From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of true stories, personal documentaries, radio movies, and then sometimes we just throw all of that out, and it's just Joe Frank.

In case you haven't noticed, there's been an explosion of audio storytelling, audio

documentary, serialized drama, all available as a podcast. It's everywhere. And if you talk to the people that make

these programs, there's a very good chance that they are fans of the work of Joe Frank.

Late one night driving on the 405,

Joe Frank showed me how radio could be writerly

and how reading a simple story could be performance.

This is Terence Mickey, host and producer of a podcast called Memory Motel,

and Joe Frank got to him.

Both his voice and language were hypnotic. He will have a spell that

transported me the way the best fiction ever could. Joe Frank is still

writing programs and we'll feature another new program at a later date.

Meanwhile he has decades of amazing material at Joe Frank.com but this is the first

story that Joe produced for unffictional back in 2012.

From KCRW, it's Unfictional.

And Dreamers by Joe Frank. And the He lived in a poor Arab village. The main street was an unpaved dirt road. Water was brought in by truck three times a week from which his family

filled their plastic jugs and the electricity which ran the TVs, the lights,

and the fans, was provided by local generators, powered by gasoline.

His father had lost both legs to an artillery shell in the 1967 war, Now confined to a wheelchair, he was a devout Muslim who

decried the existence of Israel. At the local mosque, he called for attacks on

Israeli towns and cities and extoll the bravery of Hamas fighters

...