The PAUSE

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Ari, Ash, and Aim set out to investigate the unresolved death of the mayor from 2024. Ari learns to kiss his ash goodbye as Ash goes from sound nerd to sign seer. While Aim remembers Smoky and the Bandit and the Dukes of Hazzard television shows, Whack takes them all back to 2022 in search of more clues.

Ash trashes Ari and Aim about lawns and lawnmower friends on their drive around Knoxville following an investigative journalism field research trip. While Aim fesses up to her secret motivations, Ari discloses many years of grief and grievances with residential living with a lot of rules. Unexpectedly Ash sides with one of America's great foreign ambassadors who just so happens to enjoy colonizing the land in and around Ari's former home in Pennsylvania. Fortunately Aim the gifted Sparrow photographer sees Ari's perspective and clarifies his dilemma. Unfortunately the conversation turns heated and downright menacing as a villain is born.

Flooding alert!! Not your typical flood waters. This is the new kind of Southern Appalachian flooding that happens in Knoxville and beyond. It's part of the flooding of the new Creative South. Ari and Ash are right on this floodplain of public service announcements (PSA). More PSAs than your puritanical ears will be able to respond to. Stimulation like you’ve never felt before. There are numerous ways to identify and voice how you may begin to conceive of this flood in The PAUSE. They're like you are--engaging, interrogating, exchanging--opportunities to play in the abundance of water and unrest.

Learn between the turns with Mo Squito as Ari seeks common ground in community with Stephen playing another flying friend; Sarah whacks another gestalt poem; Ash pulls a rabbit out of the hat and dashes for another gone rogue collective publication; whispers and whiskers begin to circulate around unauthorized Pause merchandise in advance of a new segment dedicated to voicing the call of the wild from an emergent political conflict around land use and zoning moratoriums as well as a flooding water spirit named Amani.

Deep within the multiverse of radio, conflict is reimagined as a dynamic creative force of emergent play and growth, living in the multitude of voices and characters living inside of us and among us. Listen and sense when not saying anything can be as provocative as animating your imagination through improvisation.

Season Two Premiere, broadcasted live on Thursday, 31 July 2025, Ari and Ash reunite after a month-long summer break. Ari shares his musical work-in-progress with Emmy Carter and Ash gets emotional around the precious. Despite a long hiatus from the studio, they manage to get their butts to sing, literally. Then metaphorically in the form of chanting to their ancestors of visual art. Worth listening to every surprise that comes in this episode.

Whack leads Ari down the path of no return. The woods weep creepy heaps of powerless promises. Parrots profess portentous popcorn while Ash perpetuates profuse profundity on the tour with The Black Lilies as Ari produces poetic prompts passed down from the prairie in prayer.

Ari shares how to pray with food as Whack honors her ancestors' sacred recipe. Walk on the wild side of the goddess within any head of cabbage. Listen and groove with the incredibly generous soundtrack by Moby, provided for the world to enjoy and feel.

Ari pauses with Whack walking and gets mixed up in the hair of themes of singularity vs. duality, creativity vs . kinship, and bird of crows vs. bird of parrots.

Heck, trash is trash. Listen. You know who you are. You like the dirty pleasures of it all. You know, like, sometimes you are driving down the road in Knox County and you see a farmhouse to toss your Walmart bag full of empty pork rinds. Yup, the one by the creek. E'erbody can screw themselves. I ain't gonna follow any rules, 'specially when no one's looking.

Hot fun in the Knoxville sun. Ash expresses her anger caused by some incompetence by a so-called advocate while Ari discusses Rage Becomes Her book by Soraya Chemaly. Then, Ari and Ash role play anger apathy and everything in between cross-country sports and legal advocacy. Fortunately St. Cheech and St. Chong distract our hosts while Whack weirdly wanders wildly off mic into a Wrastle Match. Unexpectedly, in the first ever game of Residue Roulette an orange cone and some street gravel get into a shouting match which leads to an earache which leads to parental abuse.

Ari and Ash fish for gold inside their anatomies. Ash shares her tales of nipple milk while Ari shares his tales of liquid gold plus secret recipe for his Trinity tincture.

Ari and Ash compile clips from the first three episodes from Season One highlighting the developing relationship between them.

Ari and Ash randomize the preamble. Whack gets a promotion.  Iron John initiates the youngster to the perils and pleasures of the golden well. The chatbots set hard limits and enforce forbidden parrot flower pasties. Ash riffs on moss and mushrooms in the face of cities and buildings.

Ash restates the original 2024 poetic essay of The PAUSE as an invitation from the present tense expressing more spontaneity in the face of an unstable table. The show was recorded on Friday, 23 May 2025 but aired on Radio KCM on Thursday, 29 May 2025 during the waxing crescent Strawberry Moon. 

Ari and Ash delve into the cultural construction of the cage. What would have happened if the parrot Whack was also forced to cohabitate with Iron John. Ari opens up for the first time publicly about the traumas of his two grandmothers and devotes to something big. 

Ari and Ash discover the studio has been re-wilded. The Plastic Parrot transforms into the Painted Parrot. The Prince loses his prized possession. The caged Iron John negotiates a deal with the Prince for his freedom. The Prince chooses to leave the kingdom and go on an adventure with Iron John. The King and Queen deal with the crisis of their missing child.

Ari and Ash delve deeper into the forest of Iron John narrative. Plastic Parrot enters the radio station studio. The spirit of Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum movement practice, surfaces. The pool is drained in the forest of the story of the narrative. Hide 'n' Seek played.

Invoking the mythopoetic journey of deconstructing the Grimm Brothers' Iron John ("Der Eisenhans") into Iron Jane via an ecologically disruptive and co-creative inquiry into story, commentary, music, and more.

sound sample // mixed by ari, voices by ash and ari and addair, recorded at Radio KCM studio, Knoxville