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Leo Sidran | The Third Story

Since 2014, I have been interviewing musicians and members of the creative class, telling stories and asking questions. WBGO | All About Jazz | 2023 & 2025 Signal Award Winner | Multi instrumentalist composer producer.

leosidran.substack.comSource feed ↗10 episodes

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Latest episodes

Ben Sidran at 83: “Entropy Is Inevitable, But the Antidote Is Available”

On his 83rd birthday, Ben Sidran revisits a 1974 DownBeat profile and considers what has changed - and what hasn’t - over more than half a century of music and life.

Thoughts on the Week: Singers Make Dangerous Companions

A late-night adventure with a gang of jazz singers leads me to Siberia - a dive bar hidden inside an NYC subway station. Plus, a week of vocalists on The Art of the Story.

Thoughts on the Week: Messages in a bottle

How music, magazines and creative communities can shape a life from afar. Plus LAMC, Ana Tijoux, Ruido Tovar, Christian McBride, and a Spanish-language podcast conversation asks 3 magic questions.

Ben Wikler: "Democracy is exhausting until you discover solidarity."

Ben Wikler on community, political communication, humor, organizing, civic life, and the Wisconsin values that shaped his approach to democracy.

Thoughts on the Week: The Surprising Inevitability of a Good Song

A song becomes timeless not because it remains unchanged, but because each generation transforms it into something that feels newly its own.

Thoughts on the Week: The Invisible Consequences of Small Moments

On a train platform in Córdoba, I consider how one great teacher quietly changed the course of my life.

Who Are We Without the Scaffolding?

A conversation with Ben Sidran, from Greece on America's 250th birthday, about jazz, democracy, identity, and what remains when the scaffolding begins to shake.

Thoughts on the Week: Big Props to All the Pops

How Father's Day looks different at fifty than it did at twenty-five.

Heather Aimee O'Neill: The Observer

Heather Aimee O'Neill on the vulnerability of ambition, the challenge of living an authentic life, and the strange transition from observer to protagonist.

Thoughts on the Week: Paris May Be Over (But I'm Not Over Paris)

Wrong notes from the Right Bank, the home stretch of a new album, and four stories that stayed with me this week.