The Voice in Your Head - A Tribute to Joe Frank

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, History, Documentary, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

How do you pay proper tribute to a legend that many people haven’t heard of? We began asking ourselves this question last week when the visionary radio producer Joe Frank passed away, after a long struggle with colon cancer. Joe Frank was the radio producer’s radio producer. He told stories that were thrillingly weird, deeply mischievous (and sometimes head-spinningly confusing!). He had a big impact on us at Radiolab. For Jad, his Joe Frank moment happened in 2002, while sitting at a mixing console in an AM radio studio waiting to read the weather. Joe Frank's Peabody Award-winning series "Rent-A-Family” came on the air. Time stood still. We’ve since learned that many of our peers have had similar Joe Frank moments. In this episode, we commemorate one of the greats with Brooke Gladstone from On the Media and Ira Glass from This American Life. This episode was produced by Jad Abumrad with help from Kelly Prime and Sarah Qari. A very special thanks to Michal Story. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N. Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:19.2	This is Radio Lab. I'm Chad. Abumrod. A couple days ago, Joe Frank passed away. One of the
0:24.8	greats in our business. Huge inspiration for me. But a guy whose work you may not know, he was one of
0:31.7	the originals. Nobody told stories like Joe Frank. Nobody told stories like Joe Frank. No one, he is still,
0:40.2	anyhow, you know what I'm going to do? I want to take this podcast to play for you a little bit of his work,
0:46.4	because it's so good. It's so good. And also play for you a few conversations I've had recently
0:51.8	about Joe Frank and the impact of that work, starting with a conversation I've had recently about Joe Frank and the impact of that work. Starting with
0:56.2	a conversation I had with Brooke Gladstone from On the Media. She recently interviewed me about
1:02.3	the impact that Joe had on Radio Lab, which is significant. So let's start there. This is an excerpt
1:07.1	of a conversation that I had with Brooke Gladstone that they used for on the media and I believe
1:11.6	it starts with a clip.
1:13.8	Let me play a clip, or maybe a couple
	...

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