Tribeca FOMO Edition: The Magic Moments, The Transcendent Live Experience And The Laurels

The winner of Tribeca Audio Selects...drum rolll...is...

This is the week I haven’t been in NYC for Tribeca. And I’ll be real, I’m struggling with FOMO. But my WhatsApp thread has been pinging all week with photos and videos…and last minute tickets I couldn’t nab.

The live programming had some incredible offerings: a live The Interview taping with Sandra Oh interviewed by Lulu Garcia-Navarro; Zadie Ira made his appearance to accept the award for Excellence in Audio Journalism from Tribeca; Short Cuts, the RIP show from BBC Radio was given a proper celebration of life; Talia Augustidis returned with another audio variety show In The Dark; Death, Sex and Money returned with a live taping featuring actress Allison Williams.

My FOMO ratcheted up when I read Phoebe Lett’s review about of Make-Believe Association’s Hamlet (a podcast) in Good Tape. I’m still wrapping my brain around what an “immersive binaural experiment” actually is. You can find it her to listen to yourself. But this will get you started:

“The original idea was, we turn our Hamlet into a binaural microphone,” Fiksel told me. “What Hamlet hears is how we experience it.”
…
“We are essentially hearing his speech the way we hear our speech. It resonates through the skull. It feels like it’s coming from here,” Fiksel said, pointing into his chin, “rather than out in front of us. It’s slightly boxy, some of the sibilants are sort of absent. But it felt like: Oh, this is me, speaking. This makes it worth it. This justifies rigging up our poor actor with a bunch of microphones, like the audio version of motion capture.”

As ever, curator and audio community host Davy Gardner kept everyone hydrated and in the loop, on stage, in WhatsApp channels and I heard again managed to be everywhere, all at once.

This year the Tribeca Selects were curated in two groupings: “Surprises” which was hosted by Ronald Young Jr., and then “Reckonings,” hosted by Chenjerai Kumanyika.

I’ve made a Spotify playlist for all of the Tribeca Selects that are featured on that platform.

• We’re Doing the Wiz - Radiotopia Presents, coming soon

• Camp Shame - iHeart

• Creation Myth - from CBC Personally [which is great to see here, the winner of the Pitch Party from the Resonate festival]

• Easy Money: The Charles Ponzi story [Apple Originals]

• Dirtbag Climber - which will arrive from CBC Uncover later this year

• Jacob Reed and Me - An investigative comedy about, well, Jacob Reed

• Lead - A blend of non-fiction and scripted narrative explores why, and then bizarrely how, a nine-month-old boy has elevated levels of lead in his body.

• Heart Trouble - Daughter Katelyn accidentally stumbled across her father’s tapes as a country radio DJ Sid Wood. [Another audio crossover, this concept was also part of Audio Flux, Circuit 04].

• Stanland - A comedic series about a cynical podcaster, starring Rhea Seehorn and Jon Hamm, and others) - Coming July 2025

• The Young Old Derf Chronicles - a live performed side project from TAL Director of Audio Seth Lind, along with Alden Ford and others - which is actually coming out later this year - gets its debut at Tribeca

NOT ON THE FEED YET:

• Blood Memory - will eventually be on the Love + Radio feed. Find more insta info.

• Famous Amos: The Truest Story of the Cookie Mogul - from Vanity Fair. Sounds delicious and will be very interested to hear this story from new-to-this-side-of-the-mic Vanity Fair.

• The Harbingers [As graduate students studying a dead language, they were bitter rivals... and, briefly, paramours. Then, they became the only people in the world with magic powers. ]

• Last Resort - [Nikki Delgado and five other guests of a remote island resort called Ichos. Nikki, influencer, accessed a strange signal from deep space].

• They Will / They Won’t - Ross Surtherland and Joe Dunthorne create a rom-com, but started without a plan. To find out where it goes, first help donate to the series, and then listen here

• This Call May Be Recorded - Habiba Nosheen & Theo Balcomb team up to tackle the nightmare of customer service.

• The Assignation - After meeting in a church basement support group for survivors of victims killed in a mass shooting, Abigail and Ben get drinks and follow their mutual attraction into a motel room and a romantic relationship. Ben doesn't know that Abigail is the mother of the shooter who killed his wife.

And the Winner Is…

American Explorer wins the Tribeca Selects laurels.

Tribeca alum David Weinberg is back with a new series…just 20 episodes…from a heartbreaking and seminal 2,500 mile journey travelling down the Mississippi River in 2012. Perhaps David can help to make sense of the current moment we are living through in his wry whit, as this newbie paddler heads down an inflatable canoe along the banks of the river that runs like a spine down the middle of America.

The show is in production, and won’t be available until next year. But you can view the trailer HERE.

More Tribeca reading: Davy Gardner interview by IndieWire

Sea Change - an off-Broadway Tribeca hit

Kalli Anderson, one of the founding editors of Sound Fields, along with Chad Bernhard, organized Sea Change, an audio swarm where folks gathered at three different mustering points in lower Manhattan and herded through the streets of Chelsea toward the Hudson River whilst creating a swarm of curated sounds sent to participants from Listento player and then streamed through smartphone speakers as three different groups converged on a pier overlooking the Hudson River during sunset. Although I couldn’t be there, I did manage to send down a special delivery of wildfire smoke from my country to ensure for an idyllic and photogenic sunset.

The videos go some distance to help share a piece of this magic:

[Video credit: Vivian Li]

[Video credit: Dennis Funk]

And then, as he does, Chioke I’Anson was there to add the fittingly seminal tone to what appeared to be the end of the event? Just a guess…with the namesake seeming to be part of the poem.

The fest kicked off with an audacious wav.pool, perhaps the unofficial launch party of Tribeca, brought to you from constellations x that intimate feeling … a DIY art performance where sound art, performance, music, documentary and fiction all mingled, sans ads or sponsors.

The Update-Isode

1. Signal Awards - reminder final deadline is soon - June 27, 2025

   1. PS Jemma Rose Brown Interview is coming this way next week.

2. Who’s hiding a series? Srsly. CBC call out is still live; and I’ve received personal reminders, along with email reminders, that they are STILL LOOKING. Deadline June 30, 2025

3. Audio Flux Listening Party - Circuit 05 are LIVE and online now…but why not join the AIR Media Listening Party, June 18, 2-5:30 ET. FREE. RSVP here

4. Help bring back The Truth - buy 2 fave stories pressed in vinyl - $40 for two stories, plus t-shirts, buttons, or just donate. GO HERE for all the details. Timesup on June 22, so act soon. Proceeds go to bringing The Truth back
   
   A SPECIAL UPDATE:

1. The 13th Step, the podcast I named the #1 Bingey Listen of 2023, has turned new corners, again, in journalism. As a refresher, this is a series that uncovers a series of unreported sexual misconduct in the New Hampshire addiction recovery community. The host of the show, Lauren Chooljian, along with some family members AND members of the production team were all targeted with threatening acts of violence and intimidation. Chooljian even had to relocate with her family after the series launched. NHPR stood behind her, every step of the way, with legal supports and relocation help. Federal prosecutors recently charged three men for their alleged roles in this vandalism. Spofford was arrested, and will do time for this crime (although not for the rape charges, which the show helps to uncover, as Chooljian fearlessly points out in the episode). The recent episode offers the update. Again, NHPR is setting a high water mark for how to do investigative journalism, and how do it well…and then follow through as it continues to stand by its reporters.