This ShortCuts presents the first of many conversations recorded at the University of Alberta as part of the 2023 SpokenWeb Symposium. Recorded on site by SpokenWeb’s Kate Moffatt and Miranda Eastwood, the conversations often took place in spaces where the sonic environment of the symposium is audibly present. As always on ShortCuts, we begin with an audio clip from the archives, but this time the interviewees are the ones bringing an archival sound to the table. What will we hear? And where will these sounds take us? Join us for this ShortCuts Live in which a conversation with Jennifer Waits that takes us on a magical audio tour into the sounds of campus radio stations.  

A fresh take on sounds from the past, ShortCuts is a monthly feature on The SpokenWeb Podcast feed and an extension of the ShortCuts blog posts on SPOKENWEBLOG. Stay tuned for monthly episodes of ShortCuts on alternate fortnights (that’s every second week) following the monthly SpokenWeb podcast episode. If you are a SpokenWeb RA with an archival clip to feature on ShortCuts, do write to us at [email protected] with your pitch.

Host and Series Producer: Katherine McLeod

Supervising Producer: Maia Harris

Sound Design: James Healey

Transcription: Zoe Mix

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ARCHIVAL AUDIO

Archival audio excerpted from this episode of Radio Survivor: 

https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/11/podcast-22-were-all-moving-to-the-fm-dial-now/

Blog post with photographs from Jennifer Waits’s tour of Radio K:

https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2015/10/my-grand-tour-of-college-radio-station-radio-k/

A past Radio Survivor episode featuring SpokenWeb: 

https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2021/02/podcast-284-spokenweb-and-literary-sound/

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SPECIAL GUESTS

Jennifer Waits (interviewee) is the co-founder of Radio Survivor and Radio Survivor’s College Radio and Culture Editor and Social Media Director. Jennifer is also the Founder and Editor of SpinningIndie, a website devoted to the culture of college radio. She’s worked in college radio at 4 different stations (off and on) since 1986 and is currently a DJ at KFJC 89.7FM in Los Altos Hills, California. Jennifer has a Master’s degree in Popular Culture Studies and has written about radio, music, youth culture, and pop culture for a number of publications and websites, including Radio World, PopMatters, the scholarly Radio Journal, youth culture blog Ypulse, beloved teen mag Sassy, and music site Uplister.

Kate Moffatt (interviewer) is a PhD student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests include British Romanticism, women’s authorship, walking and pedestrianism, and print culture. She is the former supervising producer of The SpokenWeb Podcast, and she is the current co-host of The WPHP Monthly Mercury podcast.