The podcast
Every episode puts a modern player across the table from an all-time great. Two musicians, one city or one lineage between them, and a conversation about what they share.
Episode 2 · New
Samara Joy meets Sarah Vaughan. In 1942, a shy teenager from Newark won Apollo amateur night; in 2019, a college junior from the Bronx won the competition that carries her name. Two church families, two generations, one door. 18 minutes.
Episode 1
Immanuel Wilkins meets John Coltrane, born one hundred years ago this September. Two church kids from the same city, seventy years apart. This episode traces that thread: the churches that trained them both, and the sound each one built out of it.
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How we make it
The Cutting Contest is produced with AI voice performance, built on scripts we write and fact-check ourselves. The score is original, composed in-house for the show; no copyrighted recordings appear anywhere in the series. Every factual claim in every episode is independently fact-checked before release. Where a story is a legend rather than a documented fact, we say so on air, plainly, in the moment. Read the full AI disclosure.
Coming soon
Tell us who steps up next. Write us at hello@afterthehead.com with the modern player, the all-time great, or both.