Sonic Café, like pictures from the past, this time we’re taking a look back to celebrate a huge milestone — episode 500 of the Sonic Café. I’m your host, Scott Clark, and yes, we’ve officially gone the distance — 500 episodes of eclectic music, comedy and pop culture, and most importantly, connection with you.
To mark the occasion, we’ll rewind to our first 50 shows — the music that started it all. We don’t usually repeat songs here at the Café, but for this milestone, we’re making an exception. Why 50? Because 50 times 10 equals 500 — it just fits.
You’ll hear Everclear’s AM Radio (a perfect flashback track), plus Dirty Vegas, Roxy Music, Smash Mouth, the legendary Johnny Cash, Jet, The Who, and more. Then near the bottom of the hour, another Sonic Café mash-up — We’ll spin Pomplamoose blending The Police with The Proclaimers’ 500-mile walking wonder I’m Gonna Be. How could we not?
We’ve also got laughs for you from Jim Gaffigan, who’s going the distance, for fried bread, and Key & Peele, capture that sweet rush of being in boarding group one. Oh — and a big Sonic Café shout-out to our first returning sponsor: Race to Pluto, the new reality show following billionaires as they race to be first to the ninth planet. Appointment TV for sure.
So let’s kick it off. From 1964, here’s James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. We’re still here, still going the distance — and as always, we’re the Sonic Café.
Three years since October 7th, Columbia University professor Joseph Massad joins hosts Nora Barrows-Friedman and Ali Abunimah to discuss what this period has revealed about Israel, the powers that sustain it and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. He explains why Israel, unlike the English settler colonies of Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand, has never secured world recognition. He argues that, having lost the demographic war, Israel is left with genocide or a radical new attempt at ethnic cleansing as its remaining strategy. He also takes on the so-called liberal pro-Palestinian position, which shows solidarity with Palestinians as victims but condemns them for resisting.
On the Resistance Report, Jon Elmer follows Ansarallah and the Yemeni Armed Forces as they push to cut off the city of Taiz from Saudi-held Aden, capturing Saudi, American and Canadian-made weapons and armoured vehicles along the way. Yemeni forces are also taking the fight into Saudi Arabia itself, with missile and drone strikes on Aramco oil facilities and the main international airport in Riyadh.
Electronic Intifada contributor Roqayah Chamseddine reports that Israeli shelling, airstrikes and demolitions continue to destroy border villages across southern Lebanon. And marking the anniversary of October 7th, Hezbollah issued a statement saying Israel has failed to break the resolve of the Palestinian people.
Between 1892 and 1956 about 12 million people immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island, in the harbor of New York City. Who were these immigrants? Where did they come from? What was the experience of getting to Ellis Island and what happened to them once they arrived? In this archive edition of Radio Curious, we visited with Andrew Weiss, who I met in 1992 when he was a tour guide at Ellis Island, working for the City of New York. I spoke with Andrew Weiss in November of 1992, when he was a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and a teacher at Barnard College in New York City. I asked him to begin by telling us about the history of Ellis Island.
Originally Broadcast: November 23, 1992
With just over three weeks until voting ends, the race for California’s 7th Congressional District is heating up. The race features two Democratic Party candidates.
Sacramento City Council member Mai Vang, is challenging 10-term incumbent Representative Doris Matsui In this edition of Elk Grove News podcasts, we talk with the upstart challenger and learn more about her beyond the campaign rhetoric.
Representative Matsui was invited for an interview on September 23, but as of October 8th, has not responded. The invitation remains open
A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Japan, France, and Cuba.
Beoga are Back In the Lab after dropping out of Ed Sheeran’s tour. Finnish folk metalists, Ritva Nero drop Bombschottische, more new music from NYC’s Celtic Cross, Edinburgh’s Sisken Green, Breton Bourrees from Trouz Bras, and Shooglenifty pour out some compassion for the Bairns (Babies) Of Gaza. Music the wells up with heart and conscience from Celt In A Twist!
We skim the cream off our new Top 30, serving up a rich mix of our favourite global rhythms. Check into BaBa ZuLa’a Otel Kaliforniya, Tiger Is Coming with new sounds from Leenalchi, Mexican Institute of Sound, Meridian Brothers & Beck collab on Ritmo Babilonia PLUS into the Laboratorio Tropical with Empanadas Illegales and new Conexiones from Los Bitchos. Bon Appetit from World Beat Canada!
This week an potential "Cheezy Collectible" album profile recorded by a woman who makes it all about her, torturous sounding songs from a 1950s kids album, and an "Instant Cheeze" by a parody artist that's truly a sign of the times.
The homes in north-central Wisconsin where I grew up had basements. Ours was dark and dank. Two dim lightbulbs hanging from the basement rafters were all the illumination available at night when no sun entered the small rectangular windows perched atop the brick basement walls.
As a child, I was deathly afraid to go alone down into our basement at night. Because of its darkness, I was sure some dangerous boogeyman lurked, waiting to do me harm.
This describes California's Proposition 39.
FROM THE VAULT: On Bob Avakian's social media post: REVOLUTION # 114. What do you say to people who argue that there aren't really splits among the rulers, that they're "just all the same, and all no good"? Noche Diaz and Joe Veale take on bogus B.S. from Black social media "influencers" and hustlers telling Black people to stand down, and stay out of the streets during the April 5 national "Hands Off" protests. What's Behind the U.S.–Backed Genocide in Gaza?
House Hearing Launches Latest GOP Effort to Cut Social Security Benefits; Growing Resistance to the Nationwide Push to Revive the Nuclear Power Industry; Left Rising Alongside Far Right in Recent German Elections.
Ramses returns to the show from his trip to Palestine and is interviewed by Q Ward. He discusses Palestinian activism, solidarity across different groups of marginalized peoples, and the daily struggle of Palestinians.
Developing countries around the world are finding themselves in a vicious cycle. As global emissions rise, climate disasters accelerate, hitting the developing world hardest. These countries then take out high-interest loans, sinking deeper into debt, which forces them to shelve climate change mitigation strategies. This week on Sea Change Radio, we welcome Niranjali Amerasinghe of ActionAid USA to discuss the work of her organization. We look at how debt in the Global South severely hampers the ability of those countries to fight the devastating impacts of climate change, and talk about the harms of the Trump administration's drastic aid cuts on the earth's most vulnerable populations.
This week all the latest tunes submitted to the station including songs from the new 15-track tribute album titled A Century of Strings, Stories & Songs: A Tribute to The Delmore Brothers.
Tara Hoot Defends the Arts
Drag Queen Tara Hoot talks defending the Kennedy Center with Jeb Backe and a listen back to the first National Coming Out Day. In the news this week, Serbia's lesbian Prime Minister abruptly becomes President in a partisan pre-election gambit, while the US midterms separate the supportive progressives from the transphobic performers. US civil rights law is open to interpretation, and so is discrimination and sexual assault, or so it seems and a Virginia street gets a lesbian name and an English castle gets a rainbow ring.
The Appalachian Sunday Morning is a two hour all Southern Gospel & Bluegrass Gospel Music Radio program with radio station & program host Danny Hensley. The program is recorded live each Sunday morning while being broadcast on 91.7 FM Community radio, streamed through our radio station APP and streamed world wide on www.sbbradio.org.
Two leaders in the movement to stop domestic violence share their experience and ideas on topics like why batterers often get custody of children, whether and how batterers can change, and how misogyny is like racism, encouraged by society and requiring self-awareness to work on. Both want to change the attitudes of the courts that tend to treat domestic violence as relatively trivial and are often harder on women than their batterers.
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service
