Expect almost anything on Tap
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, May 31, 2008

O n Sundays at 1 p.m., thousands of CBC Radio listeners hear a familiar sentence: "You’re listening to WireTap, with Jonathan Goldstein." What comes next, however, is anyone’s guess. Could be an essay about heartbreak, or a lesson in booty-call etiquette. Could be an interview with a professor, or a story about Barney Rubble’s marital problems.

For Goldstein, 38, it’s about the art of storytelling. Fact or fiction, poignant or silly -- the stories come in all guises. But listeners can be certain of one thing: the next 30 minutes will be unlike any other half-hour on radio.

A recent episode, for example, opened with the true-life tale of a man who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. That was followed by a Goldstein essay, in which he describes the joy of discovering forgotten Melba toast. Finally, there was a skit about a beekeeping operation started by one of Goldstein’s friends, who names his bees things like Bumbly, Stripey and Jennifer. ("She just looks like a Jennifer.")

Goldstein’s interest in storytelling developed early. During his childhood in Laval, Que., his family frequented a restaurant with a mural of David and Goliath. Every week, after polishing off his matzo ball soup, Goldstein would ask his father to repeat the story of the sling-toting boy who felled the Philistine giant.

Biblical tales still fascinate Goldstein. His new book, out next spring, contains his take on the lives of Old Testament figures. In the Bible, Jonathan Goldstein edition, the narratives remain intact but are infused with jokes and a modern sensibility. "I try to imagine what it was like for them," he says, "and then I impose my own neuroses on them."

Goldstein attended university in Montreal while working off and on in telemarketing. During that time, he also earned local fame as a spoken-word artist, which led to several CBC Radio appearances.

A piece about his parents’ favourite musicians (which included his mother’s observation that Paul Anka "had some ass") caught the attention of Ira Glass, host of the popular Chicago Public Radio program This American Life. In 2000, Glass hired Goldstein as a producer.

In Chicago, Goldstein learned to incorporate music into his stories. Words convey a story, but music, he discovered, frees the heart to feel a story. Finding the right song, however, can be difficult. But when it works, when the words and music mix like gin and vermouth, the result, Goldstein says, is sublime.

He produced a story in 2002 featuring his friend Joshua Karpati that, according to Glass, marked a turning point in his career. Throughout the piece, Karpati comically berates Goldstein, telling him, among other things, to "shut his squeal hole." Playing the straight man, Goldstein adopted the deadpan style that would become his trademark. Fans loved it. He had discovered that conversation itself, even insult-laced banter, could be an art form.

"There is the pleasure of the information you’re reporting and there is the pleasure of the kinetics of people talking," says Glass. "Jonathan realized there is something in the chemistry between two people that could be funny and have an esthetic onto itself, in addition to the actual content of what’s being said. In the pauses between questions and answers, you could create a whole new craft."

Soon after, Goldstein returned to Montreal and pitched a show to CBC Radio. It would be centred around loosely scripted telephone conversations, and the audience would be invited to eavesdrop. CBC brass was hesitant, fearing listeners wouldn’t get it, but in the end greenlit a 10-episode run for summer 2004.

Now, some 100 shows later, nearly 350,000 tune into WireTap every week. Though much of his audience, Goldstein deadpans, consists of middle-aged women who forget to turn off their radios after the Vinyl Cafe.

WireTap has many regular contributors, including Goldstein’s parents, several friends and Heather O’ Neill, his girlfriend and the author of Lullabies for Little Criminals. Karpati appears frequently, often in bits where he argues with Goldstein about, well, everything. ("There is no one in the world, except a deranged monkey, who would think M&M’s are better than Smarties!")

The character, says Karpati, is a highly exaggerated version of himself. "Some people e-mail the show to say what an ass I am, that they’re amazed Jonathan can put up with me. I don’t have a burning desire to be liked, so I can get behind that."

Characters often reference WireTap on-air, creating a show-within-a-show dynamic that adds to its realism. One regular, Gregor Ehrlich, often calls Goldstein a self-involved schmuck with a sad life and a crappy little show. In one episode, he mocks Goldstein simply for being on radio. ("Why don’t you get a telegraph show? You could really connect with all those people in dusty outposts who are waiting for the Pony Express.")

But there’s a downside to broadcasting conversations that sound real: Some listeners think they are real. Howard Chackowicz, another contributor, recalls an episode in which he interviewed a writer. He began with a ridiculous question -- "When I write, my hand really aches a lot. Do you use an ergonomic pen?" -- and things quickly went downhill from there.

"We got e-mails from people complaining that the standards of the CBC had degraded beyond repair," says Chackowicz.

For the most part, however, Goldstein doesn’t know what people think of WireTap. He works long hours, stitching together every second of every show, and rarely has opportunity to socialize or meet listeners. He isn’t even sure his parents listen regularly or, if they do, attentively.

"I once sat with them while they were listening to it. In the middle of it, my father stubbed his toe, and they started screaming at each other and running around the house looking for gauze."