Episode 137: Something Else In The Air

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To understand the national anger at the first radio commercials, I find it helps to understand first and foremost that these ads came right into the home… like an intruder's pungent fart. Hence, Episode 137: Something Else in the Air.

In this episode, I read from: Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads; and from a web site Mr. Wu turned me onto, one he himself used as a source for another of his books. It's a history of early radio, and an interesting one at that. Beyond the general overview I used several sub-pages, which contained lots of scans of historic content.

Sound-wise, I play: Sydney Greenstreet's evil industrialist character from the 1947 movie The Hucksters; and Monty Python's Terry Jones and Eric Idle, from the "Nudge, Nudge" sketch. Musically, I play: Metastaz doing "I'm"; Pietnaska doing "Superator"; and Podington Bear doing "Bad Seed". Clark Gable, also from The Hucksters, opens the show backed by KMFDM, and I close with Julie and Rolf doing "Over The Rainbow".

I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.

(Oh, and concerning the week-late posting, I came down with a bit of visiting family. They were where my attention was directed. It happens.)