This week on From the Vault we pay tribute to a New York radio icon, Steve Post, who was one of a small cadre of radio broadcasters who helped in the creation of Free Form radio at Pacifica Station WBAI in the 1960's. Many New Yorkers today are familiar with Post from his long stint hosting Morning Music with Steve Post and The NO Show on WNYC beginning in 1982, but few people knew that he began his radio career in 1965 at WBAI. Post, along with his WBAI colleagues Bob Fass, Dale Minor, Julius Lester, Larry Josephson, Neil Conan, Baird Searles among others, helped transform the way we listen to radio.
In this episode, we present two very different programs produced by Post during his time at WBAI. First, we feature a 1969 documentary on the life and work of political activist Abraham Johannes Muste. Then we'll catch a ride with Steve Post and his colleagues as they venture onto the New York streets in the darkest hours to explore the raw underbelly of the city and document the happenings of the people that are awake while the rest of the city sleeps, in a program from 1970 called In the Shank of the Night.
From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the GRAMMY Foundation and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives and Records Administration, and past grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio Listeners. We also thank our partners and collaborators at the Pop-Up Archive, Amara, Other Minds Archives, George Blood Audio, and the California Audio Visual Preservation Project.
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