Leveling up from Doctor Who Short Trips to full-length Doctor Who radio plays, and they’re only affirming my belief that a well-done radio play might as well be television.

I hear people are angry about Superman being an immigrant, so I think it’s time to read “Superman Smashes the Klan” again (and maybe even listen to the 1940s radio serial it’s based on).

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. I’ve listened to a lot of radio dramas recently, and this series is avoiding all the sins of the medium while providing some powerful strengths. Top notch.

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.

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? It’s not great, but it’s good for what it is, and I enjoyed it:

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! For one, it expands a two hour movie into a nearly six-hour radio serial, and so it crams in a lot of material that isn’t present in the movie (or even—as far as I can tell—the original script).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. This book shows its age in some uncomfortable ways, and it’s not fully polished, but it introduces so much of what I love about George Smiley and the books built around him. I like Mendel in particular, even though he never plays a huge role. The story is interesting, it’s attentive to morality, and it’s a good read all around.

Listening to the NPR audio adaptation of Star Wars emphasizes just how important John Williams and Ben Burtt are to making that universe work.

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.

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. I discovered podcasts in their infancy, during my final years of high school, and started really getting into them near the end of college.

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.

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.

Listening to the 1940s anti-KKK Superman radio serial while cleaning up lunch dishes.

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.

The NPR radio adaptation of Star Wars is just as great—and just as terrible—as you would think. Totally worth a listen.

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.

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.

Old favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on Audible; new favorite thing: Finding BBC Radio 4 shows on the Internet Archive.