How much remembering and forgetting happens in our city every day? Can you hear the past humming through the present on the streets of Philadelphia? Julien Suaudeau came over from Paris in 2006 and started to hunt for sounds and stories. Now you can listen to the result, Song of Philadelphia, an exclusive podcast from Hidden City, premiering October 17th. 

Read an interview with Julien published by Hidden City on October 9, 2024 HERE.

Listen to the Song of Philadelphia trailer.

We encourage you to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple. And if you like it, leave five stars!

Season Three Song of Lynchadelphia (Winter 2026)

Episode Seven (May 28): We Are Like The Dreamer

In the Lynchadelphia finale, the season’s guests and a few others share personal David Lynch memories and reflect on how he and his work affected their lives. Song of Philadelphia host Julien Suaudeau and his wife Anne Duchene join the chorus and provide conflicting accounts of the role one Lynch film in particular played in pulling them closer to each other. Stick around for the donut in the episode’s outro: a Twin Peaks-inspired song by Suaudeau’s band in the 1990s, “Ana Anyway.”

You can listen to Episode 7 of Season 3 of Song of Philadelphia, “We Are Like The Dreamer,” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or right here:

Episode Six (May 7): 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 (1970), Lynch’s third short film, and about how she was replaced by “a whole staff” as he started working on Eraserhead (1977), 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?

You can listen to Episode 6 of Season 3 of Song of Philadelphia, “Call Me If Anything Exciting Happens,” on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify—or right here:

Episode Five (April 23): 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.

You can listen to Episode 5 of Season 3 of Song of Philadelphia, “The Fear is Inside Him,” on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts, or right here:

Episode Four (March 19): When the Robins Come

David Lynch often identified Philadelphia as his greatest influence, and Philadelphia has nothing but love for David Lynch. What are the Lynchian places and happenings in the city? In this episode, Eric Bresler talks about bringing the Lady in the Radiator and Sherilyn Fenn to PhilaMOCA. Dennis McNett explains how he created the Lynch mural-memorial on Buttonwood Street. Josh Hitchens, the last Philadelphian who ever interviewed David Lynch, recalls his feelings before, during, and after the phone call. Jack Fisk remembers searching for filming locations across the city with Lynch fifteen years ago and his friend’s disappointment as Lynch realized the Philadelphia he’d experienced from 1965 to 1970 no longer existed.

You can listen to Episode 4 of Season 3 of Song of Philadelphia, “When the Robins Come,” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or right here:

Episode Three (February 19): Fuck You, Gordon

Although Philadelphia is visible only in a couple of shots in the entire David Lynch’s filmography, the city’s aura is the primary color and the thread of the cinematic language we have come to recognize as “Lynchian.” In this episode, Julien Suaudeau examines the wild ways in which Philly manifests itself in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks universe. What if Lynch’s reinvention of the city actually was the artist’s “room to dream?” An MRI of his creative mind? And maybe the place where we find out that life is but a dream?

This episode contains audio from the following works: Sunset Boulevard, Laura, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return.

Listen to Song of Philadelphia’s Lynchadelphia episode 3 on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or right here:

Episode Two (January 29): The Art Life

Philadelphia, 1966.

In his studio at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, David Lynch is experimenting with ideas, forms, materials, shapes. He is looking for something exciting. One night, he sees movement in the painting he is working on and starts thinking about film. Feeding on the effervescence of the local art scene, with the help of his best friend and roommate, fellow PAFA student Jack Fisk, Lynch is going to make three films in two years, while getting married and becoming a father.

In this episode, Julien Suaudeau continues to weave the memories of Lynch’s early years with soundscapes from his cinematic work (Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: The Return) and examines the micro-events that encouraged a young creative mind to pursue the art life.

With Jack Fisk, Bruce Samuelson, Bob Bruhin, and Josh Hitchens.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or here:

Episode One (January 15): Smiling Bags of Death, Part One

David Lynch passed on January 16th, 2025.

In the Song of Lynchadelphia season opener, Julien Suaudeau travels sixty years back to January 1966 on 13th and Wood, where David Lynch has just moved in with Jack Fisk. As the song of the city echoes in Lynch’s films and across the Twin Peaks universe, and as other voices familiar with his work chime in, Jack Fisk recalls how his best friend dreamed up his art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In addition to his collaboration with Lynch (Eraserhead, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive), Jack Fisk has worked as production designer and art director with Terence Malick (Days of Heaven, Badlands, The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Song to Song), Brian de Palma (Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise), Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), among others. His most recent collaboration is with Josh Safdie, on Marty Supreme.

This season: how David Lynch invented his cinematic language of fear and strangeness in Philadelphia. Julien Suaudeau walks around the Eraserhood and explores other Lynchian places in the city, tracking their marks in Lynch’s work, from the Twin Peaks universe to Mulholland Drive, and wondering how Lynch’s art is a product of what he experienced in Philly, from 1965 to 1970, when he was a student at PAFA.

You can listen to episode 1 of Song of Lynchadelphia, “Smiling Bags of Death,” on Spotify and Apple, or right here.

Season Three, when Song of Philadelphia becomes Song of Lynchadelphia, is coming January 2026, but you can listen to the teaser on Apple and Spotify, or right here.

Season Two (Spring 2025)

Episode 6: Larry

In the season two finale, Julien spends one night at Fergie’s Pub, where the legendary Larry Robin hosts the weekly Moonstone Arts Center readings. Larry talks about poets and poetry, poets read their work and talk about Larry, and everyone is wondering how to make it through political violence, climate change, global surveillance, and good old heartbreaks. An oral anthology of Philadelphian voices reflecting on the end of the world as we know it, with the city as the backdrop.

Season 2, episode 6, “Is This Loud Enough?” and every episode of Hidden City’s podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.

Episode 5: Larry

At 83, Larry Robin sees a lot of ghosts in Philadelphia. In the first part of this season’s finale, the legendary bookstore owner, arts-oriented educator and anchor of the city’s poetry scene drives around the neighborhoods of his life with Julien Suaudeau. As the two get lost and find their way time and time again, unsure of what they are looking for, Larry’s personal and intellectual foundations come into focus, woven into the urban fabric: a Society Hill block where a lumberyard used to sit next to a luncheonette, the row home that houses the only remaining synagogue in South Philly, a boarded up textile mill on Lehigh Avenue. Back on 13th and Sansom, the longtime headquarters of Robin’s Books and Moonstone Arts Center, Larry reflects on aging, loss, political disillusions, love and death, and explains how self-sufficiency has been the driving force of his extraordinary journey.

Season 2, Episode 5, “Contradiction is the Essence,” is available on Apple and Spotify.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode 4: Kevin

Kevin Dublin and Julien Suaudeau meet up during lunch break at the Behavioral Wellness Center at Girard. Kevin’s workplace is also where his mentor Joe Frazier was admitted in 1971 after the Fight of the Century and where Kevin checked himself in to quit drugs 20 years later. At the Marion Anderson Rec Center, on 17th and Catharine, Kevin steps into the ring to coach a sparring session and share life lessons. Back in North Philly, we take a virtual tour of Joe Frazier’s Gym and old voices of the neighborhood chime in on the fate of the building.

Season 2, Episode 4, “The Heartbeat of North Philly,” is available on Apple and Spotify.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode 3: Kevin

With the dilapidated building of Joe Frazier’s Gym and the voices of Cambria Street in the background, former light heavyweight Kevin Dublin takes Julien Suaudeau through his old neighborhood and tells him how he met “Smoke” one night in the early 1980s. Story after story, the other side of the world champion comes into focus, what happens in the ring reverberates in a young fighter’s life, and North Philly emerges in a new light.

Season 2, Episode 3, “Let me See What You Got,” on Apple or Spotify.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode 2: Kaia

Kaia Chau takes Julien Suaudeau around Chinatown-by-night on Lunar New Year. Against a backdrop of firecrackers and lion dance percussions, Kaia and her mom Debbie Wei explain why transgenerational activism is the only way to fight off the relentless attempts to “revitalize” the neighborhood. The secret karaoke room of the No Arena coalition is revealed, a city council citation is given to the Ginger Arts cultural center that Kaia founded, and a block party is thrown on 10th Street to celebrate the big W for the community.

Episode 1: Kaia

In the season 2 opener, Julien Suaudeau takes a walk across Chinatown with his former Bryn Mawr College student, young activist and Ginger Arts Center founder Kaia Chau. Kaia talks about her formative years in the neighborhood, what is still there and what’s gone, personal overlaps between Chinatown and South Philly, the commodification of Asian culture in Philadelphia and beyond, and the relentless targeting of low-income and immigrant communities in the name of urban renewal. At home, the political and the personal merge as Kaia chats over breakfast with her mom, Debbie Wei, who co-founded the FACTS charter school and Asian Americans United.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Season Two launches May 1, 2025. Go behind the scenes on Season Two.

Listen to the trailer.

Season One Winterlude (Winter 2025)

Bonus Episode: It’s All Going Sideways

In the season one bonus episode, Julien Suaudeau moves Song of Philadelphia to Paris. It’s time to get personal – and Frenched.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Season One (Fall 2024)
 
Episode 3: Farah

Farah Marasigan talks about given names, code-switching, suburban loneliness, street conversations in South Philly, the Philadelphia aikido community, and finding your voice as an immigrant.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Episode 2: Chanelle

Chanelle Wilson talks about the joys of childhood in West Philly, growing up in a Black city, conflicting versions of Philadelphia, the utopia of equitable real estate, and finding peace by the river.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Episode 1: Andrew

Andrew Simonet talks about the broken and the beautiful, voices past and present of the public transit system, a politically-charged basketball hoop, what a shaking chandelier will tell you, and the load of grief you can bring to the Schuylkill River.