Song of Philadelphia

About Song of Philadelphia

How much remembering and forgetting happens in a city every day? Can you hear the past humming through the present on the streets? Julien Suaudeau came to Philadelphia from Paris in 2006 and started to hunt for sounds and stories. Now you can listen to his audio archive, Song of Philadelphia, an exclusive podcast from Hidden City.

Publisher

Julien Suaudeau

Category

society & culture · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

10 Sept 2024

Latest episode

28 May 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 20 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   28 May 2026TRANSCRIPT

   We Are Like the Dreamer

   Song of Philadelphia host Julien Suaudeau and Anne Duchene share personal David Lynch memories and reflect on his profound impact on their lives in this interview.

2. 

   7 May 2026

   Call Me If Anything Exciting Happens

   Peggy Reavey married David Lynch in 1968. She is a painter and the mother of Jennifer Lynch. As she recalls her final years with Lynch in Philadelphia and their young family's move to California, a new image of the filmmaker and of his creative process comes into focus. "It was his thing, Reavey says, but I knew what it was." Listening to Reavey reflect on her contributions to The Grandmother, Lynch's third short film, and about how she was replaced by "a whole staff" as he started working on Eraserhead, we understand that each film comes from a bundle of dreams, experiences, people, and places that could not be ascribed to a single individual: the person known as the author always contains multitudes. How much of Lynch's life went into his films? What kind of agency did his loved ones hold as the original idea was sculpted into motion pictures and sounds? Why was the presence, the emotional support of a trusted partner so critical to the filmmaker's authorship, as he translated his vision into cinematic language? The episode art is a portrait of David Lynch by Peggy Reavey, c. 1970.

3. 

   23 Apr 2026

   The Fear Is Inside Him

   What if the fear that David Lynch said he found in Philadelphia came from another place, more emotional than physical?According to Peggy Reavey, who married Lynch in 1968 and is the mother of their daughter Jennifer, the young David arrived in the city with a baggage full of insecurities. The first part of a long interview with Reavey, this episode interlaces her memories with Jack Fisk's and soundscapes from the David Lynch universe, as we examine how Lynch projected his deepest terrors - of failing as a filmmaker, of not living the art life he knew he was meant for - on his living environment at the time. Artwork: Peggy Reavey and David Lynch outside the home of Reavey's parents in Philadelphia, c. 1968 (photo by Bernard V. Lentz)

Inside a recent episode

We Are Like the Dreamer

Published 28 May 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] It was my first David Lynch movie. And I was like, what is this? And so from there, you know, she brought, you know, blue velvet. And then anything that came out later, it was like, ooh, I got to see it. It's a David Lynch. I was so young, you know, 18. It's like you're, you know, I was making art, but it was just nothing was fully developed. You know, not even your frontal cortex is completely developed. So, you know, it's kind of like a sponge. But definitely the David Lynch, I remember seeing it and going, oh, wow, it's okay to be weird and it's okay to be, um, an outsider and it's okay to believe in the supernatural stuff and there is like this kind of unspoken thing where there's no there's no words to put to this spiritual physical connection that we have and he does it beautifully in his films so Twin Peaks was my introduction, and it was when I was a freshman in high school in Delaware in 1999. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

30 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 33 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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