9 April

Sad News, My Radio Show Is In Limbo. Our Podcast Isn’t.

by Jon Katz

Tomorrow is Wednesday, and I would normally be poring through my growing stack of canine and animal reference books in preparation for my weekly radio show, “Talking To Animals.”

I’ve loved learning so much about animals and their intelligence and consciousness.

I’m sorry to say I won’t be on the radio tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future. For reasons beyond my control, the program is taking a breather, and I can’t say if it will return to the air or not.

In the meantime, Maria and I will move ahead with our plans to publish a weekly or even more than weekly, podcast, details to come. We are putting the podcast together now,  Simon’s bray, his “Call To Life” will be our opening music.

I will be candid, I am sad about my radio show, I came to look forward to Wednesday.

I met some great people in the phone, including Cynthia Daniello, who started her own blog, The Never Ending Story, this morning. She was a regular caller, the first one every week. She has lots to say.

You can e-mail her with your questions and comments about life or dogs or almost any animal: you can e-mail her at [email protected] or [email protected].

Life goes on. And on. I don’t wait for it.

Please do message Cynthia. She is a remarkable 84-year-0ld full of life and determination. She has an amazing background as an author, poet and animal lover.

On my broadcast, I loved talking to animal lovers about their pets, I loved trying to help them deal with the problems that face all pet and animal lovers.

I am  glad I helped a few people and their dogs. I was happiest when talking to people who loved animals, that was the draw for me.

The broadcast was a long-held dream of mine, and I worked very hard at it. It was just beginning to catch fire with plenty of calls and messages and questions pouring in to me from all over the world.

We did this with  no money or support from the station, which had no resources to offer.

We got pretty far.

I have to say I thank WBTNAM for letting me have two hours a week of their air time, and I especially thank the quite remarkable Thomas Toscano, my friend and the station manager, for agreeing to host the broadcast, and for helping me with the technical aspects of the program, and for engaging in a dialogue with me on the air that was stimulating, entertaining and intelligent.

I never did get him to turn on the phone switch when we were talking, I think he liked to talk without interruption. He is, after all, a conductor. But it was never easy to get through.

Thomas is a fascinating man, a composer and conductor by trade and disposition, cast into a new role as a community radio station director, he works brutally long hours and pretty much runs the station by himself. Too much work for any single human. Wherever he lives, he has Brooklyn and the Bronx written all over him. His dukes are always up.

I loved taking photographs of his wild Toscanini eyes.

We became friends, I think, or were getting closer, and I should be clear that there was and is no difficulty between us, he supported the program in every way that he could, and we worked seamlessly together.

We had some great conversations about animals and life. He was stimulating and fun. If you think I’m a curmudgeon, you ought to spend some time with him. Sometimes, I felt like the Muppet Fozzi The Bear around him.

We had a rich and effective chemistry. We complimented one another well, he zigged when I zagged.

Our egos worked well together, they didn’t collide.

Thomas is a true creative. It was a pleasure to work with him, and I wish him every possible success. I hope we can build on our friendship.

I will miss our Wednesday lunches, I usually stopped at an Asian restaurant nearby and brought Bento Boxes before Thomas went on the Miami diet in preparation for some surgery. We always had lots to talk about, Thomas is the biological opposite of boring.

I can’t talk about the reasons for the hiatus, it involves the station, not me, and is not my business.

They were nothing but nice to me.

It was on “Talking To Animals” that Maria and I – she called in every week –  both realized we should be doing a creative project together, sharing our lives and minds and farm with our readers, and now, listeners.

Thomas loved Maria and saw her natural gift for this work right away.

The first call to my show was from Italy, the second from California. That was how it went. We got calls from all over the world, from Kentucky to Canada to Texas. People just found us. The blog has a lot of punch.

I thank the good people who got through, on the phone. They were brave and determined. The station’s equipment dates back to the Korean War, and Thomas was never a big fan of phone calls.

I had to rely on my blog and my readers, and I was happy that so many people started listening – it is not easy to listen to WBTNAM either. Community radio is important to me and many other people, I hope we gave them a lift.

I hope they survive.

I worked very hard to research and understand every question, I was very happy when people called back and said many of my suggestions work. I was close to 100 per cent. There is nothing that makes me happier than being useful.

I think the show inspired the podcast idea in me, I saw that I could make my own radio in my own way in my own study. Everyone with a microphone and broadband is a radio show.

Maria is excited about it as well, it seems very natural to us, and I think “Talking To Animals” inspired it, so it was worth doing for that reason alone.

I learned once more to follow my dreams and attempt the impossible and work hard. As I said to Thomas last week, we did it. And we did.

I am sad but proud. I will be pretty depressed tomorrow at one p.m. But not for too long.

In the next weeks and beyond, I’m going to focus my creative media energies on our podcast – Katz and Wulf On Bedlam.  There is a vast audience out there for podcasts, and we might even be able to flush out an ad or two.

The podcast should be up and running shortly, there will be a podcast button on every blog post, and a library for past broadcasts.

The podcast is free, donations from contented listeners will be appreciated.

Thanks for your support, and keep the questions coming. We will answer as many of them as we can  on our podcast. I won’t pretend to be happy about not having my show on the air, but I see it as a beginning, not an end.

Life is a series of chapters, one after the other. Tomorrow, we begin a new one.

Audio, Figuring Out the Sign In For the Podcast. Come and listen:

6 Comments

  1. Will miss the radio show too. I found every one involved to be intelligent, and interesting, including the callers. Jon, it was obvious how much the callers meant to you. Looking forward to the podcast!

  2. Good morning, Jon and Maria. I really enjoyed listening to your banter trying to figure out the sign in for your upcoming podcast.
    I am reminded of when four of us moved into a big house in Takoma Park, MD, back in 1986. We felt the need to create a message for the shared telephone answering message. We had decided to call our house and little garden “Common Ground Farm.” Like you two, we worked and worked to get it right and had great fun doing it. Somewhere, I have an audio cassette of the message but am not sure where it is. Anyway, the message went something like this, “This is Common Ground Farm,” one of us said, while in the background we all mad animal sounds, “Pleas leave a message …”

    I recall many people who left messages were laughing.

    Have fun!

    Rich

  3. So sorry to hear of this crisis in Thomas’ life. I hope it does not end his dream to keep the station going, but it sounds like it might. I would like to hear more from Thonas. Interesting felliw.

    1. Thomas has moved on, Vella, I don’t expect you will be hearing from him. He is doing what he wants to do, not what he is forced to do.

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