Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey
by Chris Kursel
When Chris was born, the youngest of seven sons, his father (Joel) was 64 years old. Joel was the child of immigrants and grew up poor in a cement factory town in western Pennsylvania. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. Then an ad man who went by another name. Then, when Chris was 16, Joel died of brain cancer. Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey tells the story of Chris's quest to discover who his father really was, reconstruct his life and reflect on his long lingering grief. A blend of narrative nonfiction and memoir, each episode weaves together the past and present in a dance of voice-driven storytelling, music and sounds.
Episodes
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Episode 20 - Inside Her
Reflecting on a startling conversation with his father from twenty years in the past, Chris confronts renewed mysteries about the mother of his oldest half-brother. As he copes with the traumas lingering from his own forays into adolescent love and sex, Joel's take shape as well. In Episode 20…
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Episode 19 - PDQ
Chris's life takes on new velocity as his relationship with Alex Green rivals the gravity of his father's illness. Parked squarely in late 90's suburban Milwaukee, this episode explores the unique color of teenage love -- part escape, part addiction. It pays particular attention to the escalating...
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Episode 18 - Golden Valley
The growing Kursel family, buoyed by Joel's promising new position at an advertising agency, takes root in a rural Milwaukee suburb called Golden Valley. In this episode, Chris explores the history of Golden Valley, both modern and ancient, expounding on the enmeshed nature of time and family in…
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Episode 17 - Alex Green
While his father's illness advances, Chris's life is gripped by a new and completely different energy -- first love. The thrills and fears of Alex Green, a spirited and intellectual dynamo Chris meets through a mutual friend, burst through the painful tedium of his dad's cancer. After a first…
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Episode 16 - Another Tube of Military Metal
In the period directly following WWII, Joel and his growing family take up residence in a Quonset Hut -- a refabbed piece of corrugated metal issued by the U.S. military -- in a hardscrabble suburb outside downtown Milwaukee. As Chris explores Joel's new life as a family man in the 1940's, he...
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Episode 15 - City of Light, City of Magic
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which acutely experienced the trauma and depression emblematic of the late 20th century -- racism, industrial contraction, economic and social segregation -- before turning the corner to a more rosy 21st century persona, is in many ways a prototypical Midwestern city. Toss…
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Episode 14 - Time Shapes
This episode traces Joel's harrowing and mysteriously brief trajectory as a combat pilot over WWII Europe. After longstanding beliefs about his father's war experience fall under question, Chris tediously reconstructs his father's missions. While attempting to square Joel's recollections with...
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Episode 13: The Man in the Cabinet
This episode is anchored in Chris's increasingly frequent feelings of his father's presence during the eerie quiet of the COVID pandemic. It also introduces a series of consequential questions about Joel's war experience that take center stage in Chris's search for the truth about his dad's life...
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Episode 12: Velocity
This episode traces the making of Bill into a wartime pilot (and a wartime husband) from bases in rural America to the skies over Europe. Following the trail of artifacts his father left behind, Chris explores how war accelerates lives, compresses intimacy and reshapes identity. He reflects on...
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Episode 11 - You've Got the Music in You
In this episode, Chris looks back on being sixteen in the late ’90s as the reality of Joel’s illness unfolds. Music, friendships, teenage routines, and small acts of rebellion play out alongside hospital visits, radiation treatments and the disorienting collapse of his father’s life. As memory,...
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Episode 10: Bumps
Chris recalls a trip to the movies with his father that unlocked a deeper understanding of Joel's past as a WWII bomber pilot. While never hidden, Joel's stories of war existed fragments, woven into their home’s quiet displays of history. But when Chris uncovers a startling detail about his...
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Episode 9: A Well-Selected Man
In this episode, we follow Joel’s journey from the familiar streets of Bessemer, PA to the academic halls of Allegheny College in the late 1930's. As he grapples with homesickness and financial hardship, Joel finds himself at a crossroads—torn between the world he knew and the one he yearns for....
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Episode 8: Winter
Christmas 1999. Chris, now 17, faces the traumatic reality of his father's cancer diagnosis. After Joel undergoes brain surgery, weekly visits to the hospital test Chris's mental and emotional stamina. In between, there are fleeting moments of normalcy with new friends and the energy of high…
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Episode 7: 100% Perfection
In this episode, we step into the world of the Kursel family of Bessemer, Pennsylvania circa 1930. We see life through the eyes of Joe and Linda’s growing family as they navigate the grit of industrial America, from the booming cement industry to the stark realities of poverty. Despite scarcity,...
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Episode 6: Thanksgiving
At a pivotal Thanksgiving gathering, Joel's health reaches a critical point. Chris reflects on his complex relationship with his much older half-brothers, the drama of their shared language of basketball, and the unspoken tensions stemming from their family’s unusual history. Within this warm but...
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Episode 5: Birth
Drawing on the haunting nature of an old wedding photo, Chris excavates the lives of his immigrant grandparents, Joe and Linda. From their early days in Pennsylvania’s steel and limestone towns to their lasting impact on his father, he discovers a world of struggle, love and resilience in early...
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Episode 4: The Virus and The Man
As 2020 New York City reels from the crisis outside—empty parks, ambulance sirens, and protests shaking the streets—inside, a different kind of reckoning unfolds. Chris continues the excavation of his father’s life, guided by the scrapbooks Joel meticulously compiled over decades. Through...
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Episode 3: Carrots
In this episode, we unravel a deeply personal and unsettling moment--one that begins with a plate of uneaten carrots. In late 1998, Joel's health takes a sudden turn. As a teenager, Chris struggles to make sense of his father’s apparent decline. Was it stress? A lingering ulcer? Or something far...
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Episode 2: His Name Was Joel
As the world teeters on the edge of lockdown in early 2020, Chris takes a deep dive into the digital traces of his father’s life — and his father's name, which mysteriously changed soon after he returned home from WWII. What starts as a routine online search leads to a trove of newspaper…
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Episode 1: Timeline
Twenty years after his father's death, Chris, a film editor in New York, reflects on the weight of his grief and how it has evolved since he was a teenager. Through fragmented recollections—his 17th birthday, a voice on an answering machine, and the quiet ache of his mother’s annual text—he...
About this show
When Chris was born, the youngest of seven sons, his father (Joel) was 64 years old. Joel was the child of immigrants and grew up poor in a cement factory town in western Pennsylvania. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. Then an ad man who went by another name. Then, when Chris was 16, Joel died of brain cancer.
Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey tells the story of Chris's quest to discover who his father really was, reconstruct his life and reflect on his long lingering grief.
A blend of narrative nonfiction and memoir, each episode weaves together the past and present in a dance of voice-driven storytelling, music and sounds.
Hosted by
Chris Kursel