Great Big Story

What do David Bowie, NWA, and the theme song to Futurama all have in common? They’ve all used the Amen break, a four-bar drum solo that has become the most sampled loop in recorded music. The six second sample originates from the 1969 song “Amen, Brother” by a band called The Winstons. For years, the solo was buried deep in the musical archives, until hip-hop pioneer “Breakbeat Lou” Flores and his partner featured it on their compilation, “Ultimate Breaks and Beats.” Once producers caught wind of the solo, it took off and changed the course of music history.

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Back in the days before electricity, a peculiar tradition rose out of southeastern North Carolina. Over vast swaths of farmland, voices would ring out to say good morning, ask for help, or just to share a ditty. The old timers called this tradition “hollerin’.” Part singing and part yelling, it was the text message of the pre-industrial age with a complicated history. But, just as telephones and automobiles were about to make hollerin’ obsolete, a group of North Carolinians put together a one-of-a-kind event that may have saved this folk tradition from dying out forever.

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Once upon a time, a mysterious substance emerged that was so precious, so wondrous to have inspired a kind of worship. That magical object was ... a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoromo: a Japanese brand so smooth, so perfect that some mathematicians wondered if it was made from the tears of angels. But one day it was threatened with extinction, triggering the greatest crisis the world of chalk had ever seen. Pencils down, please, as we tell the tale of a writing implement so irreplaceable, professors stockpiled it. And we’ll meet the brave teacher who singlehandedly saved its legacy from being erased.

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Whether you know him by name or not, you’ve definitely seen James Hong before. From movies like “Blade Runner” and “Chinatown,” TV shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Seinfeld,” and animated features like “Kung Fu Panda” and “Mulan,” in his over six decades in Hollywood, Hong has become one of the most credited actors in history. Born in Minnesota to parents from Hong Kong, Hong moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. However, he has had to spend his entire career combating stereotypical depictions of Chinese, Asians and Asian Americans in film and television. Even in his 90s, Hong is showing no signs of slowing down.

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All his life, Eugene Shoemaker dreamed of stepping foot on the moon. A geologist and planetary scientist known for his work with craters, Gene worked tirelessly in the hopes of becoming an Apollo astronaut so he could explore the lunar surface. A failed medical test cut his dreams short, but his journey didn’t end there. His wife, astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker, tells us the story of how Gene was always destined to be the man on the moon.

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