Phone Messages

Phone Messages

By Paul Mason FotschSociety & Culture
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Phone Messages episodes

  • 181 Ahdahdah (Brian 12)
    Four years after Disco Demolition Night, the Police performed at Comiskey Park. In the Quad Cities, 80s entertainment included the Bix Beiderbecke festival and cruising on Saturday Night.
    10 min
  • 180 Thank You For That (Gordon 2)
    The Chicago Defender played an important role in the Great Migration of African Americans fleeing the violence of the Jim Crow South.
    Beginning in the 1970s, digital technology like VDTs had a big impact on newspaper production, including at places like the Defender.
    10 min
  • 179 That really doesn't sound like you (Ben 12)
    In 1979, Methuen Press published Subculture: the meaning of style by Dick Hebdige, the first academic book to address Punk culture. In 1984, the University of Chicago Press published Paths of Neighborhood Change whose lead author was Richard Taub, a section of which discusses Hyde Park's urban renewal.
    10 min
  • 178 I F'd Up (Julia 4)
    The mix of orange juice and rice can be used in a wide range of savory and sweet recipes. Before college students had cell phones, dormitories hired receptionists to direct calls to a phone in each resident hall.
    10 min
  • 177 A Very Important Question (Ben 11)
    Pure Hype began on WHPK in 1986 as a way to promote upcoming indie rock shows with free tickets and interviews with musicians. By 1988, the show also began hosting live performances in the middle of the radio station's record library.
    10 min
  • 176 This is Julia (Julia 3)
    The Indian Termination Policy from the 1940s to 1960s encouraged Native Americans migration to cities like Chicago, where they often settled in the Uptown neighborhood. In the 1970s, a movement for self determination inspired public school programs meant to reintroduce native children to their heritage.
    10 min
  • 175 It's Two (James 25)
    The Seminary Coop Bookstore began in 1961 when a small group of students grouped together to buy academic books at a discount. In 2013, it moved from the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary to the McGiffert House, a former CTS dormitory.
    9 min
  • 174 Bag of Chips (Chris 27)
    In the 1980s, video stores sold eighteen inch statues with oversized heads of celebrities from music, TV and film. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Esco Products of Brooklyn fabricated hundreds of different figures, from Groucho Marx to Louis Armstrong.
    10 min
  • 173 Give Me a Call (unknown)
    The mixing of entertainment and news can be traced back to the penny press, but for the model of New Yorker style personal journalism, we might look to The Spectator column from the nineteenth century magazine The Outlook.
    10 min
  • 172 Get Up (Jan)
    In 1996 a scene from the film That Old Feeling was shot in the lobby of Toronto's Royal York Hotel. The Empire Room at Chicago's Palmer House was a legendary supper club that feature vocal greats from Frank Sinatra to Peggy Lee.
    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.