Our Wednesday Pick...Jonathan Goldstein's 'Heavyweight'.

Hyperquench
ForeverVille


Folks that stop by here might know Jonathan Goldstein from his long running show called 'Wire Tap' that ran on CBC Radio One from 2004 to 2015.

It was like Mordecai Richler, generation four, writ smaller.

littler e. liked that show so much that she used to listen to replays to help her get to sleep.

Heckfire. Even a snot-nosed kid named Jesse Brown knew what was what back before Canadaland was even a digital couplet in his media-jaundiced eye.

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Mr. Goldstein also spent some time working for that nice Ira Glass fellow on his little radio show south of the border.

In fact, I reckon Jonny, as former sidekick Howard Chackowicz used to call him, especially when he was hooked on hyperquench, first met future podcast tycoon Alex Blumberg while working on This American Life.

And now it turns out that Goldstein has a show on Blumberg's Gimlet empire called 'Heavyweight'.

Mostly, Heavyweight is focused around helping people to construct better endings on some of the most important stories from their past lives.

Sarah Larson of the New Yorker described one episode this way:

...The most famous episode of “Heavyweight” is the second of the first season, “Gregor.” In it, Goldstein gets his friend Gregor (Ehrlich) to reconnect with Gregor’s long-lost friend Moby, to whom he had once lent his collection of Alan Lomax CDs, which Moby had then used to create his album “Play,” which made him a megastar. Gregor is bitter: he never heard from Moby again, he says, and he wants his CDs back. The resolution is as satisfying, provocative, and funny...


And now, in the most recent episode, Goldstein helps two young women connect with their first grade teachers. Each segment starts out elegiac in the extreme and then transforms into unrestrained joy, all of which is fantastic enough on its own.

And then...

Goldstein calls some guy in Winnipeg and convinces him to pick up his acoustic guitar and play the following into the phone:

And the MoCo let this guy go?

Sheesh.


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Need more?....Here's Jonnny with his longtime manager/nemesis, Gregor Ehrlich, in a clip that ends, ironically, with a tune from another band from Winnipeg.


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