ArchiveFM

Radiolab

David and the Wire

David Weinberg was stuck. He had been kicked out of college, was cleaning toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night and spending his weekends in jail. Then one night he heard a story on the radio and got it in his head that maybe he too could make a great radio story. He’d cast himself as the main character in a great documentary and he’d travel and live and steer his way out of his rut. So he bought a recorder and began to secretly record every last meaningful and mundane minute of his life and he found his great idea transformed into a troubling obsession. The very thing that gave him hope and purpose was also distancing him from those he loved the most. What if he’d created an archive of his life that had become his life? Produced by Andy Mills. David Weinberg is an award winning reporter and producer for KCRW. His most recent project is Below The Ten (www.belowtheten.com) The iTunes page for the series: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kcrws-below-ten-life-in-south/id1030625802 He has taken lots of those old recordings (and lots of new ones too) and put them together in a collection called Random Tape http://randomtape.com/ David explored some of this story on the late, great CBC show Wiretap: https://beta.prx.org/stories/82541 David isn't alone in being inspired by Scott Carrier. You can listen to his This American Life stories here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/search?keys=scott%20carrier And we highly recommend his podcast Home of the Brave: http://homebrave.com/ Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    
Duration
34m
Broadcast on
12 Jul 2016
Audio Format
other

David Weinberg was stuck. He had been kicked out of college, was cleaning toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night and spending his weekends in jail. Then one night he heard a story on the radio and got it in his head that maybe he too could make a great radio story. He’d cast himself as the main character in a great documentary and he’d travel and live and steer his way out of his rut.

So he bought a recorder and began to secretly record every last meaningful and mundane minute of his life and he found his great idea transformed into a troubling obsession. The very thing that gave him hope and purpose was also distancing him from those he loved the most. What if he’d created an archive of his life that had become his life?

Produced by Andy Mills.

David Weinberg is an award winning reporter and producer for KCRW. His most recent project is Below The Ten (www.belowtheten.com)

The iTunes page for the series: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kcrws-below-ten-life-in-south/id1030625802

He has taken lots of those old recordings (and lots of new ones too) and put them together in a collection called Random Tape http://randomtape.com/

David explored some of this story on the late, great CBC show Wiretap: https://beta.prx.org/stories/82541

David isn't alone in being inspired by Scott Carrier. You can listen to his This American Life stories here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/search?keys=scott%20carrier

And we highly recommend his podcast Home of the Brave: http://homebrave.com/

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

WNYC Studios is supported by ODU. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. ODU solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. ODU is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODU at ODOO.com. That's ODOO.com. RadioLab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video, a text or a group chat that never stops. And right now AT&T has a deal that will keep the connection going. You can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trade-in. It has the Ultimate Pro camera system and a big leap in battery life. So you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your phone for the new iPhone 18 Pro at AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Required trade-in of $230 or more and eligible plan, terms and restrictions. Apply subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details. Wait, you're listening to RadioLab from WNYC. I'm Robert Krollich. I'm Molly Webster. This is RadioLab and today we've got a guy asking a pretty common question. Yeah, but the way he tries to solve this question is at first a thrill to him. Then a crutch, then a curse and then it ends up in an extraordinarily deep puzzle. It comes to us from producer Andy Mills. A story is about David Weinberg, Buddy of Mine and it starts off right around the time he gets out of high school. Yeah, I graduated from high school in 2000 and then went directly to university and then I got kicked out somewhere in the beginning of the second semester and then left that town that I was living in and moved to the town where all my friends were going to college. He moves into a group house. It was a party house. Him and a bunch of his friends. There was a giant cross in the front yard. My friends had found wall tripping on acid and put in a shopping cart and they put in the front yard. Our fact checker actually found out that they were tripping on mushrooms, not acid, but anyway. A lot of drinking, a lot of partying. And for David, for a while, it was good. I'm hanging out with the people that I care about most in the world. I feel incredibly free because I don't live at home anymore and then it just started to get old. For one, every day when his friends would go off to class, David would have to go to work. And today I was working as a janitor at the university where my friends went and during the evenings, I would deliver pizzas. And it went on like this for years, you know, day after day, they would party, but then in the morning when his friends would go to class, he would go and clean toilets and

Transcription truncated.

David Weinberg was stuck. He had been kicked out of college, was cleaning toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night and spending his weekends in jail. Then one night he heard a story on the radio and got it in his head that maybe he too could make a great radio story. He’d cast himself as the main character in a great documentary and he’d travel and live and steer his way out of his rut. So he bought a recorder and began to secretly record every last meaningful and mundane minute of his life and he found his great idea transformed into a troubling obsession. The very thing that gave him hope and purpose was also distancing him from those he loved the most. What if he’d created an archive of his life that had become his life? Produced by Andy Mills. David Weinberg is an award winning reporter and producer for KCRW. His most recent project is Below The Ten (www.belowtheten.com) The iTunes page for the series: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kcrws-below-ten-life-in-south/id1030625802 He has taken lots of those old recordings (and lots of new ones too) and put them together in a collection called Random Tape http://randomtape.com/ David explored some of this story on the late, great CBC show Wiretap: https://beta.prx.org/stories/82541 David isn't alone in being inspired by Scott Carrier. You can listen to his This American Life stories here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/search?keys=scott%20carrier And we highly recommend his podcast Home of the Brave: http://homebrave.com/ Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.