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PRESS
"Why I made a podcast about Father Coughlin" (JTA)
Podcast Review: "3 Podcasts to Listen To in October"
Interview with America Magazine's "Jesuitical" podcast
Interview with the Detroit Free Press
Interview with Tablet's "Unorthodox"
Interview with Michigan Radio's "Stateside"
Interview with Washtenaw Jewish News
Interview with "Daily Detroit" podcast
"Father of Hate Radio" (Detroit Jewish News)
The "Irish insurrectionists" that have been more or less forgotten (Irish Central)
Interview with Alan Locher (YouTube)
Interview with WDET's "Detroit Today" (from 2019)
"Radioactive": a serialized podcast about Father Charles Coughlin, Detroit's antisemitic "Radio Priest," and his lasting legacy of demagoguery and bigotry in America. I am the creator and host. Tablet Studios is my producing partner. Exploring Hate from The WNET Group is a major supporter.
Finalist: WDET Detroit Storymakers Podcast Competition
Semi-finalist: Google/PRX Podcast Creators Fellowship
"Radioactive" is a multi-part narrative podcast exploring the life and legacy of Father Charles E. Coughlin, the “radio priest” who, from the Shrine of the Little Flower parish in Royal Oak, Michigan, broadcasted his antisemitic radio show to a weekly audience of millions during the Great Depression.
Coughlin was America’s first true mass-media demagogue, using populist messaging techniques to spread hateful conspiracy theories and spur on the rise of violent, right-wing militias. My show will re-examine him, and the blueprint he created, through the lens of modern times.
The show weaves together archival audio of Coughlin’s own radio program with present-day interviews and profiles of the people and institutions in his shadow. I remind my audience of who Coughlin was and why he was so dangerous in his own time, but I also probe into deeper, more prescient questions: namely, how do you create a demagogue in America? And did Coughlin’s tactics ever really disappear… or were they just waiting to re-emerge in a new era, stronger than ever before?
