Radio Drama Revival

This week, I play Episode One of Gareth Stack's startling psychological thriller, "The Wall in the Mind". It's the tale of a city split down the middle, and a woman whose life split with it. Claire O'Hanlon was a young woman in 1989 --an Irish national on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall--when she was arrested by the Stasi, the East German secret police.

After months of imprisonment and interrogation, Claire was set free, only to find the world had changed; the Wall had come down, and her lover, Emil Reichmann, had disappeared. In the present day, Claire returns to Berlin when she receives a mysterious cassette tape: a recording from her youth.

Following the episode, I'll talk to the writer, director, and producer of "The Wall in the Mind", Gareth Stack. We discuss love, loss, sanity, and the surveillance state. It's a conversation not to be missed!

This week, we're taking a little detour into UNCANNY COUNTY, the brainchild of playwrights Alison Crane and Todd Faulkner, both proud children of Oklahoma.

I play an episode of theirs, "Coulrophobia" (which is about spooky, spooky clowns!), and then the three of us have a little chat. Alison tells me a secret! Todd reveals the travails of creating custom foley for an army of [SPOILERS]! We talk at length about the unique qualities of Oklahoma that inform UNCANNY COUNTY; then Alison reads our horoscopes.

http://uncannycounty.com/

This week, Gabriel Urbina, writer and director of WOLF 359, joins me for a segment we're calling "Going Deep"; together, the two of us investigate one of Gabriel's favorite classic audio dramas, 1948's "The Thing on the Fourble Board" from QUIET, PLEASE. We play the feature, and then Gabriel and I take it apart, piece by piece, trying to unlock precisely what it is that makes "The Thing on the Fourble Board" so damn spooky.

Music credits:
"Danger DigiDoo" is licensed from DJ Stranger Danger.
"Devil's Candy Shop" by Nigel Simmons is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic License.
"Poppyseed" by Podington Bear is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

This week, we play an episode of The Truth, Jonathan Mitchell's collaboration with New York's Magnet Theater; they're dedicated to making audio fiction the likes of which you've never heard. It's intimate, it's internal, and it's cinematic, all at once.

Motivated by an improv style and by Mitchell's 15 years as a public radio documentarian, The Truth is produced in a manner halfway between a sketch comedy show and a segment of Radiolab (where Jonathan worked as a producer). Today, you'll hear "The Man in the Barn", written by and starring The Truth regular and Magnet Theater highlight Louis Kornfeld; the piece was produced on location in Kilfinane, County Limerick, Ireland, during the 2015 HearSay Festival.

Stick around after the piece to listen to a conversation between me and Jonathan Mitchell, as we talk about experimental music, sound art, and cinema.

Light breaks over Marblehead this week on Radio Drama Revival, as I chat with Alexander Danner and Jeff Van Dreason of the novelistic GREATER BOSTON.

We talk about comics, theater, the Brexit referendum, and, of course, Boston. All that and more is here for you on Radio Drama Revival.


http://greaterbostonshow.com

This week, I'm playing something from Our Fair City, the dystopian sci-fi podcast; it's their entry in the 2014 Chicago Fringe Festival: a slick detective thriller called "All The Life You'll Ever Need".

Hey -- if you're feeling beaten down by the events of the past few weeks and months, I've got two websites for you to visit:

http://www.joincampaignzero.org and http://everytown.org

#BlackLivesMatter. Thanks for listening.

Fred is back, introducing our new occasional mini-series, pulling episodes from RDR's Archives back to the top of the pack!

The inaugural episode, celebrating the Ogle Awards, is "Next Year's Girl" - The Willamette Radio Workshop's 2004 Gold Ogle Winning Production about a small town and the strange beast that looms large over it.

This week, we're playing ars PARADOXICA, the Cold War time travel drama by Mischa Stanton and Dan Manning of Los Angeles, California. Join me as I play Episode 1 of aP: "Hypothesis", and stick around for a rollicking good time of a conversation with Mischa and Dan.

This episode is brought to you in part by Blue Apron! If you sign up using the promotion code DRAMA, you'll get your first three meals free, including shipping.

That's http://blueapron.com/drama

I may be on vacation, but the hits just keep on comin'! We're featuring an episode of the fantabulous, trippy RUBY by Tom Lopez and ZBS -- a cyberpunk adventure from the 80s that's sultry, smart, and fun. Ruby's a proud member of the Wondery Network, and so are we!

Later, you'll hear an interview Fred did with Ruby's writer/director Tom Lopez in 2012.

If you have the chance, I'd be very grateful if you'd give this survey a go: http://Wondery.com/survey