News & Features Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



Relative radio
Every week, the Satellite Sisters hold a mini–family reunion. The twist? They do it on the airwaves.
BY TAMARA WIEDER

Those of us with sisters understand the unique bond shared by the women in this relationship. Whether we bickered over boys, stole each other’s clothes, or argued over who got the front seat on the way to the orthodontist, chances are we wouldn’t trade our late-night confidantes for anything — or anyone.

The Dolan sisters — Julie, Liz, Sheila, Monica, and Lian — understood the bond, too. The problem was, having settled in four cities on two continents — New York; Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; and Bangkok — they were separated by thousands of miles. And so, in 1999, the Dolans launched Satellite Sisters, a public-radio show that brings them together, albeit only on the airwaves, every week. Billing itself as "real conversations about real life," Satellite Sisters quickly developed a loyal following; the show currently airs in more than 70 markets and has been featured in People and the New York Times. Then, not content with simply talking, the Dolan sisters took up writing and recently published their first book, Satellite Sisters’ unCommon Senses (Riverhead Books, 2001), which defines and illustrates what the sisters call the uncommon senses: connection, self, humor, adventure, and devotion.

Q: Where did the idea for the show come from, and what drew you to this?

Liz: The original idea was that there was all of this talk radio that you could hear all over the dial, but none of it sounded the way the people we knew sounded when they actually talked to each other. So that’s why we call our show "conversation radio," not talk radio, because traditionally talk radio is people taking these highly polarized positions and being paid to disagree with each other or paid to be mean to the callers or whatever it is. And we actually wanted to see if there was a way to explore the issues that real people cared about, but explore it with the respect and the humor that people use when they actually talk to each other. So in our heads, we kind of heard a group of people around a dinner table, and what is the range of topics you would talk about, and how would you talk about them? And you would talk about some very serious things, and you would talk about some silly things, but you would treat each other with respect and humor.

Q: How do you decide what each show’s going to be about? Do you have a democratic process?

Liz: It’s a highly collaborative process. Every week we have a conference call that includes the five sisters dialing in from all over the world, and the people that are on our radio-production staff on WNYC in New York, and we plan the topics for upcoming weeks, and then we go over the actual plan for whatever we are recording that week. We have a theme, and then ... all of the sisters and our producers sort of pitch conversations that we think would explore the theme from different perspectives.

Q: How often does one of you come up with an idea and the rest of you say, "Uh-uh"?

Liz: For each show we have one sister who’s sort of the head sister on that show, so that person — with our senior producer, of course — could potentially veto anything that they thought didn’t fit. It’s not usually a veto thing, though; there are more delicate negotiations that go on. Behind-the-scenes lobbying does happen, separately from the group-conference call. We’re all pretty self-critical, and we are trying to invent something that is new to us, and in general kind of a different-sounding format, so we try to kill ideas quickly if we think they’re not going to sound like a real conversation. That’s the bigger risk, is that it’s either something that everyone else has done — for instance, since September 11, there are obviously so many topics that people want to explore, from things that relate to what’s going on in the United States to things that relate to the Middle East and Afghanistan, and it’s not for us to try to explain to people the history of Islam, but ... we’ve had a human-rights expert on, a woman that we know who has worked in that area for a long time, to talk about the refugees in Afghanistan and what’s happening to the women and children in that environment. And we’ve also talked to a woman who is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and who has been mobilized, about what that means to her life. So we can sort of take the things that are in the news, but approach them from a more personal perspective, and we work hard to try to do that.

Q: Do you think that you each gravitate toward different kinds of topics for the show?

Sheila: I think we each bring our own life experiences to each topic, but yes, there are naturally some topics that I feel more interested in: I’m a parent, I have a teenager, I’ve worked with children, I’m interested in education, I’m interested in the arts, so I naturally gravitate toward those topics. But I also really enjoy being sort of a back-up on a conversation that I have no experience in, say, medicine. My sister Monica’s a nurse, and I’m fascinated with that type of thing. I think I’m a good counterpoint, too, to other discussions that I don’t have a lot of experience in.

Q: How did the book come about?

Sheila: The publishers came to us, and they wanted to see if we could come up with something that extended the radio show, that extended our idea of the sense of connection and how important that is. And we came up with the idea of the uncommon senses, which are sort of these senses that define us, just our family in particular, because we grew up in a big family, and how the life lessons we learned when we were little shape the decisions we make as adult women today. We originally thought we’d have a lot more stories about our listeners, because that was where we were coming from, but then the publisher said, "You know, hey, we want to hear more about the sisters," and our listeners were very curious about our lives. So we provided, really, the back-story for the radio show by writing the book.

Q: What was the process of writing the book like? Did you all get together?

Sheila: We did meet several times together — we would actually go to a motel outside the airport in Los Angeles that we discovered provided a very good writing environment. We would stay in one room, we had a lot of Diet Coke, a lot of guacamole, a lot of wraps, and a lot of lattes. And then we wrote the big lists together, all the collaborative parts of the book together, and that also gave us a chance to share our writing with each other in a free-for-all kind of style. We really were there to just have fun and write the collaborative sections of the book together.

Q: Are your brothers jealous of all the attention you get?

Sheila: They’re not jealous. I would say my brothers are just very supportive, but they’re just not very interested in doing this type of thing themselves.

Q: None of you has any children who have sisters. How do you feel about that? Or haven’t you thought about it?

Sheila: I do think about it, because I’m divorced. I have one child who is a girl, and I’ll tell you, she’s always had a very strong sense of connection with her aunts, but she also let me know when she was little that she really wasn’t interested in having a baby sister or brother. But she herself has a very tight group of girlfriends, actually five girlfriends, that she’s grown up with, so she has a really strong sense of connection with her aunts and with the women in her life. Our mother was an identical twin, and she had two other sisters, and we really learned about sisterhood from our mother, who celebrated every holiday with her sisters.

Q: Do you have a favorite sister? Is it the one sitting in the room with you?

Liz: I would say I have different relationships with all of my sisters, so no, it’s not a favorite, but my relationship with Sheila, who’s sitting here in the room, is totally different than my relationship with Lian, for instance. That’s partly because Sheila and I are just exactly a year apart in age, so we sort of grew up as peers, sharing rooms, being in the same schools at the same time, having a lot of the same friends. It’s interesting. You know, Sheila and I, I would say, have totally radically different personalities, whereas Lian, who is much younger than I am, and so we did not grow up in the same schools or with the same friends, but our personalities are probably more similar. So I would just say, no, I don’t have a favorite; they’re all very different, and so my relationships with all of them are very different.

Sheila: This project, what this has done is provided me an opportunity to sort of meet my sisters all over again, on different levels. And for me, I look at it as just sort of this great opportunity, really, to explore my sisters as friends in our adult lives. I had a buddy sister; my buddy sister was Monica, and I wrote about her in the book, in an essay called "Me and My Shadow," and we still kind of are buddies, and actually when we were all together in New York kicking off the book tour, we were kind of doing our buddy kind of wrangling thing in the car that we used to do when we were little, and Julie yelled up front, "You know what? I’m really glad that you two aren’t going anywhere together on the book tour — that would be a nightmare!"

Q: What do you think makes a good sister?

Liz: A good sister knows when to buck you up, and when to bust you. And then they have a few other important jobs, too, like making you laugh and telling you when you’re being ridiculous. It’s empathy, and it’s respect. I guess a good sister, they have the goods on you. And they use it sparingly. It’s like, there are times when they can really call you on things, but most of the time they provide you the kind of back up you really need to be a braver person and to be a better person. But occasionally they need to just remind you what you looked like in your glasses when you were 11.

Sheila: I think respect for your choices, for your life choices, is really important, and I think that’s what a good friend would do — you know, they’d be there to support you. I mean, the thing about friends and sisters is you as a person are going to make your own decisions in life, and no one can really change that or change you, but it is the job of a good sister to be a good listener, to be supportive, and then occasionally point out that you may have some trouble going down that road that you’re planning on going on, and offering help, if that’s what you need. Sisterhood is the relationship in our lives that really provides that nurturing, and sort of unconditional love and support. It’s a hard job, but it’s great when you have it.

Satellite Sisters airs locally on WBUR (90.9 FM) on Saturdays, at 8 p.m. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com

Issue Date: January 24 - 31, 2002
Back to the News & Features table of contents.

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2002 Phoenix Media Communications Group