A self-described magician, filmmaker and West Coast bohemian, Harry Smith obsessively collected shellac 78s recorded between 1927 and 1932, the window that opened with electronic recording and slammed shut with the Great Depression. This episode explains how his 1947 meeting with Moses Asch of Folkways Records led to the Anthology of American Folk Music, an 84-track set released in August 1952 without a single license from the labels that owned the recordings.

The hosts walk through Smith's three volumes of Ballads, Social Music and Songs, his tabloid-style liner notes, the alchemical Celestial Monochord cover art and elemental color coding, and the reality that only 50 copies had sold by 1953. They then follow the set's reissue with a Ben Shahn photograph, its status as a secret handshake in Greenwich Village, the rediscovery of artists li ...