We're taking a look at some of our favorite stories from the show.

We'll go behind the scenes of the play.

The classic King, directed by actor Jeff Daniels and funk legend George Clinton, sits down for a conversation about Detroit's influence on his music.

And we'll visit an exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Japan.

It's all coming up next on one Detroit.

Across our Masco family of companies.

Our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

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and viewers like you.

Hello.

I'm Zosette Guir manager of content operations and production for One Detroit.

In this special episode, we're sharing some of the stories that stood out to our team this year.

First up is a story I found quite compelling about an exhibition at Oakland University called Memorializing the Hibachi Experience.

It focused on the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Their experiences were conveyed through an array of photographs, poems, and other artifacts.

Contributor Toko Shiiki talked with Professo Claude Baillargeon who curated the exhibit, which brought lessons from the past into the present.

Ground zero.

Hiroshima, Japan.

Filmed by the US military in 1946, only months after the first atomic bomb was dropped, there are survivors who wanted the world to know what happened to them and others like them, even though many people did not want to be recognized.

They said, please take our pictures, show the world so we do not repeat the evil.

Oakland University's art gallery in Rochester.

Claude Bergen is a professor of art history.

He's giving a walkthrough of an exhibition called Memorializing the Hibakusha Experience.

Hibakusha refers to the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Just 50s later, 15 miles from ground zero, the Enola Gay is rocked by the blast.

Significance of memorializing the hibakusha experience.

I think it has a lot to do with our current geopolitics.

I do believe that a lot of people think that the threat of nuclear war is a thing of the past.

People think that since the end of the Cold War, maybe this is no longer relevant, but I think it is even more relevant today than it has been in recent past.

So that is one of the reasons why this exhibition, I think, is very significant today.

I do want to bring your attention to these two magazines that are here, very, very significant published accounts of actual atomic bomb survivors experiences in the US.

The New Yorker published a story in August 1946, a year after the bombings.

Up until then, coverage of the bombs didn't focus on the human cost.

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation estimates up to 246,000 died from the blast and the radiation poisoning that followed.

This truly was the first time that the American people read about the people who were on the ground.

Up until that point, it's all been about the mushroom cloud and the physical destruction of the city.

Right?

But in this case, it begins a noiseless flash.

The article tells the stories of six survivors.

Then the world began to learn more.

In Japan, a press code prohibited reporting about the survivors experiences.

It was lifted in 1952.

There was no poetry.

No art could be made.

No literature.

You could not talk about it.

This magazine on this site called Asahi Graf, is published on August 6th, 1952, seven years after the bombings.

This is the first time that the Japanese people actually saw images of what happened on the ground.

These are probably some of the most difficult picture to look at in the exhibition, because at the time of these three photographs, these people were alive, but they die within hours or a day.

The exhibition is in partnership with the Peace Resource Center, established in 1975 at Wilmington College in Ohio.

It preserves a collection amassed by an American anti-nuclear activist devoted to the cause of the hibachi.

You've got photographs by famous people.

You've got photographs by anonymous amateur photographer.

You've got books that do not exist.

United States, or some of them.

You can find two copies or something.

Then they've got all this archival material.

They have relics.

They have example of the Berkshire handicraft.

And Biogen had some other artists at their work to the exhibition.

I ended up adding five contemporary artists whose work is also inspired by the nuclear experience, where also concerned with the state of affairs on a global stage and want to make art that speak about the memory.

I do hope that this exhibition will travel further.

Looking back at the island of bikini.

So here's another one of these photographs.

Professor Beijing's class visual representations and the nuclear experience.

This sessions about Bikini Atoll in the Pacific after the war.

This was a nuclear weapons test site for the US government.

If you look at the file name of this, it gives you the date.

And at the end it says secret.

These images were all completely unavailable until several years, decades, in fact, after the bombing.

The things that we talk about in here, that the things that I learn about, that I just I would have never known.

And it's it's disturbing, really, to know that maybe if I had not taken this class that I would just walk around without any of that knowledge.

My courses are about visual culture in the course visual representation, nuclear experience.

We have 40 that come from victims, that comes from survivors, that come from the military, that come from artist, and the list goes on.

I'm interested in the totality.

How can we look at all forms of imagery that actually look at the nuclear era?

We were told very little about the actual bomb, but we were told like right after that it was for the good to end the war.

So we were kind of told like this was it was okay.

All of the information that I have and the knowledge I gain, it doesn't just stay with me in this class.

It makes me want to talk about it.

You know, with how depressing and how dark and how ugly everything is, I think it's even more important to to leave with hope and to leave having faith that we can come out of this and we can be better.

We need to take what we've learned and we need to be more loving.

We need to be more empathetic.

Don't let this hold you down, but let this kind of carry you forward.

I think that's important reference to feel we are there to look with compassion and empathy about what happened, so that hopefully they will contribute to a better world going forward and not repeat the evil.

Knowledge is power and it's very important to know knowledge is power.

Yeah, thank you for I'm Chris Jordan, editor and producer for One Detroit.

One of my favorite recent stories was my behind the scenes piece about the purple Rose Theater Company's play, The Classic King, which ran earlier this year.

The play was developed at the theater and directed by purple Rose Theater Company founder and artistic director Jeff Daniels.

We filmed a rehearsal for the play, getting a unique look at Daniels creative process and how the theater company workshops and develops an original production.

Check it out.

I know it's got a hug.

Just landed in the truck.

I, I badge.

Beard down to his navel box.

Not in two.

Good a shape, neither.

It's a biker.

Don't all jump at once.

The purple Rose theater companies rehearsal space in Chelsea.

Early January.

A rehearsal for the Classic King, a new play by Richard Johnson, directed by Jeff Daniels.

The play follows the staff of a struggling car dealership in Detroit.

You're just trying to stay afloat.

You've got 30 days to do it.

The banks put some pressure on on the dealership, and it's four guys trying to get through the month.

You know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

You're going to pay danger money.

Good.

Do it again.

Really good.

Playwright Richard Johnson had a long career in automotive journalism as the print editor of Automotive News.

After he retired, he decided to write a play set within the industry.

He'd spent his career covering.

I thought the industry was was fascinating.

I mean, not just, you know, designing and selling cars, but just the way people talked.

I used to be at dinners, at industry events, and here guys talk and wanting to throw a tape recorder on the table just so I could.

I could capture it because they have their own way of speaking.

And when I retired a few years ago, I thought it would be fun to try to work this into some kind of drama setting.

I had thought that the history of the Ford Motor Company would make a good play, and I was dumb enough to actually attempt to do that.

He had great characters Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford the second and Robert McNamara, and in great cars like the Mustang.

And I thought, this is a story here.

My ex-boss at Automotive News.

Great job.

The name of Peter Brown, who's on the board of the purple Rose, said.

That was pretty good.

He liked it.

Showed it to Jeff.

Jeff immediately said, there's no way in the heck that this is going to work on a stage, because it has.

It's so long.

It has maybe 30 characters and 100 scene changes in the whole thing.

But he said, come on in, let's talk about some other ideas.

And it was in those meetings with Jeff.

Together we came up with the idea of a used car car dealership and very focused one stage, four characters, much easier to do.

And so so this play was very much developed at the purple Rose.

Oh, absolutely.

I had a buddy at the Harley shop down the street called him.

They bid on it.

Boom.

Neil.

Only motorcycle after up.

Nice work.

Braden.

Thanks, Mike.

Us luck.

I'll take any kind of luck I can get.

I play Mike, who is the owner of the dealership.

He's at his wits in trying to keep the place afloat.

He is beating back the the competition, the large, pervasive competition and doing all that he can to rally the troops.

I play Jerry Flanagan.

He's been working with Mike for Mike at Starlight Classic Cars since he was a kid selling cars runs in his family.

It's in his blood.

His dad did it.

His grandfather did it.

So this is the world Jerry is comfortable in.

See that?

Got a light one.

So do we.

At what stage do you guys, as actors, come into the process of workshopping and developing these original plays here?

It's pretty early on.

Yeah, we've done readings of Rick's play probably a little over a year ago.

He would rewrite.

We would do other.

I don't know, we did a handful of readings so that Rick and Jeff could hear it out loud.

Do a bunch of rewrites and that.

So we were involved pretty early on.

Rick's constantly working stuff.

We're we're working stuff.

Seeing seeing what, what lands, what doesn't and making adjustments every minute of the day.

Listening and collaboration is so important.

And it's it.

You see the work grow as we put it up, go through iterations, have the feedback.

I had an idea who Mike was and then showed up in the room and threw it all away.

One of the important things is that allowing yourself, you listen to your scene partner and allowing that to inform some of your choices.

He did it.

He did it.

He did it.

Is this the high five?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Great.

Nice work.

Great.

Thanks, Mike.

Boom!

High five.

Like that.

Like that.

And go.

Because you can go.

You can do whatever you want.

Then hit it with.

I'll take any kind of luck I can get.

Oh, don't take that for that.

Incalculable.

That's it.

No.

You're wrong.

I need a law luck I can get.

It's alive.

The material is is alive.

Yes.

It's that on on the business and.

Yeah, yeah.

And walk right into that.

Thing.

So I hit him with that and get your office.

That's the amazing thing about Jeff.

Who will the vision he has when he watches these guys rehearse.

Well, here's 15 ideas of how you could do this better.

And he just rattles them off.

He's so good at that.

And again, one of the many things I'm amazed about is I watched this process.

He'll watch us throw, you know, a dozen behavioral ideas in one moment and and gives us the freedom to do that and then says, yeah, just pair it down, make it about this set.

And the other thing, he's so good at simplifying the complexities that that at least I tend to bring in when I'm, when I'm working, just the wealth of experience and knowledge.

Having that in the room is so helpful.

It's a love letter to the car enthusiasts, really.

At the end of the day, it's a celebration of that world in that community.

Even if you don't know a lot about cars, if you're from Michigan, you're going to understand just because our car culture here in Michigan is runs deep.

You know, first and foremost, it's really funny.

These guys, how they interact is hilarious.

The world that when you walk into the theater, you're stepping into this very vivid world.

It's one act, it's a bullet train.

There's a lot going on.

It's a great story and wonderfully executed.

Good.

One more time.

Really good.

Hi, I'm Cecilia Sharpe.

One story that stood out to me reflected on the rich history of United Sound Systems recording Studios in Detroit.

Funk legend George Clinton and Grammy Award winning producer Maurice Piranha had heard spoke about their time at the iconic studio.

During the conversation, I showed them four albums that Clinton recorded at United Sound.

They shared incredible backstories and behind the scenes moments.

The trip down memory lane gave even more context about the magic of United Sound Studios and the funky music created there.

you made United Sound your home for about 20 years.

Studio A became the P-Funk lab.

Yeah.

What made United Sound Studios so special that you stayed there so long?

I know the sound.

I mean, just the sound in the history of the people that recorded it prior to us.

I mean, they went back to the 40s and stuff.

They did radio commercials.

So they were pretty much the sound of radio throughout the country.

You didn't know it, but that was the studio did most of the commercials.

But everything between here and Chicago, General Motors, Fords, everybody did their commercials there.

So it had a relationship to radio that people didn't even know.

Not only that, Motown recorded their prior to their own studio, and when they couldn't get into the studio, United was that choice.

And it had the same kind of vibe as Motown.

Had a little more bottom, though, but it had the same, especially when we came there and with Bootsy.

Bootsy had a bass that had the string each spring on the bass had his own output.

United.

We had a special sound that we that no matter what we did.

I mean, you can just walk in there and not thinking something was anything.

And when you finish like Atomic Dog, that was a track being played backwards.

I just got on this thought talking.

And next thing I know, it had that magic on it that no other place could do.

Piranha, I want to get your take.

What was your intro into United Sound?

And I was it was around 80 to 83.

I was, you know, dinking around on the east side, you know, learning to play with cats in the neighborhood.

You know, we were staying out of trouble because there was a lot of trouble that you get into on the East side.

And Bootsy had this group called God Mama.

It was a lady named Cynthia Gurdy, Cynthia and Tony, and she grabbed us.

It's like, I'm gonna take you to see the studio.

And she was working for Don Davis at the time, and we went over there and I think it was it was Greg Water.

Jim Vinnie who said, Georgia isn't here yet?

So Don was like, yeah, just going down there and just check the studio out.

He was showing us around and things like that.

I think you and Chong came in after that was just like, wait a minute.

I just met this guy who owns a bank and runs a music business, and Doctor Frankenstein want to You realize you could do whatever in a studio.

I mean, like whatever you want to do.

You know what I mean?

How y'all used to do them claps.

Oh, yeah.

Live class.

Live clap live clap.

And they thought it was machine.

And we would do it for ten minutes.

I mean you now days you can do two four bars.

Two bars.

You did looping digitally?

No.

Back then you had to do it.

Flashlights.

You had to do it for like seven minutes.

And hands are tired.

You got to maintain the energy.

So only certain people could do it again.

Yeah.

You can't get Miss One because it sounds as because.

And that's what the flashlight was the beginning of it.

Yeah.

I want to jump into showing you an album.

You take it and tell me your united sound memory.

I noticed that also the hand clappers did get credit on these albums.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, we gave handclaps credit.

Yeah.

you know.

So I was into R&B deejays at the time, Mothership connection.

I was trying to do an album with one story line all the way through.

We did it on Motor Booty Affair.

Most of the songs relate to the same story.

We got thrown off track on this one because some of the tracks sounded so good.

We had to put them in there.

Anyway.

And well, of course the roof off the sucker.

And what was good about that?

We were able to get it on here.

If we take off to the roof off the mother sucker, Seeger said, we'll put it on.

If you take the roof off the mother, say.

And once we did that, it was all over.

Yeah.

Biggest memory from this album.

Clones of Doctor Funk and Stein.

Wow, this is a good one.

I got on a plane in Dallas, Texas, and when I got off, I had to get on a train.

It was the first day they used the trains to go from one terminal to the next.

Yeah.

When I got on there, there was a book on the seat of the train and it said the clones faces, two faces, one face in the same person.

I thought the book come with the train.

You know, it was the first day of the train.

It just makes sense.

That saw them and was talking about Steve Swanson.

And this doctor was cloning salamanders, taking one and making hundreds of them, that you will be able to eventually one day be able to clone people and blah, blah, blah.

But then I realized I'm like, it's serious.

And so when I got to Portland, Oregon.

I went to the library because, you know, I'm trying to find different concepts and it sounds interesting.

I go to the library and that's it.

Was there anything on cloning that was that?

They told me.

She said due to the freedom of information, we're not allowed to give books of books on those.

It was taboo at the time.

So that of course, you say taboo.

You really got me going down.

But, you know, she said, you can you can actually get a book called chariot of the gods or the Isle of Doctor Monroe.

I got cherry of the gods and the whole album is this.

Wow.

That's what.

So the concept was based upon stuff that you read.

That was science fiction.

Science fiction?

Yeah.

Okay, this of all these.

Now, that's that's the way we dressed in school when I was at school.

Tailor made suits.

The tailor made suits, you know, all of that?

Just slick.

A friend of mine was.

He was trying to show how much he could be deep with us, and he was just getting with us.

So he just wrote on a note intellect.

And it had a nice ring to it.

But what does it mean?

He said some entity reaching his maximum potential as opposed to something and that's as opposed to placebo.

He said sounds good.

So that became the key versus the placebo syndrome.

Flashlight is the weird one, because that was Bernie playing bass on the synthesizer as opposed to Bootsy playing bass.

That was the first time that had happened.

First time that happened happened like that.

And how about I did that right?

That was my friend's ball mitzvah.

I remember this bar mitzvah.

He was like.

And it just came back in that moment.

You think it's crazy?

It's just.

Okay.

That fit that.

And down the street.

Went to school together and his mother, George Myron come in for soup and sandwiches.

Your mom is like, I didn't know what a bomb was, but that was his.

I said, okay.

So when I finally said it in the magazine, maybe a couple of years ago, it went viral.

Last one.

Okay.

Yeah, this is a good one because, see, this is 1982 83.

Wow.

This was the first one that I did on my own name.

No, man.

So I did this record under George Clinton the first time.

The first time I used my name period.

On the record, we put our first touch that radio.

People loved it.

Back.

So immediately we Tommy Dog took off without even saying anything.

Yes, that went crazy and it was all over.

To this day, it's still like that.

One of the first people to play that was the likes of Fine Mojo.

And when we heard it, you know, it was like, yo, what was that?

You know, that that whole thing, I mean, and it was such a jam because of the backwards drum thing in there.

What was going on with that?

Yeah, the tape was on backwards, was put in effect on it, and I'm into my own.

I was getting high at the time, didn't know when I was doing I busted that starts rapping, you know like thinking they was trying to record without me.

They went about to miss your spot.

What about the Mrs.. When once I got it, I didn't know what to talk about.

So this is a story of famous dogs.

For the dog that takes his tail would be busy.

I'm trying to think of something to say.

Yeah, and I must.

I feel like that.

And I did it just like that.

And they left it like that and sing harmony around it.

Wow.

But you know what I mean.

It was just like one of these things, man.

Y'all had such a magic.

All recorded at United Sound Studio.

That'll do it for this week's one.

Detroit.

Thank you for watching.

Head to the One Detroit website for all the stories we're working on.

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Across our Masco family of companies.

Our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

The Dty Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at T Foundation.

Nissan Foundation.

and viewers like you.