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Mixtape: Help?

In tape five, three stories: first, a tale of how the cassette tape supercharged the self-help industry. Second, cassettes filled with history make an epic journey across Africa with a group of Lost Boys. And finally, Simon meets up with fellow Radiolabber David Gebel to dig through an old box of mixtapes and rediscover the unique power of these bygone love letters. Mixtape was reported, produced, scored and sound designed by me, Simon Adler, with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. Special Thanks to: Shad Helmstetter, Vic Conan, Glenna Salisbury, Jerry Rosen, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, Angela Impey, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me, and to the British library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate. 
Duration
50m
Broadcast on
19 Nov 2021
Audio Format
other

In tape five, three stories: first, a tale of how the cassette tape supercharged the self-help industry. Second, cassettes filled with history make an epic journey across Africa with a group of Lost Boys. And finally, Simon meets up with fellow Radiolabber David Gebel to dig through an old box of mixtapes and rediscover the unique power of these bygone love letters.

Mixtape was reported, produced, scored and sound designed by me, Simon Adler, with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen.

Special Thanks to: Shad Helmstetter, Vic Conan, Glenna Salisbury, Jerry Rosen, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, Angela Impey, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me, and to the British library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive.

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


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Want more radio lab? Now you can get more radio lab on our YouTube channel. Catch up on new episodes, hear classics from our archive, plus watch other cool things we did in the past, music videos, short films, animations, behind-the-scenes features, complete radio lab live shows, come meet the team, check out the starter kit of some of our favorite episodes. Plus, discover plenty more stuff you won't find in the podcast feed, take a look, explore, subscribe, just get more radio lab at youtube.com/radiolabpod. Oh wait, you're listening to radio lab, from WNYC, a good way to begin is to say, all I want you to do is focus on the sensations in your body right now, your shoulders, your neck, wherever there might be tension, just notice, but I don't want you to release the tension, just yet, I want you to just notice, it's nice to notice from time to time, so take your time and feel free to reach on me right now. Well it strikes me that the tools of a hypnotist are not so different from the tools of a broadcaster. I'm Simon Adler, this is Mixtape, and we're starting off today with Lloyd. Yeah Lloyd Glauberman, I'm a psychologist in Manhattan, I practiced on West 86th Street for a long time. Lloyd's a skinny guy, off time sports blazer and jeans, and as you heard there, he is a hypnotist. Hypnosis is always interesting to me, so I went to graduate school, took some workshops. And back in 1986, he built himself practice. And several years in, he started to wonder, would it be possible to hypnotize someone from afar? Now not in the super villain hypno race sense, but rather just with his voice on a cassette tape. That's correct. Right. Okay. So I tried to create a recorded hypnotic audio experience. Now I've listened to a lot of cassettes over the last year, and what he made is definitely one of the stranger things I've come across. When you press play, the first thing you hear is this relaxing ambient music. So set the stage, you listen to this, automatically you start relaxing. And then, two simultaneously told magical fairy tales, start up one in each year. Now, if you're a little confused, good, because you're not actually supposed to follow these two stories, the whole idea is, I want your conscious mind to drift away. Because Lloyd thought, if he managed to get you into some altered state, you'd then be susceptible to what he calls the trick of these recordings. Okay. I'm going to tell you the trick, how the trick is done right now. I'm going to expose the contents of this idea. Basically Lloyd was hoping that if your conscious mind drifted away a little, then instead of trying to follow each story on its own, you might be able to unconsciously hear what's being said between the two stories. So for example, if in the right ear, the story says the word feel in the left ear, what followed was the word better. So the listener at that moment in time, the only thing that's actually available for that that split two seconds is feel better as if I were giving you a direct suggestion to feel better. Yeah.

Transcription truncated.

In tape five, three stories: first, a tale of how the cassette tape supercharged the self-help industry. Second, cassettes filled with history make an epic journey across Africa with a group of Lost Boys. And finally, Simon meets up with fellow Radiolabber David Gebel to dig through an old box of mixtapes and rediscover the unique power of these bygone love letters. Mixtape was reported, produced, scored and sound designed by me, Simon Adler, with music throughout by me. Unending reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. Special Thanks to: Shad Helmstetter, Vic Conan, Glenna Salisbury, Jerry Rosen, Richard Petty, Sharon Arkin, Angela Impey, William Mulwill for sharing his cassettes with me, and to the British library for sharing some of their recordings from their South Sudan collection, which is housed at the British Library Sound Archive. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.