AirTalk with Larry Mantle

Producer

Pitched, developed, and produced segments for the long-running daily news and public affairs radio program “AirTalk with Larry Mantle” on NPR member station LAist 89.3 in Los Angeles, CA.

SEL. Segments Produced:

SoCal History: LA’s Guerrilla Art and Graffiti Writing
Los Angeles is a city whose history is shaped and preserved by its street art. Today on AirTalk, we’ll take a look into that history, from hobo markings to Chicano muralists to the recent “bombing” of Oceanwide Plaza, and examine how graffiti and street art in Los Angeles have been influenced by shifts in culture and public opinion.

Joining us to discuss is Susan Phillips, professor of Environmental Analysis at Pitzer College and author of the book “The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti.” Also joining us is Stefano Bloch, an associate professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona and author of “Going All City: Struggle And Survival in LA’s Graffiti Subculture,” and Man One, a longtime graffiti writer in Los Angeles since the 1980s.

Web Article

Who’s Laughing Now? The History Behind TV Laugh Tracks
In 1999, TIME magazine declared the TV laugh track as, “one of the hundred worst ideas of the twentieth century.” At the time, TV sitcoms had been riddled with pre-recorded laughs and snorts for decades, having become a kind of base coating for successful TV comedies. Whether in classics like Leave It To Beaver or more contemporary comedies like Seinfeld or Everybody Loves Raymond, its presence was ubiquitous… and often criticized, particularly for questioning the audience’s intelligence. However, at the turn of the century, with the rise of single-camera shows like Arrested Development and the U.S. adaptation of The Office, the laugh track slowly began to fade out of frame, leaving many to wonder: where are all the laughs, now? And what prompted the industry to leave us to chuckle alone?

Today on AirTalk, we’re joined by Robert Thompson, professor of Television and Pop Culture at Syracuse University, to dive into the history of the laugh track, its recent disappearance, and its cultural significance for early TV audiences.

What’s Behind The Steady Decline of Sex in Movies?
You’ve probably heard rumblings about the sexless and chaste nature of recent Hollywood. Now, a new study has found that there’s a lot less sex in the movies of today than there was twenty years ago. The study, which looked at the 250 highest-grossing movies in America, found that sexual content in Hollywood movies has fallen by nearly 40% since 2000. To put that in perspective, in 2000 less than 20% of the highest-grossing films had no sexual content at all.

In recent years, discussion on the subject has heated social media, particularly in consideration of the MeToo movement and the rise of intimacy coordinators on set, with many people asking what actual narrative and cultural purpose sex scenes offer the medium. So what’s truly behind this decline in sex at the movies? Is the culture informing the box office or vice-versa?

Joining us to help us better understand the data and Hollywood’s relationship with sex is Rachel Lloyd, deputy culture editor at The Economist, and Amy Nicholson, film critic for LAist, film writer for the New York Times and host of the podcast ‘Unspooled.’

How TV Comedies Transformed Gay Rights
From queer-coded characters grappling with identity in shows like Bewitched to the over 40 million viewers that watched Ellen DeGeneres come out on prime-time television, sitcoms have played an important role in America’s evolving understanding of LGBTQ+ issues. But how did we get here?

Through the intimacy of television and the communal spirit of laughter, the TV sitcom of the 60s and 70s paved the way for Americans to welcome controversial subjects, like homosexuality, into their homes. And while these shows were developing queer visibility on the screen, behind-the-scenes creatives were butting heads with the networks that sought to control the narrative of American culture. However, with successful shows like All in the Family and, most importantly, The Golden Girls, queerness became a casual fixture on American television — shaping the way queer topics were discussed in culture.

Joining us today to walk us through the history of queer visibility on American TV sitcoms and its impact on gay rights is Matt Baume, author of the book “Hi Honey, I’m Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture.”