This week on From the Vault we listen to social historian Howard Zinn present an informal talk in Berkeley, California in November 1992 titled, “Virtual Optimism: The Other Side of American Histoy,” In this recording, Zinn shares how his personal view of history changed following his experiences during the Vietnam War, and explains his interests in the cause of war, the nature of “enemy” soldiers, the laborers who built the railroad, factory laborers, the poor, and the unrepresented.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

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This week on From the Vault we expand our discussion on society’s obsession with beauty and how that affects the health and well-being of women – and to a lesser degree men – with two outstanding recordings that search for the roots of this obsession. Our first recording, produced and hosted by Susan Anderson in 1978, is titled If I Can’t Sell It, I’ll Keep Sitting on It Before I’ll Give It Away, and explores the two major images of women portrayed on American television since World War II: the consumer-ready “happy homemaker” and the “ideal beauty.” Our second featured piece is a 1991 conversation between KPFK’s Feminist Magazine host Jude McGee and author and Rhodes Scholar Naomi Wolfe. At the time of the interview, Wolfe’s recently-published, groundbreaking book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, had already garnered accolades from iconic Second-Wave Feminist icons such as Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

This week on From the Vault we listen to a curious recording from 1985 entitled Female Beauty Rituals, which was produced by an outstanding team at Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley: Corless Smith, Ginny Z. Berzon and Michael Yoshida. This documentary on the social role of ‘beautification,’ playfully presented through the eyes of a Martian correspondent, includes interviews with fashion consultants Pat Kwan, Deborah Matthews, and Monique Montgomery; podiatrists Dr. Margaret Lowe and Dr. Ruth Wood; and Robin Lakoff, author of Face Value: the Politics of Beauty. We end this episode of From the Vault with a short selection from a 1991 lecture and interview with author Naomi Wolf, author of the groundbreaking feminist book, The Beauty Myth.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

In this episode of From the Vault, we listen back twenty years to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, and uncover the true extent of Pacifica Radio’s role as an alternative news outlet for Angelinos amidst mainstream media’s sensationalized 24/7 news barrage. The following selections from recordings made during and after the uprising highlight the importance of an independent and competent media advocate for the public – like KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. Voices include Congresswoman Maxine Waters, President George H.W. Bush, City of Quartz author Mike Davis, journalist Norman Soloman, former SCLCSC president Joe Hicks, poet June Jordan, professor and commentator Saul Landau, artists and poets from the Soul to Seoul collective, and numerous Pacifica staffers and reporters.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

This week on From the Vault, we continue our celebration of National Poetry Month with the earliest known recordings of poet and cult icon Charles Bukowski and British-born American poet Denise Levertov.
We’ll start with our Charles Bukowski recording, from a late-night KPFK broadcast on August 5, 1962 – where he gave his Los Angeles audience an earful in true Bukowski tradition. Then we’ll hear selections from a recording of Denise Levertov, who frequently framed her poetry to express her personal politics, at a Speech Department poetry reading at the University of California, Berkeley on November 10, 1961.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

Adrienne Cecile Rich – May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012

This week on From the Vault, we celebrate National Poetry Month by paying tribute to the life and work of award-winning poet, essayist, feminist and intellectual Adrienne Rich, who influenced generation of women throughout The Feminist Movement. Pacifica Radio is proud of its solid collection of Adrienne Rich recordings – the earliest from 1969 and the latest from 1992: sampling these recordings, we’ll hear Rich read from her collections Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and Necessities of Life (1966) during an appearance on the series Talk with a New Bedford Whaler in 1972 at WBAI in New York. In 1973, again at WBAI with producer Mimi Wiesbord Anderson, Rich reads selections from The Will to Change (1971), and a decade later in 1983 at KPFK in Los Angeles, Rich speaks with poet Eloise Klein Healey about her life’s work in a wonderful recording called Women’s Words.

Our guides for this tribute to Adrienne Rich are veteran Pacifica programmer and journalist Helene Rosenbluth, who recorded Rich at the 1978 Feminist Perspective on Pornography Conference in San Francisco, and poet-author-artist Grace Cavalieri, host of The Poet and the Poem, a weekly series that originated from WPFW in Washington, DC from 1977-1997 and presented over 2000 poets to the nation during its radio syndication.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

This week on From the Vault we feature recordings of one of the great women’s advocates and social thinkers of our time, Selma James. Well known for her landmark 1952 publication A Woman’s Place, James was an early leader of the second wave of the Women’s Movement, founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and remains today one of the great intellectual leaders standing up against injustices to women, the poor, and the segregated in our society. First, in this 1974 interview with Selma James by Pacifica Radio-WBAI producer Nanette Rainone, we’re drawn to the intellectual clarity of James as she discusses how housework is undervalued by society. Then, almost 40 years later on March 26, 2012 – her focus sharp as ever – James speaks with KPFK producer Margaret Prescod about her latest anthology, Sex, Race and Class—The Perspective of Winning; A Selection of Writings 1952-2011.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

This week on From the Vault our discussion focuses on author and humorist Mark Twain, thanks to the rediscovery of a long-forgotten recording. In this freshly digitized slice of history, Colin Edwards, one of Pacifica Radio’s most prolific producers from the 1950′s and 1960′s, brings us to Hannibal, Missouri in 1959 for a guided tour of the house where Twain lived and penned some of America’s most important prose .

Then we visit with actor Val Kilmer, who is appearing as Mark Twain onstage in his one man play, Citizen Twain, opening spring 2012 in Los Angeles. From the Vault chief Brian DeShazor and senior producer Mark Torres sat down with Kilmer to talk about Mark Twain and the development of the play, as well as a proposed film project.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

In 1973, at the height of the second wave of feminism in the United States and around the world, literature was playing a critical part in raising the global female consciousness, and women were effectively bringing feminist prose to public radio, arguably in one of the earliest cross-platform marketing approaches for feminism. One of the most widely-circulated feminist novels in history, Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères immerses us in an epic battle of the sexes, where women, having taken up arms, triumph against an army of men. First published in 1969 in France, translated into English in 1971, and brought to the airwaves in 1973 by the women at Pacifica’s WBAI in New York, this English adaptation of Les Guérillères is very likely the only one of its kind ever recorded. Today on From the Vault we proudly present this production of Les Guérillères, which has not been heard by the public ear since 1973.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

This week From the Vault celebrates what would have been the 100th birthday of one of the unknown and unsung heroes of the American Civil Rights Movement, Bayard Rustin. Pacifica Radio is fortunate to curate several rare audio recordings with Rustin’s voice; two of these in particular are most-fitting to be shared in tribute. First, go back to 1968 for speech in Washington D.C. titled The Future of Minorities, in which Rustin focuses on the changing role for minorities in American society, and then dive even further back in history to 1960′s Negro Rights in Africa and America, a discussion between Rustin and Kenneth Kaunda (then-President of the United National Independence Party in Rhodesia) in which the two leaders examine civil rights in their respective countries.

From the Vault also chats with Michael G. Long, editor of I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, a new book from City Lights Publishers which chronicles the life of the openly-gay and pacifist civil rights leader. Long is an associate professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies at Elizabethtown College and is the author or editor of several books on civil rights, religion, and politics in mid-century America, including Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall and First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson.

Visit City Lights Publishers to learn more about I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.