12/26/2012 Listening Lounge

Music Box Healer by Emily Eagle
The fancy MP3 player you unwrapped yesterday will soon be obsolete. As portable music players get smaller and sleeker, our old ones are tossed and forgotten. But music players haven’t always been so disposable. A century and a half ago music lovers and talented craftspeople designed and created music boxes. These elaborate machines are considered antiques, but many of them can still play music -- if they've had the proper repairs. Michael Everett is one of the very few remaining music box technicians. 

Shodekeh Profile by Aaron Henkin
Remember the days of Doug E. Fresh and the Fat Boys, when 'human beat-boxing' mesmerized us fans of early hip hop? The old art form is still around today, some 30 years later. And vocal poly-rhythm masters like Baltimore's Shodekeh are continuing to stretch musical boundaries with the technique.

Teen Contender from Radio Diaries
Boxing has been an Olympic sport since the time of the ancient Greeks. But only men have taken part. This year, that changed. For the first time ever, women jumped into the ring at the 2012 summer Olympics in London. One of the contenders was 16-year old Claressa Shields, a junior at Northwestern High School in Flint, Michigan. We follow Claressa as she prepared for her Olympic trial.