The Jim Motavalli Interview Podcast

Popular music critic Richie Unterberger has written books on the Who, on the history of folk-rock music, and now a second book on the Velvet Underground. Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground is an 800-page dive into the legacy of this influential and transgressive New York band. 

As some listeners might know I host a show on free-form, listener-supported radio station WPKN, where I currently serve as program director. Visit us at wpkn.org. Imagine my surprise, then, when I encountered a passage in Tom Perrotta's novel The Wishbones that was, unmistakably, about WPKN. A character hosts a show on "this great listener-supported station" in Bridgeport, Connecticut. That's us! I called Perrotta and the result is this interview, mostly about music. Perrotta is the author of Election and Little Children, both made into feature films, and The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher, both now mini series. He's working on a music-related TV show now. He was a delightful interview. 

Denny Zeitlin is a highly regarded jazz pianist--signed by John Hammond, and Thelonious Monk sang his praises in a Blindfold Test--who is also a clinical professor psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. In this wide-ranging interview, he talks about his dual roles, going back to the 1960s. Zeitlin is a pioneer in electro-acoustic music, and wrote the music for the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He might have done more movies, but his schedule was too busy. 

Hartford, Connecticut-based bassist Nat Reeves is best known for backing legends such as saxophonists Jackie McLean, Kenny Garrett, Benny Golson and Pharoah Sanders, but he's also been (with McLean as his mentor) a longtime professor of jazz studies at the University of Hartford's Hartt School, His own recordings are State of Emergency, Blue Ridge and Now In Time. Reeves has worked and recorded with saxophonists, George Coleman and Eric Alexander, trumpeters Eddie Henderson and Roy Hargrove, trombonist Steve Davis, pianists Harold Mabern, George Cables, David Hazeltine and Rick Germanson, and drummers, Jimmy Cobb, Art Taylor and Jeff “Tain” Watts, Joe Farnsworth, Lewis Nash and Eric McPherson to name a few. He also performs with jazz rising stars, including saxophonist Sarah Hanahan and pianists Caelan Cardello and Jordan Williams.In this interview for WPKN, he talks about his career and his then-pending two-night stand at the Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Tu Le of Sino Auto Insights lived in China from 2009 to 2022, and is one of the more insightful voices analyzing the car industry there from an American perspective. It's a view we don't get because Chinese cars are invisible in the U.S. (though all around us in Canada and Mexico). China sells more cars than the U.S. and the European Union combined. 

Automotive analyst Ray Shefska of CarEdge spent decades at dealerships learning the tricks of the trade, and here he reveals some of the nastier ones--such as bogus destination fees and fake certification charges. He also explains why there aren't any $20,000 cars--it's not just inflation, but manufacturer greed. They want us to buy the top models with all the bells and whistles. 

Neyla Pekarek was a Lumineer for eight years as cellist and vocalist of the folk-rock group, but says her roots are in theater, and she's glad to be back in that world with a new musical (her second) called The Queen of Magic. It's about the celebrated 19th century magician Adelaide Hermann, a contemporary of Harry Houdini who helped reshape the magic world. An EP of songs from the musical has been released. 

Stevie Holland is an American jazz vocalist, writer and lyricist who's played major concert halls, jazz clubs and cabaret rooms, in addition to performing in theater. The youngest of seven children, Stevie grew up in a music-filled, Norwegian-Italian household in Westchester County, New York. Her father was a tenor sax-playing commercial artist and avid jazz record collector, and her mother was a church soloist who performed in recitals and operas. Holland's most recent album is Talk to Your Tomatoes, released in late 2025. The album combines pop, jazz and Great American Songbook classics, as well as original songs. Arrangements are by Gary William Friedman, and if it sounds like Ben Monder on guitar, that's because it is. Also on the album are Matthew Sheens, piano; Matt Aranoff, bass; Jeff Davis, drums and Chet Doxas, alto saxophone. Mike Fahie plays trombone, and Sam Hoyt, trumpet and flugelhorn. 

David Helvarg, a longtime environmental activist and journalist, is the founder and president of the marine conservation group Blue Frontier Campaign. He is the author most recently of Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp (Island Press). In a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wondrous and underappreciated marine habitats.

Why do people cite religious objections to getting vaccinated? Where do these passionate beliefs, with no foundation in science, come from? Dr. Kira Ganga-Keiffer, a professor at Fairfield University, is a scholar of health and society, American religion, and history with a Ph.D. from Boston University). Her first book is Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton University Press, May 2026).