The Lottery at Hudson

2009
Norman Douglas
The Lottery at Hudson is a fictional work/radio play by Norman Douglas that uses the radio documentary format familiar to listeners of National Public Radio. Stylistic paradigms can be found in such programs as Joe Frank (now in reruns on WNYC AM Sunday nights at 11, wnyc.org), WBEZ's This American Life, WNYC's RadioLab, and even a few podcasts like the memory palace. "The Lottery at Hudson" is the small but intricately woven story of how a humble community of approximately 7500 souls living alongside the banks of upstate New York's mid-Hudson River transforms itself into a functioning utopia of sorts. What sort of utopia seems to have arisen largely from the appeal of one person's singular perspective, a multifaceted vision culled from various sources that an otherwise unremarkable teacher and student of history has stumbled across during his twenty-odd years of service in the field of public education.