Podcasts permit a shift of listening time from a set appointment to virtually any convenient occasion. I do it while taking my daily (more or less) 3 mile walk, while I’m “plodding along”. While there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of great podcasts from other sources, the ones sponsored via public radio have been vetted through the worthy objectives of the medium. Here’s what I’ve been listening to recently. I hope you might find these suggestions — in roughly 90 minute bites -- helpful in enhancing your own enjoyment of radio, our favorite medium.
__ __ “1. Happy Go Lucky - Episode 1 of 6” MEET DAVID SEDARIS - BBC Radio 4 “If something is in Esquire and you don’t like it, it might be a bad essay. If something is in the New Yorker and you don’t like it – there’s something wrong with you!” In the first episode of this series, David reads from Happy Go Lucky – the latest comic essay about his turbulent relationship with his father, Lou, aged 98. The story opens at Springmoor, the assisted living facility where Sedaris senior is seeing out his final days and where his cognitive impairment seems to have turned him from a monster into a pussycat. Also in this show – some extracts from David’s hilarious diary, which he’s kept for over 40 years and which reveals some of his darkest and cheekiest thoughts – including the magical marketing of a town called Uranus. (28”) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jcb3 “America at 250: A View from Britain, with “The Rest Is History”” THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR - NPR and WNYC New York Public Media Studios Americans tend to see the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War as milestones in world history that inaugurated the era of modern democracy. But the British, unsurprisingly, see these events quite differently. David Remnick talks with the historians who host the popular podcast “The Rest Is History,” Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland. Growing up in Britain, Sandbrook explains, the Revolution seemed like “a parade of quite boring men talking very earnestly about liberty, [with] battles that involved twenty people in a field somewhere. . . . It’s not Waterloo!” The King was “annoyed” to lose the thirteen colonies to the new nation, but, for his government, “it could have been a lot worse.” Sandbrook and Holland discuss historical events that overshadow the American Revolution in the British mind; the 1619 Project and the subject of slavery; the “colossally consequential” Presidency of Donald Trump; and the fate of the British monarchy. (53”) https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/articles/america-at-250-a-view-from-britain-with-the-rest-is-history — — A compendium of these suggestions, plus on occasion additional pertinent material, is published every other month in the CIDX Messenger, the monthly e-newsletter of the Canadian International DX Club (CIDX). For further information and membership information, go to www.cidxclub.ca John Figliozzi Member, North America Shortwave Association Executive Council Co-Coordinator, NASWA Annual SWL Fest Editor, The NASWA Journal “Shortwave Center” column Author, "The Worldwide Listening Guide” Opinion Writer, “The Daily Gazette - Sunday”, Schenectady, NY _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
