Neko Case, whose musical career spans over two decades, brings the listener on a journey of the music that has shaped her, from the time she was a child listening to “Taking Care of Business” by Bachman Turner Overdrive until now, listening to “People Have the Power” by Patti Smith. Over the years she’s listened to 80s hardcore, country, gospel, and punk, all of which have contributed to her unique sound. CONTAINS ADULT LANGUAGE.

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We take to the streets with Mal Sharpe, a man who, along with his partner James Coyle, was among the first wave of fake newsmen, paving the way from everyone from Borat to Colbert. Over the years Sharpe has conducted thousands of surrealist man on the street interviews, accosting random pedestrians and asking them a series of progressively strange and extreme questions, creating classic recordings of absurdist radio comedy. Reporter Ike Sriskandarajah found Sharpe in San Francisco and returned to the streets for a few new adventures in vox-pop.

Fiction writer, humorist, and essayist, George Saunders talks with the Organist’s executive producer, Ross Simonini about the sonic aspects of his writing and reading. After reading aloud a passage from his most recent story collection, Saunders discuss his use of writerly voice as both a written and spoken device in his work.

This week’s show features an interview with composer and singer, Meredith Monk, who holds the 2014-2015 Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. For 50 years, Monk has created music that bends the limits of the human voice, much of it connected to her own films, dance, opera, and site-specific performances. The Organist’s executive producer, Ross Simonini interviews her about Buddhism, her early days in New York, and her wide array of curious vocal techniques.

This week the Organist explores sound design in two new documentaries, Irene Lusztig’s The Motherhood Archives and Matt Wolf’s Teenage. The films each use a combination of archival footage and original music to convey the cultural constructions of two very separate stages of human development–birth and adolescence.

The story of Chris Stroffolino, who describes his journey from academia — writing Cliffs Notes to Shakespeare, teaching Creative Writing at NYU — to the downtown poetry scene of the 90s, to playing in the Silver Jews on their great 1998 album American Water, to a bicycle accident and eventual self-enforced homelessness – where he currently lives in a 1983 Ford Econoline van retrofitted with a piano in the back, performing for pedestrians.

Produced by David Weinberg.

This week’s show features documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher (Room 237) presenting an excerpt of an unreleased early film, called The Collectors. The excerpt centers on Pea Hicks, a collector of an obscure electronic instrument called the Optigan (and member of the great Optigan-driven band Optiganally Yours).

Enter The Optigan from Rodney Ascher on Vimeo.

Daniel Fishkin is a young musician who played in bands and studied composition at Bard College. When he was 22 he got a bad case of tinnitus, a continuous ringing in his ears that drowned out all the sounds around him, and even some of the music in his head. It was a pretty tough blow for an aspiring composer. It wasn’t the first time that a musician has had to deal with hearing loss, but what Fishkin did with this situation is remarkable.

Produced by Jascha Hoffman.

Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2014 (excerpts) from df on Vimeo.

Daniel Fishkin’s feedback system, where a piano string vibrates without being touched.
Fishkin used this to create the Tinnitus Suites.
Photo by Oliver Jones

Transducers attached to long strings that create a feedback loop when amplified.
Photo by Oliver Jones

Mike Mills’ new film asks the kids of Silicon Valley workers (the sons of Google’s cafeteria line cooks; the daughters of engineers at Apple) about their relationship with technology and what the future looks like to them. The journalist and critic Gideon Lewis-Kraus sat down with Mills in San Francisco to discuss the film and the ways in which growing up in the corporate-technological landscape leads to a strange new worldview for these kids.

From now until July 1, Organist listeners get an exclusive sneak peek at the full version of A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought Alone at believermag.com/mikemills. (password: BELIEVER)

This week’s show features actor, writer, and artist James Franco (Spring Breakers, Palo Alto) performing a radio play by playwright Will Eno (Thom Pain (based on nothing), The Realistic Joneses) written exclusively for the Organist. Filmmaker Harmony Korine discusses his novel, A Crackup at the Race Riots, and some unreleased songs he wrote and recorded as a child for the sole purpose of annoying his grandmother.