Jiggle It A Little It'll Open
Listen as two old friends and collaborators gradually fashion a podcast from nothing but their shared history by gently agitating whatever enters their field of perception, watching for some meaning or significance to eventually come tumbling out. Avenues of inquiry include, but are not limited to, their mutual hometown of Chicago, experimental theatre, the current cultural and political climate in the U.S. and Europe, and just what this podcast is all about, anyway. Occasionally some humor also arises. Aaron Kahn co-hosts (and produces) from his home in Paris, Ira S. Murfin co-hosts from Chicago.
Episodes
19 episodes
19. Once Removed
Following a thread about falling into things, Jiggle It a Little It’ll Open welcomes a surprise third guest, who also happens to be the grandson of the podcast’s first guest, and Aaron's first cousin once removed.Jesse Schumann st...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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1:25:16
18. Theatre Why?
For only the second time in its short history, Jiggle It A Little It’ll Open welcomes a guest. Melissa Lorraine, Artistic Director of Chicago’s Theatre Y, discusses her company’s journey from its founding as a venue for the work of Romanian pla...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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1:14:47
17. Unmarked Doors
The world is full of unmarked doors that some people know how to find and how to get through, and some people - by design or otherwise - do not. Aaron and Ira are thinking about ways that controlled access can both exclude and protect. When we ...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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1:21:47
16. Immersion Blender
Immersion is all around us, and perhaps it always has been. But we keep discovering it anew every time an experience is unique enough that we notice we are having it. From Greek tragedies and Medieval passion plays to 1960s happenings and envir...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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1:41:00
15. Better Than Real Theatre
The hour or so spent in this episode on the concept of process orientation both illustrates something about the topic, and demonstrates how slippery it can be. Ever gravitating to theatre no matter what the topic, Aaron and Ira weave a network ...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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1:24:00
14. Beautiful Cacophony
The idea of the collective suggests a set of possibilities that do not rely upon personal vision or independent will. It can expand upon, enable, and obscure individual contribution – sometimes all at once – and, at its best, it surprises every...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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1:24:11
13. Ambition, Ambition! Ambition!
Either Aaron and Ira have become mature adults, or they’re rationalizing their own failure, but either way, ambition no longer seems to hold the same power for them that it once did. As Ira puts it, “We do not want to live our lives as sacrific...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:58:50
12. Art Time + Life Time
As Aaron observes early in this episode, the relationship between art and life is something that has been considered by everyone from Stanislavsky to Ani DiFranco, but JIALIO decides to give it a whirl anyway. The discussion of art and life qui...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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1:34:48
11. Anagnorisis
Aaron and Ira return to the podcast studio for a new batch of episodes after a 6-month hiatus from recording. The thread they choose to pull from the previous episode, and the whole first season, is comedy. Comedy may actually be one...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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1:57:52
10. The Right to Ski
Inaugurating JIALIO’s new format, your hosts choose the topic of work, specifically the value produced by labor, as a thread they want to pick up from the previous episode. They begin with jokes that deliberately do not work as jokes. This lead...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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1:53:34
9. The First Podcast That Barbara Almost Finished an Episode Of
This is what we call a shorty. After the duration and weight of the previous episode, Aaron and Ira spend significantly less time covering a greater variety of topics than usual, beginning with Aaron’s plans for the estival solstice, and moving...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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54:29
8. Extremely Heavy and Sad
JIALIO is not a current events podcast, but Aaron and Ira exist in real time, and this episode constitutes something of a time capsule. Recording back in May 2022, shortly after the US Supreme Court’s majority draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wa...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:57:27
7. Live for You + Me
After hosting JIALIO's first guest on the previous episode, Aaron and Ira hash out how that decision was made back in episode 5, and how it might impact the direction of the podcast going forward. At issue, in part, is the value of centralizing...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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1:12:03
6. Resisting Tyrants Since Pharoah
JIALIO welcomes the first guest in its history, attorney, critic, author, patron of the arts, and Aaron’s maternal uncle, Joel Henning. Joel appears courtesy of the process established in the previous episode by which Aaron asks someone who has...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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1:14:31
5. The Eye of the Brainstorm
To mark the 5th episode of Jiggle It a Little It’ll Open, Aaron and Ira invite an existential crisis by briefly looking back at what has happened so far on the podcast, and asking, “Where do we go from here?” Eventually, they agree upo...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:04:08
4. “If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
Aaron and Ira unspool some tiny corner of the cultural response to COVID during the early days, and uncover some differences between American and European discourses. The changes and deprivations of the COVID era trigger a more expansive ...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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1:08:15
3. Stuff We Can’t Affect
As an American who has lived the better part of the last 15 years in Europe, including Eastern Europe in recent years, Aaron reacts to the onset of the war in Ukraine. Wrestling with the enormity of what is happening, he describes his own thoug...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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1:11:12
2. Revised Connoisseurship
Aaron and Ira contemplate the implications of a rather bureaucratic messianic revelation before turning to the purpose of theatre and, with a h/t to scholar Sara Jane Bailes, the uses of theatrical failure. Several important names in experiment...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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1:18:16
1. We Discover The Podcast By Making It
Aaron and Ira embark on the project of finding out just what their new podcast, Jiggle It A Little It’ll Open (JIALIO), is or might be. (SPOILER ALERT: They come to no conclusions and have no plans to do so, but will return to the topi...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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1:03:18
