Phone Messages

Phone Messages

By Paul Mason FotschSociety & Culture
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Phone Messages episodes

  • 101 I want to move (Sikay 5)
    K's First Case, written by L.G. Alexander, is a Longman reader for students learning English as a second language. It's 1975 publication in Hong Kong helped inspire an act of self-naming.
    9 min
  • 99 The Beeper (Chris 20)
    The first pager system was used by the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn. Although associated with drug dealers, by the 1990s beepers became popular among teenagers, who developed elaborate codes based on numerical displays.
    10 min
  • 98 I Played Pro Ball (Chris 19)
    Michael Jordan began playing for the Chicago Bulls in 1984. During the first several years of his career, one could see him play at Chicago Stadium for as little as three dollars and fifty cents.
    10 min
  • 96 I'm Running (outgoing 19)
    Rolling Stones fans are legendary: some dedicate their lives to transcribing guitar solos from fifty year old live concerts, others to chasing down grandfatherly idols for an autograph.
    6 min
  • 94 Aunt Leora (Grandma 4)
    In 1973, Robin Morgan addressed The American Home Economics Association as "the enemy." The organization changed its name to the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences in 1994.
    8 min
  • 92 The Poet (Andy 1)
    In the 1960s, most soda pop was sold in reusable glass bottles, but in the 1970s these were replaced by cans and plastic. The last Coca Cola plant to produce reusable bottles closed in 2012.
    10 min

About Phone Messages

From the publisher's feed

This podcast will play and discuss old phone answering machine messages. In the late 1980s, while living in Chicago, I selected certain messages to be duplicated using a double cassette recorder. Playing them back leads me to explore the intersection of personal history and the larger social and cultural context through the lens of an outdated technology.