{"id":650,"date":"2012-05-28T00:44:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T07:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=650"},"modified":"2012-05-28T00:44:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T07:44:11","slug":"podthoughts-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: The Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.radiodramarevival.com\/images\/the-truth-npr-series.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vital stats:<\/strong><br \/>\nFormat: sound-oriented radio fictions<br \/>\nEpisode duration: 9-18m<br \/>\nFrequency: 2-3 per month<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought there would be a revival of fiction and theater on the radio,\u201d says science-fiction author Terry Bisson, \u201cand I\u2019ve been very disappointed that it hasn\u2019t, kind of, worked out that way.\u201d You and me both, brother. I say this as someone who, in childhood, obsessively collected bootleg tapes of old-time radio shows like <em>Amos &amp; Andy<\/em> and <em>X Minus One<\/em> and had the newer, more internationalist productions of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zbs.org\/\">ZBS Foundation<\/a> playing on infinite loop. I dreamed of re-introducing \u201cmovies for your mind,\u201d in the words of one radio-drama survivor whose tapings I attended as a kid, to the dead airwaves of my benighted time. Bisson made his lament to producer Jonathan Mitchell on an episode of Mitchell\u2019s podcast <a href=\"http:\/\/thetruthapm.com\/The_Truth.html\"><em>The Truth<\/em><\/a> [<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/thetruthapm\">RSS<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-truth\/id502304410\">iTunes<\/a>] which adapts Bisson\u2019s story \u201cThey\u2019re Made Out of Meat\u201d [<a href=\"http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/thetruthapm\/Theyre_Made_Out_of_Meat.mp3\">MP3<\/a>]. I bet Mitchell went through similar youthful befuddlement, wondering what made all those cool old shows go away and hoping \u2014 <em>knowing<\/em>, in some quasi-messianic sense \u2014 that they would return. It hasn\u2019t, kind of, worked out that way.<\/p>\n<p>What to blame? Maybe the increasingly utilitarian slant of modern American radio, which either feeds listeners\u2019 anxiety over not having the latest news and information or numbs them completely with three-minute shots of anesthetic familiarity. But I get the sense that, deep in the minds of even dedicated tuners-in, radio just isn\u2019t <em>for<\/em> fiction. They may express great admiration for the idea of new radio drama, and they may even bemoan the past 50 years\u2019 lack of it, but they\u2019ll keep turning the dial if they suspect what they\u2019re hearing isn\u2019t true. I doubt they do it for strictly gray-flannel-suit reasons; they probably just fear that they can\u2019t keep up with a fictional narrative on the radio, or that they\u2019ve already missed some plot point critical to understanding what happens next, or that they\u2019ll get where they\u2019re going before the big twist ending when everything falls into place. Or they just assume the story won\u2019t give them much to talk about at the water cooler.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2012\/05\/28\/podthoughts-colin-marshall-truth\">at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vital stats: Format: sound-oriented radio fictions Episode duration: 9-18m Frequency: 2-3 per month \u201cI thought there would be a revival of fiction and theater on the radio,\u201d says science-fiction author Terry Bisson, \u201cand I\u2019ve been very disappointed that it hasn\u2019t, kind of, worked out that way.\u201d You and me both, brother. I say this as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}