This is factual radio that'll make you giggle out loud with pleasure. So assured, so clever, so wise. And Jad Abenrad and Robert Krulwich do this practically every week (MP3).
And you might want to give some money to WNYC to help pay for the production of this stuff - since they don't have an inflation-protected licence fee to depend on.
This is just lovely. It's got the stuff you want from radio feature-making: something you didn't know, an unexpected insight, evidence that people you thought you knew all about aren't what you thought they were. It's about soldiers and birdwatching: specifically birdwatching done in warzones, birdsong on battlefields. Twitchers in uniform—and in peril of death. Moving and enlightening (web page, MP3). (Here comes the clunky link). And while we're talking about sound (we were talking about sound weren't we?), you should get over to the WNYC web site and listen to this really gorgeous show (there's a link to the MP3 on the page) from the Radiolab team (from the end of 2007) about the way they work with sound to tell stories. Clever and humane communication.
Robert Krulwich is the older, funnier one from WNYC's Radio Lab, a show we've featured here quite often. He's also NPR's science specialist and makes terrific science inserts for shows like Weekend Edition and Morning Edition. We don't make science programmes like this in Britain. It's clever and funny and formally bold: Krulwich builds a short piece about neuroscience and the integrity of the self around Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway: a nicely arranged collision of science and art. The MP3 is here, there's a programme archive here and a podcast here.
bookmarks by: delicious.comSpeechification is a celebration of speech radio from around the (English-speaking) world. It's maintained (intermittently, it has to be said) by a scattered band of listeners most of whom live in Britain, which explains the preponderance of programmes from Radio 4, the nation's number 1 speech network.
We record or link to programmes and wrap the whole lot up in a podcast, which is probably the best way to absorb this stuff.
Of course, one day this might turn into something else, maybe a new way of curating speech radio. Or maybe it won’t.
Your hosts on this not very wild ride are Steve Bowbrick, Russell Davies, Dan Hill, Bobbie Johnson and James Bridle. Drop us a line with your thoughts, unless you wish to complain about continuity announcers and their accents.
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