Speechification

A mini-post featuring something from Charles Wheeler’s archive: three-and-a-half minutes recorded on the fourth of April 1968, the day of Martin Luther King’s assassination (MP3).

When I was fourteen, my form teacher Mr Aldridge made us read The Times and the Morning Star every day. The intention was to teach us to be critical in our thinking and, while in no way trying to turn us into little Communists, realise that there were always two sides to any story.

In the same spirit, and with the infinitely greater opportunities that the Internet now presents for such an exercise, I present the daily news from the English-language service of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

From the regular, hour-long broadcast I’ve extracted twenty minutes of programme highlights and the news headlines (MP3 - apologies for occasional lapses - the feed is not good), but if you’d like to hear more, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s own Listen Again service can be found here (scroll down to the Live Radio option). The extract is worth listening to all the way through for the tunes at the end - among other things.

(One other story: I first heard the Voice of the Islamic Republic in the Horn of Africa, curled around a static-y shortwave radio. Presented by a young man and a young woman with bright, American-accented voices, it took me some time to work out its provenance. In most of the world, this voice, and many like it, have as loud a megaphone as the BBC.)

Simple and clever news radio from The Today Programme. Mike Leigh just made a film about happiness and Professor Richard Layard has been researching happiness for years. In fact Layard recently wrote an important report for the UK Government in which he proposed that we spend a lot more money on the kinds of psychotherapy that have been shown to produce happiness. He’s a happiness guy. So, anyway, the Today people put them together for an eight minute interview and it’s not polished or deliberate but just really interesting stuff (MP3).

I wouldn’t normally post such a short snippet to Speechification, but the 8:00 am news slot on Radio 4’s Today programme had an unmissable moment which can’t fail to put a smile on your face.

Charlotte Green, in her wonderful newsreaders voice, reads a story about the first recording of a human voice (singing ‘Au Clair de la Lune’) and we are treated to a sample. The Guardian is carrying the news that her subsequent laughter may have been triggered by someone quietly telling her that the recording sounded like a “bee buzzing in a bottle”.

The corpsing fit adds an unexpected twist to the next piece, Abby Mann’s obituary. By the end of that, she sounds like she’s crying with laughter. James Naughtie valiantly picks up with the next story, but it’s so infectious that his voice nearly cracks a couple of times too.

(MP3)

Thanks to everyone who let me know about this classic little piece of Radio 4 history. I think it’s something I’ll keep coming back to when I need cheering up.

Greetings. I’m putting on my ‘chief Speechification engineer’ hat to make a public service announcement about the Speechification podcast.

Podcast? I hear you cry? I didn’t know they were doing a podcast as well as this lovely blog! Well, actually, the blog is the podcast. Sorry. You’re standing in it.

Do you already subscribe to Speechification? You really should. If you using a feed reader and each post is truncated you’re probably still subscribing to smelly old RSS feed. Don’t do that. Seriously, it’s only there to support people who came over with us back when we were on Tumblr. If you’re one of those old-skool subscribers and you’re still using that feed, you’re missing out. The new feed is a full feed (not truncated, yay!) and has enclosures for all those lovely MP3 files. That’s right. It’s a podcast, too.

So, if you haven’t already done so, subscribe to our new and funky Feedburner feed. More than half our readers (um, listeners?) subscribe using iTunes. Yes, iTunes. Imagine that. If you use it, just click right here to subscribe and you need never miss an update again. Of course, you might well use some other bit of podcasting software, in which case you might want to try clicking here instead. Or if that doesn’t work, paste ‘http://feeds.feedburner.com/speechification’ into whatever it is you use. There’ll be a menu option somewhere. I can only help you so much here.

I might redirect the old feed to Feedburner soon. For now, try it for yourself and do let me know if something breaks.

By the way, if all of that nonsense about podcasts meant nothing to you, hello. Don’t be afraid, this is the internet. We do things differently here. The BBC (bless em) do a grand job of explaining podcasting to the great unwashed. Don’t worry, we won’t laugh at you for wanting to know more. This is what all the kids are up to know you. In fact, it must be mainstream by now; even the Archers comes as a podcast these days.

image credit: OllyHart