The Big Ponder
This transatlantic podcast explores abstract concepts and phenomena through personal radio essays. Every other week, one of our producers transforms a broad topic into a captivating story told from a US-German perspective.
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The Big Ponder #28: The Mom-and-Pop Store
In the heart of Berlin, there is a small corner store, lovingly dubbed the “living room of the neighborhood.” Sadly, the shop’s owners are facing eviction after three decades in business. Sally McGrane and Axel Scheele tell the story of the little grocery on Choriner Street.
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The Big Ponder #27: Immersion
Immersive artwork breaks down the border between the viewer and the artist, submerging the spectator in the exhibit. Nancy Pettinicchio discusses this dynamic at length with three artists.
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The Big Ponder #26: Krampus
In the U.S., Santa keeps tabs on who’s been naughty or nice, but there isn’t much follow through on the naughty list. In much of Europe, however, St. Nick has a stern partner who enforces the rules: Krampus. But who exactly is this Krampus guy?
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The Big Ponder #25: The Night
To newborns, there is no discernable difference between night and day. Evening and morning blur together in this piece as Katie Marquette rocks her baby to sleep, contemplating the night.
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The Big Ponder #24: Happiness
How do you quantify something as indescribable as happiness? Michael Hobbes searches for a way to measure life satisfaction that works in both the U.S., his old home, and Germany, his new home.
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The Big Ponder #23: Airlines
A lot has changed since the first days of aviation, from beverage service to affordable plane tickets. Florenz Gilly and Leon Ginzel recap the history of transatlantic flight and reflect on their own experiences crossing the big pond.
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The Big Ponder #22: Candy
As a kid, candy makes the world go round. As an adult, it has the power to bring back long-forgotten childhood memories. Carol McKinley talks about the magic of candy with Tony Vallejos who ran a vintage sweet shop in Colorado.
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The Big Ponder #21: Community
Community is the story of our lives. It is who we are, who we have been, and who we hope to become. Melissa Gerr visits Jewish congregations in Baltimore, Maryland, and Dresden, Germany, where she speaks with members about the importance of community.
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The Big Ponder #20: Adventure
Have you ever thought about dropping everything to pursue your passion? Susanne Papawassiliu profiles Mike Powers who left his life in Florida behind to do just that. Today, Mike resides in Berlin, where he spends his days making art.
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The Big Ponder #19: Encounters
How many people will you meet in your lifetime? How many will you remember? Fascinated by the countless chance encounters in their own lives, Susannah Edelbaum and Monika Müller-Kroll reveal the ways that casual interactions affect us all.
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The Big Ponder #18: Road Trip
Cariad Harmon and her partner John Kesling embark on a long-awaited cross-country road trip. Cariad interviews locals and fellow travelers of all kinds at national parks, truck stops, and diners while sharing intimate details of life on the road — the good and the bad.
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The Big Ponder #17: Listening
Our ability to hear is fully formed after just four and a half months in the womb. From this early age, sound shapes our worldview. Jim McKee, a sound designer himself, interviews experts who have built careers by learning to listen to the world around them.
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The Big Ponder #16: Wonder
Americans on the East Coast were in awe when Brood X, an enormous group of 17-year cicadas, suddenly emerged from underground to mate. Melissa Gerr, who lives in Maryland, was no exception. Inspired by this local wonder, she sets out to explain the feeling of awe.
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The Big Ponder #15: Record Booth
By the 1920s, people had begun using coin-operated record booths to create audio souvenirs — immortalizing their thoughts and feelings on a disc. Cariad Harmon travels to one of the last remaining record booths in Louisville, Kentucky, where she captures her own voice and revisits some touching messages from the past.
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The Big Ponder #14: Sacred Self
In her early 20s, Sibylle Baier recorded 14 folk songs that she says saved her life. Then, she packed the tape away and forgot about it. Decades later, her son discovered his mother’s music and released it — to critical acclaim. Sibylle tells her story for the first time to Carol McKinley.
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The Big Ponder #13: The Diary
Working with personal diary entries, Dina Elsayed and Monika Müller-Kroll take listeners on a journey through the seasons to different places in the U.S. and Germany. These entries create a mosaic of our daily lives in all its contradictions and parallels, seriousness and banality.
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The Big Ponder #12: Hunting
There exists a strong tradition of hunting in both Germany and the U.S. However, the cultures surrounding this pastime differ more than you might think. Ada von der Decken and Moritz Gerlach speak with hunters from both countries to find out what drives people to pursue the sport.
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The Big Ponder #11: Home
Is ‘home’ a place or more of a feeling? Jocelyn Robinson speaks with three American expats who unpack the relationship between self and place, drawing from their experiences living in Germany, on the Diné Nation, and in Senegal.
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The Big Ponder #10: The Diner
What happens when you uproot an American institution like the diner and place it somewhere entirely new — like Germany? Florenz Gilly and Leon Ginzel journey into the world of diners, visiting hometown restaurants in the U.S. and Germany to find out.
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The Big Ponder #9: In Friendship
Inspired by a year of forced isolation, essayist Bilal Qureshi explores the history, landscape, and meaning of friendship across cultures. At the heart of his examination is the question: Who do we call a ‘friend’ and why?
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The Big Ponder #8: My Pen Pal
One day, Jakob Lewis receives an email from a German man named Ingo asking to be his pen pal. The close relationship they develop teaches Jakob that strangers can connect on a deep level — even when an ocean and a language barrier separate them.
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The Big Ponder #7: How Buildings Mean
Producer Alex van Oss ponders the external, internal, and eternal meanings of buildings in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood. The result is a personal rumination featuring thoughts from friends and neighbors on their buildings, homes, and communities.
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The Big Ponder #6: The Flag
In both Germany and the U.S., the flag can be divisive, eliciting pride in some and unease in others. From patriotism to protest, Jocelyn Robinson explores the role that these symbols play in proclaiming who we are.
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The Big Ponder #5: Little America Revisited
Since World War II, there have been countless American GIs stationed at military bases all over Germany. Sylvia Cunningham and Monika Müller-Kroll talk with some of the people who once lived in these ‘Little Americas’ and decided to stay in Germany.
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The Big Ponder #4: Anatomy of an Apology
Katie Davis tells the story of an inadvertent provocation between two boys at a teen center in her Washington, D.C. neighborhood, the conflict that developed, and the ensuing efforts to prevent it from escalating.
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The Big Ponder #3: Radio Wanderlust
Bilal Qureshi explores the German-English idea of ‘Wanderlust’ through his personal audio archives and conversations with fellow travelers. Does this romantic idea hold up in the age of fast travel and fleeting social media?
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The Big Ponder #2: The Garden
Jakob Lewis and his wife Catherine transformed their front yard in Nashville into a garden. From conception to harvest, Jakob meditates on the lessons he learned about imagination, play, and grief, all the while drawing on the wisdom of Goethe.
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The Big Ponder #1: I Love You, I Hate You
“We have the right to hate Germany because we love it,” German writer Kurt Tucholsky wrote. Listening to positions from both sides of the Atlantic, Sylvia Cunningham and Monika Müller-Kroll explore the love-hate relationships people have with their home countries.
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The Big Pond #52: Puppeteering from Darmstadt to DC
Ingrid Crepeau is a successful US-American puppeteer, performer and puppet-designer based in the Washington, DC area. Her time in Darmstadt, Germany in the late 1950s kindled her interest in puppeteering. For this episode of The Big Pond, our own Technical Director Flawn Williams reports on her transatlantic career.
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The Big Pond #51: The Right to Housing
Berlin and Los Angeles share a common problem: homelessness. Producer Caroline Porter reports on topic, which is the focus of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and the Thomas Mann House in LA. This episode is a contribution of the Thomas Mann House to The Big Pond.
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The Big Pond #50: Showing Our Colors
People of mixed heritage lead complex lives, often navigating between two racial and/or cultural identities. Our producer Jocelyn Robinson, who lives this experience, explores identity formation in the US and in Germany.
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The Big Pond #49: US-American Soccer and the World
Since the US Men’s National Soccer Team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, many American soccer players have been looking to sign onto international teams to better their skills and become more competitive. Players like Christian Pulisic, who got his start on the German team Borussia Dortmund, show promise for the future of soccer in the US.
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The Big Pond #48: Legacies of the Berlin Wall
“It was chaos, it was total chaos.” When the Berlin Wall unexpectedly fell in 1989, it triggered a time of massive flux for the newly reunited capital of Germany. Subcultures and international trends combined with other creative forces to establish Berlin as a mecca for artists. For The Big Pond, KCRW Berlin speaks to Berliners who helped build the city’s lasting legacy.
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The Big Pond #47: How to Walk in the City
After moving from Cologne, Germany, to New York City, our producer Thomas Reintjes had trouble adjusting to walking in the bustling metropolis. Traffic, crowds and high-rise buildings made it difficult for him to get away from everything. By sharing their personal experiences, the writers Lauren Elkin and Garnette Cadogan teach him how to walk in New York City.
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The Big Pond #46: Black Art, Berlin Stories – Looking for Alain Locke
In 1925, the African-American philosopher Alain Locke (1886-1954) launched a revolutionary black arts movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance. In this episode of The Big Pond, producer Bilal Qureshi traces Alain Locke’s ideas back to one city in particular – Berlin.
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The Big Pond #45: The Passion of Chris Strachwitz
Chris Strachwitz is a man possessed. A “songcatcher,” capturing and recording the traditional, regional, down-home music of the US, his adopted home after his family left Germany following the end of World War II. His archive is jam-packed with 78s, LPs, 45s, reel-to-reels, cassettes, videos – a collection of all manner of recordings. For The Big Pond, The Kitchen Sisters present the story of Chris Strachwitz.
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The Big Pond #44: Germans in New Orleans
Historically, New Orleans is a cultural, spiritual and ethnic melting pot. In the streets, you immediately come across signs of French, Caribbean, Native American and Spanish influence. Hard to imagine that there were German immigrants here at one time! But once you know how to read the clues, the picture changes – producer Martina Groß explores Germans’ long history in New Orleans.
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The Big Pond #43: Under the Skin – Tattoo Artists
It seems like there are more people nowadays with tattoos than there used to be – of the body art is hidden, but most are quite visible. Men and women alike have black, gray and colorful designs covering their arms, legs, or even their entire bodies. Our producer Anne-Rose Heck tries to find out more bout how this phenomenon is spreading across both sides of the Atlantic.
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The Big Pond #42: Heart in Space – German Scientists and NASA
Since 2016, the German scientists Sonja Schrepfer and her husband Tobias Deuse have led the Transplant and Stem Cell Immunobiology Lab at the University of California in San Francisco and the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf. It is funded by NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space. Our producer Iris Völlnagel reports on their contribution to space travel.
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The Big Pond #41: Enjoy the Ride – About Bicycling
In these times of increased awareness of environmental protection, the bicycle is on the rise again. In Germany, especially medium-sized cities such as Freiburg are aiming to create an infrastructure that encourages bicycling among their citizens. Our producer Anne-Rose Heck investigates the current developments for this episode of The Big Pond.
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The Big Pond #40: Villa Aurora and Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles
During the Nazi regime, many German artists, scientists, and other intellectuals found refuge in Southern California. The authors Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann were two of the most prominent "exiles in paradise." Producer Kerstin Zilm takes us on a trip to their former homes in Los Angeles – the Villa Aurora and the Thomas House – both of which have been rededicated to transatlantic dialogue.
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The Big Pond #39: Quietude – In Search of Radio Silence
In this radio travelogue, culture writer and journalist Bilal Qureshi explores Germany’s capital Berlin to find out about local origins, regulations and daily rituals of silence. To his ears, German Stille sounds and feels more present than the pulsating noise of US-American cities – and this episode of The Big Pond is a personal quest to understand why.
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The Big Pond #38: Seeing in the Dark – Volkmar Wentzel’s Photography
In this episode, producer Katie Davis profiles German-American photographer Volkmar Wentzel who was born in Dresden, Germany in 1915 before moving to the US with his family in 1926. He grew up in Upstate New York, shortly after relocating to Washington, DC. In DC, he was hired by National Geographic and became one of their legendary field men who traveled and photographed the world.
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The Big Pond #37: 100 Years of the Bauhaus
The Bauhaus school of art, architecture and design was founded in 1919 and lasted for only 14 years before the Nazis forced it to close in 1933. And yet, the Bauhaus and its founding members continue to have a profound impact on the design-, construction- and building-world that it is fair to call it one of the most influential schools to date.
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The Big Pond #36: Luftbrücke – 70 Years of Memories
On June 24, 1948, the Soviet military administration officially cut off roads and rails into West Berlin in the Berlin Blockade, isolating it from the rest of West Germany. In this episode of The Big Pond, KCRW Berlin reflects on the Berlin Airlift, a massive multinational effort to bring vital supplies to West Berliners via plane during the blockade. To tell this story, producers Monika, Nikki, and Sylvia interview some of those who experienced it firsthand.
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The Big Pond #35: The Library and the Book
German and American libraries have influenced each other’s development tremendously over the last few centuries. During this time, the library has been defined as a space dedicated to research and knowledge - and books. These days institutions in both countries are faced with challenges brought on by rapid shifts in technology. Experts address the threat that technology poses and weigh in on the future of the library in the era of digitization.
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The Big Pond #34: Finding My Parents
Producer Jakob Lewis was born in a military hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. His dad was stationed at a U.S. army base in Woelfersheim, a nearby village. Jakob grew up hearing stories about his parents’ time in Germany during their early 20s, but Jakob doesn’t remember any of it. He left when he was six months old and he’s never been back. For this episode, Jakob and his wife Catherine set out on a journey to retrace his parents’ footsteps - what they didn’t realize was just how closely their journeys would be linked.
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The Big Pond #33: Texas German - Auf Wiedersehen to a Dialect
America is a country of immigrants. Most people know that Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the US besides English, but there’s more than just Spanish here - German immigrants helped found this country. In some parts of Texas, their culture and language still live on... But probably not for much longer. This funny-sounding dialect, a mixture of Texan English and German from the immigrants who settled here in the mid-1800s, is slowly dying out.
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The Big Pond #32: Getting to Know the Gateau
Although it’s not certain who first wrote the recipe, the Black Forest cake has been fully embraced by the Black Forest community as an essential aspect of their cultural identity. On a quest to understand just how this confectionery classic came to be, producer Katharine Sammer journeys to its namesake, the Black Forest. There, she speaks with local experts about the region’s history, the cake’s origins, and the significance it holds for the community and their ancestors.
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The Big Pond #31: The Berlin Ringbahn
Hop on board Berlin’s Ringbahn, a suburban train that carries over 400,000 passengers each day and circles some of the city’s most authentic and lively neighborhoods. Producer trio Monika Mueller-Kroll, Sylvia Cunningham, and Nikki Motson dedicate a day to riding the Ringbahn around the city. During their trip, they interview an array of Berliners entering and exiting at the train’s 27 stops, each station an entry into one of Berlin’s distinct districts.
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