NPR Music Guru Bob Boilen Has a New Tiny Desk

One recent morning, radio personality Bob Boilen was in the broadcast studio doing his usual thing, playing music for listeners who’d gotten to know him over his 35-year career at NPR. Boilen is best known for co-creating and hosting the popular Tiny Desk Concerts series, which has hosted more than 1,200 artists, including huge names such as Taylor Swift, Usher, and Adele. But these days, he occupies a different small desk: Boilen now broadcasts from a shoebox-size room in Takoma Park that’s home to a minuscule station called WOWD, or Takoma Radio.

After Boilen retired from NPR in 2023, the plan was to fill his time making ambient music and taking photographs. But less than a year later, he jumped at the chance to become program director of this far smaller radio enterprise. “I quit my retirement,” Boilen says of starting his gig at Takoma Radio last spring. Now the 71-year-old hosts a show and oversees the DJ lineup, while also helping with technical issues. One thing he doesn’t do: steer the DJs in any particular direction. “We don’t tell them what to play or criticize or comment,” says Boilen. “The individual who’s part of the station has the run of their little world, and that’s kind of beautiful.”

Takoma Radio launched in 2016, the brainchild of Marika Partridge, a former colleague of Boilen’s at NPR. Today, it’s run by station manager Olivia Ellis Randolph—she and Boilen are the only full-time staffers. (Partridge is still involved in a leadership role and serves as president of the station’s board.) The programming is adventurous: Tune in to 94.3 FM on a weekday and you might hear English ballads, electronic music, Amharic talk, indie rock curated by high-schoolers, or interviews with area authors conducted by Howard professor Carolivia Herron. The station is extremely local, with a 20-watt signal that doesn’t reach far beyond the borders of Takoma Park. Fortunately, it’s also available for anyone to listen to online.

Though Taylor Swift is unlikely to drop by Boilen’s current show, his NPR experience has had an impact on the station. As well as modernizing the DJ software that automates its playlist overnight, he’s added a big collection of songs he loves that spin regularly on-air. Boilen says in some ways Takoma Radio reminds him of NPR in the old days, when program­ming was quirkier. He and Partridge used to select the wide-ranging music clips included between segments of All Things Considered, and they hope to bring some of that flavor to Takoma Radio. “Forget the news,” Partridge says. “Just play the interstitial music!”