/Audio by Adam/

Radio and Audio Features and Documentaries

Author: Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips has been a radio features journalist and audio documentarist and oral historian since 1986, both as public radio freelancer and, since 1993, as a career journalist at the Voice of America. Adam has won nearly twenty international, national and in-house awards for his work, which highlights the experiences and realities of everyday people with extraordinary stores to tell, and which makes extensive use of found sound and music to create a “theater of the mind.” Adam teaches Audio Documentary Making at the New School’s Graduate School of Media Studies, and Oral History at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. His combines his lifelong interests in mythology, theater and community building in his celebrancy practice, which uses ceremonies to mark life’s milestones and the processes of nature. Adam was ‘born, bred and buttered’ in New York City.

The Mormon “Hill of Cumorah” Pageant

Every year, upwards of 700 Mormons take over the hill in upstate New York where they believe their founder, Joseph Smith, discovered the golden tablets making up the Book of Mormon. They reenact the history of the world and the history of their people on into the Future in ‘them thar hills,’ and believe me, […]

Children Ponder the Gettysburg Address

Often praised as the greatest speech of all tine, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863) still resonates and moves Americans who hear it and memorize it. The famous words were the subject of a teaching unit for sixth graders at the John Eaton School in Washington DC, which culminated in a recital and some interviews […]

Chinese and Jewish Ma Jong Cultures

In New York, one can walk through both solidly Jewish neighborhoods and completely Chinese neighborhoods and hear the same strident, even merry, clickety clack of ma jog tiles. Players in both worlds have developed their own cultures and phrasing. For instance, the Chinese phrase for the sound the tiles make when they are mixed up […]

Capital Punishment in America

To Kill or Not to Kill? This question lies at the heart of an American debate, and calls forth fundamental values and opinions about the sanctity of life and the sanctity of justice. This 1995 doc, which features once condemned men, as well as the late Sister Helen Prejean (who figured prominently in “Dead Man […]

Buddhism in the USA

Buddhism, once thought exotic has been mainstreaming at the rate of mind. As with other cultures, Buddhism has moved through our culture without force, but by adapting itself to the strengths and shortfalls with what it finds. This piece, which features Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, the late Rick Fields, David Phillips, Helen Tworkov, Sogyal Rinpoche […]

Columbus: Man and Myths

Explorer. Hero. Genocidal Conqueror. Genius. Inventor. Adventurer. Fool. Prophet. All these names have been used to describe the “discoverer” of America. But what do we really know about the man who sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and ninety two? This long form doc, explores the many faces of Columbus as he has come […]