World Radio: 2005-02-06

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Friday, February 11, 2005

Arthur Miller & Scapegoating

The great American playwrighting triumvirate was Eugene O'Neill, Tenessee Williams and Arthur Miller, who died today. Here he is describing his impressions of the McCarthy witch-hunt and its parallels today.

// posted by DXer @ 8:10 PM 0 comments

A politically-correct version of the Battle of Trafalgar

Saunders Abungay provided this vignette on Wake up to Wogan today.

// posted by DXer @ 5:51 PM 0 comments

A 2' 9" tall Baroness

In October 2004, Nicky Chapman became the first person with a congenital disability to be appointed to the House of Lords under the People's Peers initiative. Her maiden speech caused a storm in the Upper House, when she condemned the Government's Mental Capacity Bill because "if this Bill had been passed 43 years ago, I would not be here".

It is difficult to imagine that when she was born with brittle bone disease, doctors feared that her disability would limit her existence to such a degree that her life would not be worth living. She is 2 feet 9" tall, and is the only peer living on income support (£128.42 per week).

(from No Triumph No Tragedy, BBC Radio 4)

// posted by DXer @ 2:51 PM 0 comments

Arthur Miller dies from "congenital" heart failure at 89, according to NPR

Dear NPR,

I have corrected NPR before on the subject of heart disease. I'm afraid I have to do it once again.

On the 11am newscast, it was said that Arthur Miller died of "congenital heart failure" - 89 years is a pretty long time to survive with a "congenital" ailment (something present at birth).

I think the word you were searching for was "congestive", the commonest type of heart failure, meaning that it causes a build up of fluid in the lungs.

[they changed it to just "heart failure" on the next newscast]

// posted by DXer @ 12:37 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Lynn Cheney verbally wrestling Terri Gross (196 kB .mp3)

As the mother of a lesbian, the US Vice President's wife is sometimes torn between the love for her daughter and her responsibility to back the President.

// posted by DXer @ 3:12 PM 0 comments

When Herbert Hoover saved the Soviet Union (299 kB .mp3)

In a fascinating new book, The Big Show in Bololand, Bertrand Patenude tells the story of the 1921 famine in Soviet Russia, that would eventually claim somewhere close to 5 million lives. The world was alerted to the crisis by a letter by Maxim Gorky in The New York Times in which he appealed – “To All Honest People……..Gloomy days have come to the country of Tolstoy, Dostovesky, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Mussorgsky, Glinka ……I ask all honest European and American people for prompt aid to the Russian people. Give bread and medicine. " Remarkably, it was the arch-conservative Republican US President, Herbert Hoover who answered the call and so saved Lenin's fledgling Bolshevik state.

// posted by DXer @ 3:12 PM 0 comments

Happy Year of the Cock! (179 kB .mp3)

It's Chinese New Year - an excellent excuse to tuck into prawns for breakfast on Wake Up With Wogan!

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Test your French! (60 second .ra file)

Here's a little trick played on Les Anglais by a French hotelier from the Limousin. Can you understand what he did?

The answer's here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/creuse/eating_habits/answer_page.shtml

// posted by DXer @ 2:50 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

No Smoking in Cuba (click to listen - .ra file)

And last for Mardi Gras... a typically cock-eyed slant on the banning of cigar-smoking in Cuba by the Transylvanian poet from New Orleans, Andrei Codrescu...

// posted by DXer @ 10:52 PM 0 comments

Buy on the sound of cannon! (click to listen, 367kB)

Not really radio, but BBC TV's Newsnight is broadcast on the web. Here's a nice summary of what happened to world financial markets over the past 4 years, on the eve of the FTSE's recovery to the psychological 5,000 mark, which has happened, as Lord Rothschild predicted, on the sound of American cannon in Iraq.

// posted by DXer @ 8:07 PM 0 comments

Good or Menace? Radio Prehistory, from Bell to Reith (click to listen! 88kB)

This recording of Lord Reith (first head of the BBC) sounds, apart from the crackles and pompous voice, remarkably modern, as he samples the performances at the London theatres live via an "electrophone" - we can't even do that with cellphones today, and this was 1894!

It took another two years for that most flamboyant of Italians to do it all wirelessly... but I wonder whatever happened to the Electrophone Company?

Prehistory of Radio (from the BBC)

1864: Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell publishes a remarkable paper describing the means by which a wave consisting of electric and magnetic fields could propagate (or travel) from one place to another.
1882: French futurologist Albert Rolida predicts sound broadcasting and argues there'll only be one piano in Paris by 1952 ... in a radio studio.
1886: Alexander Graham Bell effectively invents speech broadcasting, demonstrating his new telephone by transmitting excerpts from Hamlet down a line.
1888: Heinrich Hertz confirms Maxwell's theory.
1894: The Electrophone company transmits programmes commercially over the phone. Queen Victoria has several receivers installed at Windsor.

1896: The first British "wireless" patent is given to 22-year-old Italian, Guglielmo Marconi.
December 12, 1901: Marconi demonstrates transatlantic communication by receiving a
signal in St. John's Newfoundland from Cornwall, England
1909: Marconi awarded Nobel Prize in physics: "Have I done the world good, or added a menace?" he asked.

// posted by DXer @ 8:07 PM 0 comments

Ellen MacArthur round the world in 71 days (Click to listen! 473kB)

So Britain still rules the waves - at least as far as solo round-the-world yachting is concerned. Unfortunately, not everyone is celebrating, such as these callers to the Jeremy Vine show today!

// posted by DXer @ 1:14 PM 0 comments

Monday, February 07, 2005

Farting for Lent (click here to listen! 176kB)

I'll start off with a funny little clip from Sarah Kennedy today. She has a 'Pause for Thought' section every day where a vicar or other religious bod engages in some pious contemplation. Today, the chap's exaggerated southern vowels made his fasts sound like farts! Have giggle!...

// posted by DXer @ 8:59 PM 0 comments

Welcome to Radio Listener!

Hello everyone!

I've heard people talking about Blogs and thought it was about time I started one. Since I spend most of my days listening to the radio, I guess that would be as a good a topic as any.

I'm a pretty voracious listener - have been since I was a kid in the '70s. First it was BBC radios 2 and 4. Then came a bit of DXing (Radio Moscow, Sweden, Netherland, etc.). Now with so many internet streams I am in paradise.

I'm quite discerning mind - I don't like a lot of the populist claptrap - esecially music, so if you come here for that you'll be disappointed. I prefer talk, ranging from politics and science to he early morning banter of Sarah Kennedy and Terry Wogan.

My favourite stations are still radios 2 and 4, but I also listen to a lot of Radio National from Australia, the BBC World Service, and odd tidbits from elsewhere.

I'll be putting links to broadcasts that I highlight and some MP3 snippets (if this allowed).

My usual day consists of:

Sarah Kennedy (BBC Radio 2)

Terry Wogan (BBC Radio 2)

Jeremy Vine (BBC Radio 2)

Phillip Adams (Australia)

Life Matters (Australia)

The Afternoon Play (BBC Radio 4)

Book of the Week (BBC Radio 4)

Off the Shelf (BBC Radio 4)

Book at Bedtime (BBC Radio 4)

Diane Rehm (National Public Radio, US)

Margaret Throsby (ABC FM, Australia)

Then there are the weekly broadcasts:

Start the Week (BBC Radio 4)

Midweek (BBC Radio 4)

In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)

Loose Ends (BBC Radio 4)

Any Questions & Any Answers (BBC Radio 4)

Westway (BBC World Service)

The National Interest (Australia)

Ockam's Razor (Australia)

... well, there are lot more that I'll tell you about along the way!

Let me know if you are reading this and tell me what you listen to yourself.

// posted by DXer @ 6:43 PM 0 comments

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