Below are posts associated with the “radio” tag.
🎙️ radioblog: A Murder of Quality (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
In some ways this is the least interesting of the Smiley stories. There’s something fun about a retired Smiley doing detective work, and it’s fascinating to get glimpses at the British class system, but it’s not Smiley in his element (as it will later become), and it feels like a distraction in that sense.
Yet, the radio adaptation is so, so nicely done that I can’t help but give it full marks.
some brief notes on the theme song to The NeverEnding Story
I have vague recollections of watching The NeverEnding Story as a child, but they are vague. I was young (nine at the oldest, but probably younger), it was at someone else’s house, and it was only once, so it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. My next substantive encounter with that movie—or, more accurately, its theme song—was the ending gag in this Homestar Runner cartoon, where the title character sings “the never ending sooooodaaaaaa” to the tune of the movie’s theme song.
🎙️ radioblog: Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I think I got this in an NPR Humble Bundle, and I’ve been meaning to relisten to it for a while. It’s a real mix of good and bad: Thanks to John Williams and Ben Burtt, it’s got some great audio to work with; however, it does a lot of awkward “tell since we can’t show.” It sometimes feels like it’s reaching to fill in an extra four hours, but also it maybe demonstrates that Star Wars could maybe be a miniseries with some better writing?
Jacques Ellul's technique and Brian Daley's Alderaan
I recently finished an audiobook of Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society and have been finding other things to listen to now that I don’t have mid-twentieth century French philosophical reflections on technique to think through anymore. Last night, I began (re)listening to the National Public Radio Star Wars radio drama—adapted by Brian Daley—while cleaning up the kitchen, and I continued listening on the way in to work today. The radio drama is interesting in so many ways!
🎙️ radioblog: When the Wind Blows (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
There’s something especially dark about the voice actor who played Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit) starring as a naïve Englishman in this story about the horrors of nuclear war.
I’ve wanted to read the book this is based on for quite some time—and may yet read it now that I’ve found a copy on the Internet Archive—but I got to the radio adaptation first. The couple at the heart of the story are so naïve as to make the story heavy-handed, but it’s also a good literary device for just how helpless one is in the face of nuclear weapons.
🎙️ radioblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Cabin Pressure (Series 2)
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.
🔗 linkblog: Aller Versoix - rts.ch - Portail Audio'
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.
underrated radio and Public Service Broadcasting
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.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Call for the Dead, by John Le Carré
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 through my library, but the best ones are, and that works just fine for me.
small radio delights, everday cultural artifacts, and other thoughts on audio media
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.