Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “radio”
- kudos:
Half-serious question as I belatedly remember my library’s summer reading program for adults started last Monday: Does a radio adaptation of a book count as an audiobook?
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Nineteen Eighty-Four
- kudos:I had started listening to the recent Audible adaptation, believing that it was a BBC adaptation, but between not loving Audible and it feeling overdone, I ditched it pretty quickly and found this actual BBC adaptation instead. For bonus points, Christopher Eccleston is in the lead role! I feel like it’s the kind of adaptation that you have to know the original to really appreciate, but that doesn’t make it bad.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Man Born to Be King
- kudos:I discovered this cycle of 12 radio plays that adapted the four gospels for the BBC on the Internet Archive and decided to give it a try! From a hermeneutical and theological perspective, I have some complaints. For one thing, even though it’s a radio play, it still manages to make clear that its Jesus is blond (and, by extension, white) through repeated references to golden hair, so that got under my nerves.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for XPD
- kudos:There’s an interesting premise behind this spy thriller adaptation, and some of the radio work is pretty good, but I felt like there wasn’t enough connective tissue to keep it together. I don’t know how much of the weakness was in the original novel versus introduced in the adaptation—the rushed pacing makes me suspect the latter—but while I don’t regret finishing it, I can’t say I was impressed.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 8)
- kudos:This series wasn’t bad—it’s just that maybe I shouldn’t be binging them series after series, because despite some clever moments, I just felt like there wasn’t much new about this material.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 7)
- kudos:I didn’t listen to the finale all in one chunk, so I didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have, but the excellent use of callbacks and flashbacks in that episode was enough to bump up my rating. I think this is also the first series I hadn’t heard before, so it was nice to hear some new content.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 6)
- kudos:Still fun! Just didn’t stand out as much as some of the other series.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 5)
- kudos:I really enjoy metahumor, and Finnemore’s talent for it is on full display in this series—even to the extent of calling himself out on overreliance on it. Doesn’t bother me, though!
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 4)
- kudos:I’ve been tempering my praise of this series through this relisten, but the time travel sketch in the finale is excellent, and there are other top notch examples of Finnemore’s humor scattered throughout. What’s more, the recordings of this series on the Internet Archive are actual recordings and have bits of continuity announcer on either end of the episodes. I just love that, for reasons I can’t fully articulate, and I wish all the series were like that.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 3)
- kudos:I miss the traditional “storyteller” sketches at the end of every episode, but I know they’ll be back in future series, and there were plenty of laugh out loud moments in this one.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 2)
- kudos:This show continues to be fun, even if it wears off its genius on the third run. Some parts still make me laugh out loud, though!
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme (Series 1)
- kudos:This is the third time I’ve listened to this series in the past five years, and I wonder if I’m rating it a bit low because of that. At any rate, I couldn’t help myself from trying it again after finishing Cabin Pressure. I might like this show even better—Finnemore has more freedom to show off his gift for words and his intricate plotting and callbacks.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Cabin Pressure (Series 4 and Finale)
- kudos:It’s been about a decade since I was introduced to this show, and I’m very glad to finally have experienced the whole thing. The last season was fun, the finale was a nice wrap-up, and I really do think the whole thing is a masterpiece.
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My favorite radio episodes to download from the Internet Archive are the ones that are actually recorded from a broadcast, so you get a minute or so of continuity announcer at the beginning and the end.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Cabin Pressure (Series 3)
- kudos:This series feels like Finnemore kicking things up a notch. There are some interesting new character arcs in play, and it’s fun to see Finnemore playing with the fact that one of his actors is now taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes. He’s also clearly having fun subverting some audience expectations with stories and characters. I hadn’t heard this series before, and it was fun to come back to it!
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Cabin Pressure (Series 2)
- kudos:My journey through Cabin Pressure continues! I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve previously listened to—definitely not the Christmas special, but probably the rest of it. At any rate, it continues to have exceptional writing and lovely acting. Radio is underrated, and John Finnemore is perhaps the best example of that.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Cabin Pressure (Series 1)
- kudos:It’s been ages since I’ve listened to this, though I’ve listened to some of John Finnemore’s other work in the meantime. It’s such an excellent show: brilliantly written, well acted, and a real joy to listen to. I’m confident I haven’t listened to all four series, though I can’t remember which bits I’ve missed. Looking forward to finding out!
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Primary Phase)
- kudos:I first picked this up through an Audible deal several years ago, with the idea that it would help with the move from Michigan to Kentucky (I can’t remember if I wasn’t yet anti-Audible or if it was just a good deal that I couldn’t pass up with the whole family living off my grad school fellowship). Anyway, the U-Haul didn’t have an aux jack or Bluetooth, so my brother-in-law and I cranked my phone as loud as it would go and tried to make out the jokes over the highway noise.
🔗 linkblog: mes pensées sur 'Aller Versoix - rts.ch - Portail Audio'
- kudos:J’aime bien Gare à vous, mais j’aime en particulier les épisodes qui parlent des endroits que je reconnais. Ayant habité à Chambésy pendant plusieurs mois, j’ai passé un peu de temps à Versoix, et c’est sympa d’en apprendre l’histoire. lien pour “Aller Versoix - rts.ch - Portail Audio”
underrated radio and Public Service Broadcasting
- kudos:Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to listen to more internet radio, getting back into the great NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and generally thinking about how underrated radio is as a medium. This morning, a chance comment from a familiy member had me checking the website for Public Service Broadcasting, a strange and wonderful “found audio” band that I count among my favorites. Thanks to checking that website, I learned that PSB has a new album out based on their appearance last month at the BBC Proms celebrating BBC Radio’s 100th anniversary.
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The British narrator of the audiobook I’m listening to can only do American accents that sound like they’re from early 20th century radio serials. I find it charming, and I’m sure it’s much better than all the British accents Americans have butchered over the years.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Call for the Dead, by John Le Carré
- kudos:This week, it felt like it was time to revisit George Smiley. Smiley has been something of a comfort read these past several years, but it’s been some time since I visited the actual books, instead preferring the BBC Radio 4 dramatizations. They are superb, but I decided to listen to the “full” audiobooks this time through. Not all are available theough my library, but the best ones are, and that works just fine for me.
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Listening to the NPR audio adaptation of Star Wars emphasizes just how important John Williams and Ben Burtt are to making that universe work.
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There’s a SomaFM internet radio station that plays NASA recordings of Apollo missions over calm electronic music. I don’t listen to it often, but I love it when I do.
small radio delights, everday cultural artifacts, and other thoughts on audio media
- kudos:I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings.
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Recently got a six-month free trial of Apple Music, so I figured I’d try out music streaming for the first time in years. As great as the music selection is, though, my bias toward owning music and listening to internet radio is being strengthened.
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Very relieved to learn that the singer on French radio that I can’t tell apart from Johnny Hallyday started his career as a Hallyday impressionist.
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I hear Italian PM Giuseppe Conte’s name fairly often on Francophone radio, but I nearly always hear it first as José Piquanté and then fix it in post.
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The NPR radio adaptation of Star Wars is just as great—and just as terrible—as you would think. Totally worth a listen.
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This afternoon, a career in academia looks like working from the kitchen table, playing a French 80s radio station, and fuming at Reviewer B’s complaints about my using the journal’s template like I was asked to.
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Was there a moral panic about radio? My kid is enjoying podcasts, and while parent-me feels like that’s somehow better than TV, tech researcher me is wondering about history.
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Old favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on Audible; new favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on the Internet Archive.
brief thoughts on entertainment media
- kudos:I once had a neighbor who argued that because it had higher fidelity, 3-D was the future of cinema. To prove his point, he asked “who would prefer an audio adaptation to a video one?” and was surprised when I, a big radio fan, raised my hand. To be honest, I don’t know that I’d prefer radio to TV/cinema in every instance, but I believe firmly that it’s more about how you use a medium than it is about what medium you use.
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In June, I purchased an “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue” compilation on Audible that is over 18 hours long. Tonight, I finally passed the halfway point.
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Last week, I confessed to my colleagues some of my quirky passions, like radio dramas and Franco-Belgian comics. This week, driven by a compulsive need to outquirk myself, I am listening to a radio drama adaptation of a Franco-Belgian comic.