Episode one of The Organist plays like an issue of the Believer magazine amplified and broadcast on the air: the short-story master George Saunders talks about how riffing as a teenage bench-warmer led to the richly imagined voices of his fiction; Parks and Recreation's Nick Offerman explains the tortured etymology of the word "podcast" (it's a conflation of the words paw and broadcast -- a radio show with claws); critic Greil Marcus considers a reissue of the first Bikini Kill EP and a new novel by Percival Everett; Amber Scorah tells the story of her defection from the Jehovah's Witnesses while working as a missionary in Shanghai; Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy presents five five-word record reviews of interesting new guitar rock; the electronic duo Matmos take a song from their new album apart, piece by piece, revealing its brilliant, pulsating innards. And, also, more.
The associate producer is Jenna Weiss-Berman, with engineering by J.C. Swiatek, and writing by Kevin Moffett and Matthew Derby. Thanks, too, to everyone at the Believer, McSweeney's, KBIA, and KCRW.