaders, edited by Sarah Carter, which tells the tragic story of the women that homesteaded alone in the desert conditions of early twentieth century Eastern Montana.
Alan cracks open Everett Public Library's Kanopy streaming video service, by focusing on "Ex Libris," Frederick Wiseman's brilliant documentary about one of America's great cultural treasures: The New York Public Library.
Mr. Neutron spotlights Birch Pereira, a laid-back, yet frenetic Seattle artist who, along with his band The Gin Joints, somehow spans the chasm separating Perry Como, Johnny Horton, Fats Waller, and Artie Shaw.
The Lone Reader examines Paul Taylor's The Next America, which lays bare the ineluctable calculus of near-future retirements funded by a shrinking workforce.
Alan explores the eponymously named "Contemporary Color," referring to a ballet-like artistic elaboration of the flag-bearing marchers that perform at half-time shows of sporting events. The film focuses on a competition held in New York at the instigation of David Byrne, the multi-level genius that fronted for Talking Heads.
Mr. Neutron's audio tribute to Tacoma band Girl Trouble, who weaves a magical web of lava lamps, black light posters, and shag carpeting.
The Lone Reader draws a bead on Mary Shelley's classic monster novel, seen by many as the first science fiction work.
Music: "Under the Porcelain," by Good Noise Bad Noise vs Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel.
Alan kicks off the library's Frankenfest celebration by reviewing James Whale's dual masterpieces, 1931's Frankenstein and 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. Alan will lead discussions of the two films on Saturday, Oct. 27 in the Main Library Auditorium, 2702 Hoyt Avenue. The showings begin at approximately 11:30am.
Music: "Kompat Project test recording," by Krisztina Zsolnai and Gabor Varadi; "Evoked Potentials, (signal-to-noise Ratio)" by Cage Cabarrett.
Mr. Neutron sketches sixty years of Pacific Northwest rock.
The Lone Reader, Cameron Johnson, ruminates upon iconic film editor Walter Murch's tidy tour-de-force about filmmaking.
Newtown is an unexploitative, honest, yet shocking saga of the massacre--and aftermath-- of Newtown, CT's 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, which took the lives of twenty children and six adults.
Mr. Neutron samples The Funhouse Comp Thing 2, a raw, dirty-sounding, dangerous compilation of bands who played in Seattle's Funhouse, a punk bar that closed in 2012 to make way for an apartment building.
The Lone Reader looks at Susan Hitchcock's book about the 200-year cultural reverberations emanating from Mary Shelley's 1818 publication of her groundbreaking novel, Frankenstein.
Alan Jacobson evaluates Faces Places, a academy award-winning documentary about French New Wave director Agnes Varda and her graffiti-artist collaborator JR as they travel through rural France making and placing giant murals of ordinary people.
Mr. Neutron analyzes the psychedelic roadtrip, fuzz, reverb, and patchouli served up by Seattle's own Night Beats.
chord fragments: "Something's Missing," by Brett Edmonds. Courtesy of Internet Archive.
Cambridge historian Mary Beard takes a fresh look at the origin and decline of the Roman Empire.
Music: "The Lyre of Orpheus" by Jerald Franklin Archer.
Alan Jacobson plumbs Andrew Haigh's unsung, underseen 2015 masterpiece.
They're young, they're fresh, they're huge in Spain! Hear fuzz, psychedelia, hooks courtesy of Paul Revere and the Raiders, Yardbird guitar solos, and a trip to the garage circa 1966.