I’ve been getting into NPR’s Ask Me Another, another quiz show that goes great along with my favorite NPR show, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. The questions are often plays on words and, just like Wait Wait, it’s fun to play along.
Image via CrunchBase
For a while now, I have been spoiled. My current car, though not great in the snow, does have one feature that my Jeep did not have: satellite radio. Even with connections for iPods, I will still find myself listening to the radio, and flipping a lot. I will cycle through my programmed stations searching for something to listen to. But there are also a few songs that will get me to stop flipping. A couple of them will even make me turn my car into a rolling karaoke club.
Coast to Coast AM (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As I have mentioned numerous times in past posts, I am a Coast to Coast AM listener. For those who don’t know, Coast to Coast AM is a late night radio show (in my area, it is broadcast from 1 to 5 am) running seven days a week. The subject matter on the show varies from one night to the next night, from political to open lines. The one thing that is consistent is that the subjects covered by the show tend to fall in the fringe. That’s the nice way of saying that they talk about a lot of weird stuff.
Shows can vary from ghosts to alien visitations to shadow governments to prophesies. In most cases, there is a guest or two talking about these subjects. In most cases, these guests tend to be knowledgeable about the subject. Even if you don’t believe in the specific topic, you cannot fault the guest for not knowing what he is talking about, or at least seeming credible. You may not believe Richard C. Hoagland‘s claims of ancient civilizations on Mars and the Moon, but at least he backs it up with an impressive resume (consultant for CBS during the Apollo program, consultant for NASA, etc.)
But then, every once in a while, there is a guest that comes up with something so out there, it becomes nigh impossible to take them seriously. You listen to what they say and only come up with one conclusion: they are crazy. The real task is to somehow figure out which are the guest with some degree of legitimacy, and which don’t have a leg to stand on. In some cases, it’s extremely easy to do so.
After a sojourn to the New England Air Museum, I worked on hitting the gigantic pile of backlogged movies. At least, that was Sunday, Monday was something different.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Kathleen Wilson oversees a radio program written and performed by children at radio station , , which was at the time owned by ‘ newspaper. The photo shows Wilson and girls gathered around a table with a microphone. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am a huge fan of radio dramas. There is something about listening to a story and imagining what you would see based on what you hear. It’s magical. So much so that my college senior thesis was an original radio drama. Well, in truth, it was a superhero radio adventure. But there was something about telling the story through sound that made me want to do it.
Sadly, with some exceptions, radio dramas have fallen out of favor. There are some still in production, but the golden age of the radio drama is gone. Thankfully, we still have a number of internet sites and podcasts that work to keep these dramas alive.
Image via Wikipedia
“Lights out, everybody!”
Announcer for the radio show Lights Out!
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