#38
WireTap
CBC
Canada
WireTap is Jonathan Goldstein’s surreal-feeling chat series—part intimate phone call, part offbeat storytelling salon—where the mundane collides with the absurd, each half-hour sketch unfolding like a tightly directed short film. It’s a quietly comic experiment in spoken-word cinema, as though Goldstein has coaxed life’s little oddities into becoming vivid characters in a beautifully strange, conversational tapestry.
"Wiretap made me realize how wide-ranging radio storytelling could be - telephone conversations with friends, personal stories that blurred the line between reality and fiction, audio poems... This show was one-of-a-kind and full of sonic oddities that have stuck with me."
- Dominique Ferraton, freelance
WireTap is a beautifully off-kilter half-hour of imaginative storytelling and intimate performance, hosted by Jonathan Goldstein in a gently confessional, “as-if-over-the-phone” style. The show’s blending of memoir, scripted whimsy, and wry monologues crafts a world that's both charmingly absurd and unexpectedly profound, often threading emotional honesty through layers of playful fiction. Its formal inventiveness—in marrying radio comedy with emotional resonance—was groundbreaking in 2004 and remains influential, even if its tone occasionally drifts into repetitive whimsy. At its best, WireTap offers moments of genuine vulnerability that feel as unguarded and human as Goldstein’s own stammered revelations.