From KCRW, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. You know, you hear Bookworm on the radio,

but you also hear it as a podcast, and at KCRW, we have a number of other podcasts that are really

worth listening to. Today, we're sharing an episode of the KCRW podcast that's produced in

partnership with the independent publisher McSweeney's.

It's called The Organist. It's an experimental arts and culture program. They like to say that

they find their subjects not on the star-studded boulevards, but in the back alleys that connect them.

They uncover the unexpected connections between artists and ideas.

I hope KCRW listeners and bookworm listeners in particular

enjoy this first episode of the Organist's new season.

If you like it, go ahead and subscribe and leave them a review on the Apple Podcasts app.

And hey, leave Bookworm a review while you're at it.

Thank you and enjoy. Right now, my field of vision is about the size of a toilet paper tube.

And it's getting smaller, closing faster and faster, because I have a degenerative eye condition.

It's got a fancy polysyllabic name, but let's just call it Deborah. And these days,

Deborah is speeding up. Slow down, Deborah. It's the hurry, Deborah. So the amount of the

world that I can see at any given moment is shrinking. You know that narrowing tunnel that closes

around the end of every Looney Tunes cartoon?

It's kind of like that only super slowed down, a chopped and screwed porky pig.

And once that hole closes, the TV shuts off, and the radio turns on.

So going blind has gotten me thinking a lot about radio and the role of voices in my life.

The thing that distinguishes radio from movies or TV or even theater is that it's nowhere.

The voices are separated from the bodies that make them, and they're talking

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