The SFFaudio Podcast #053

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #053 – Jesse and Scott are joined by Anne Frid de Vries of the Anne Is A Man blog for a talk about his wonderful podcast review blog.

Talked about on today’s show:
Anne Is A Man blog, reviewing podcasts, Five Free Favourites #4, Five Free Favourites (on Anne Is A Man), a Dutch person living in Israel, podcasting as “a new universe”, or “a secret world”, BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, OPML files, iTunes, trading podcast subscription feeds, Dan Carlin, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, “History and Science Fiction go together like ham and cheese”, radio shows vs. podcasts, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, interviews in different media, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CBC, Tapestry, Spark, APM’s Speaking Of Faith, Canada wins!, Mary Hynes, Ideas, TVO’s Big Ideas, Hunting For Robin Hood |READ OUR REVIEW|, Writers And Company (on a re-imagining of Robin Hood), WNYC’s RadioLab, Robert Krowlich, Krulwich On Science, The Do It Yourself Scholar blog, UCSD podcasts, Victor Maganga‘s courses on East Asian Political Thought and Politics And Warfare, Yale podcasts, Stanford podcasts, the rationales of rating and reviewing audio, Harriet Klausner, Google’s PageRank, reading good books twice, Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Professor Hubert Dreyfus @ U.C. Berkley, the Greek and Judaic traditions, Nate DiMeo’s The Memory Palace, what’s wrong with radio!?!, radio in Canada, radio in the USA, radio in the Netherlands, radio in Israel, iTunes in Uzbekistan, The Teaching Company, where do you do your listening?, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Robots Podcast, Talking Robots Podcast, “The Future Of Artificial Intelligence“, “Robots: Chaos Control“, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: Carve Her Name With Pride: The Story Of Violette Szabo, S.O.E. operations, the film version of Carve Her Name With Pride, Dan Carlin’s series on The Ostfront, ‘WWII is the Iliad of our times’, the western front of WWI, Anne’s Pick Of The Week: New Books In History podcast, Marshall Poe, Jared Diamond, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern.

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC: Writers And Company: Hodd by Adam Thorpe (a reimaginaing of Robin Hood)

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC Radio One - Writers And CompanyHost Eleanor Wachtel, of CBC’s Writers And Company, interviewed novelist Adam Thorpe in a fascinating podcast from January 31, 2010. Here’s the show description:

“From the Middle Ages to the 21st century, the legend of Robin Hood has fascinated us. England’s Adam Thorpe subverts the myth in his new novel, Hodd.”

Wachtel elicits a brief history of Robin Hood from Thorpe. He talks about the 1950s black and white TV version The Adventures Of Robin Hood (and it’s McCarthy-era fleeing writers), Sir Walter Scott‘s portrayal of Hood as a kind of proto-socialist, the Roger Lancelyn Green version, as well as the scholarly historical possibilities as dug up by J.C. Holt. Thorpe seems to have also taken equal inspiration for Hodd from the monsters of 20th century politics. Wachtel is one of the finest interviewers on radio.

As is quite typical with my consumption of the CBC’s Writers And Company podcast, I was listening to an older (dropped from the feed) episode. This means if you, just now, have subscribed to the official CBC feed you wouldn’t be find it available at all. But, thanks to some skillful web-fu, I’ve sussed out the still available (though hidden) |MP3|. Enjoy!

Here’s the first episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood Ep. 01 (The Coming Of Robin Hood):And here’s the trailer for the upcoming Ridley Scott version of Robin Hood:

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. J. Michael Straczynski’s radio drama series The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al is still being suppressed by CBC Radio. What a pity!

The SFFaudio Podcast #049

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #049 – Jesse and Scott talk about recent arrivals, new releases, audiobooks, podcasts and plenty more!

Talked about on today’s show:
SFFaudio.com is 7 years old, So I Married An Axe Murder, San Fransisco, California, Alcatraz, recent arrivals, Brilliance Audio, military SF, Fearless: The Lost Fleet Book 2 by Jack Campbell, space opera, Gene Roddenberry‘s Andromeda, Buck Rogers, Live Free or Die: book 1 in the Troy Rising series by John Ringo, Paperback Digital, Cally’s War by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane |READ OUR REVIEW|, John Ringo can give his books away and sell books too, Time’s Eye: A Time Odyssey Book 1 by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, it’s not a sequel it’s an “othrquel“, time is orthogonal to space (in relativity theory), Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, benevolent aliens, malevolent aliens, H.P. Lovecraft, The Eternal Wall by Raymond Z. Gallun, LibriVox, Gregg Margarite, time travel, Blackstone Audio, Identity Theft by Robert J. Sawyer, Mars, consciousness uploading/downloading, Treason by Orson Scott Card, A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card, Stefan Rudnicki, Spider Robinson, Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson |READ OUR REVIEW|, copyright, copyfight, the philosophy of art, The Graveyard Book |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Harry Potter, The Dark Is Rising, A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, ripping off Heinlein is legit when you are Spider Robinson, Friday by Robert A. Heinlein, new releases, Wonder Audio, The Men Return & Worlds Of Origin by Jack Vance, Brilliance Audio, The Songs Of Dying Earth: Stories In Honor Of Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe, David D. Levine, Tk’Tk’Tk’ by David D. Levine, The Moon Moth by Jack Vance |READ OUR REVIEW|, Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, Madouc by Jack Vance, Swimming Kangaroo Books, Need For Magic by Joseph Swope, BBC Audiobooks America, Great Classic Science Fiction: Eight Unabridged Stories, Forgotten Classics podcast talks James Gunn’s The Road To Science Fiction series, paperback book bags, A Game Of Thrones coming to HBO, A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin |READ OUR REVIEW|, Roy Dotrice, John Lee, Shogun (the TV miniseries), FlashForward, Stephen King’s Storm Of The Century, 1408, Scott’s Pick Of The Week: Steve, The First by Matt Watts |READ OUR REVIEW|, @ the CBC store, radio drama, post apocalypse, humor, Canadia: 2056 |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Jesse’s Pick Of The Week: The Chronicles Of Solomon Kane, Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin, Robert E. Howard, The Iliad, Ralph Macchio, Red Shadows by Robert E. Howard, religion, Solomon Kane, The Punisher.

Posted by Jesse Willis

CBC: A Christmas Carol: Redux

SFFaudio Online Audio

Ready, Set, Panic wrote, produced, and directed a one-hour radio special for CBC Radio that aired on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day 2009. They describe it as “a modern spin on the classic Scrooge tale, with 98.4% more comedy than the original.” Here is clip from the start of the program, featuring narrator Russell Thomas:

And here’s the podcast, just 302 days early for Xmas:

A Christmas Carol: ReduxA Christmas Carol: Redux
Loosely adapted from the story by Charles Dickens; Performed by a full cast
1 |MP3| – Approx. 54 Minutes [RADIO DRAMA]
Podcaster: CBC Radio
Podcast: January 6, 2010
A Christmas Carol: Redux” gives a 21st century, dark comedic spin to the Charles Dickens classic. Set in the present day, with a crumbling economy and skyrocketing unemployment, cheapskate Scrooge refuses to share his wealth with those less fortunate. Join our narrator, Russell Thomas, as he recounts this classic Christmas tale with visits by The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (all while he battles his own ghost: The Ghost of Recent Divorce).

Podcast feed:

http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/xmascarolredux.xml

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. CBC Radio is being very Scrooge-like by not releasing The Adventures Of Apocalypse Al!

CBC Spark: Fantasy user interfaces

SFFaudio Online Audio

CBC Radio - SparkSpark is my current favourite CBC podcast. The latest Spark episode, #101, talks about “Fantasy User Interfaces.” I’ve been a fan Nora Young‘s since summer 1994 when she hosted a similar (but less computery) CBC Radio show called Brand X. Sez Nora Young:

“I just interviewed Mark Coleran. Mark is a visual and interface designer. Part of his work has been in designing ‘fantasy user interfaces’: the computer interfaces that you see in movies. He’s designed interfaces for films that include Mission Impossible 3, The Island, The Bourne Identity, and Children Of Men. There’s been a bit of a stir about Mark’s work lately, though Mark is keen to point out that he’s hardly the only person doing this work. I wanted to find out how you design computer visuals that are more dramatic than, well, actually using a computer.”

Here’s the show |MP3| or if you’re looking for the unexpurgated version check out the raw interview |MP3|.

Regular podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbcradiospark

Added content podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbcradiosparkblog

Added content iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

Posted by Jesse Willis

P.S. Apocalypse Al, a radio drama series, is being suppressed by CBC.

CBC Radio radio

SFFaudio News

CBC Radio radio

Prior to about 2004 I would have instantly purchased one of these for everyone in my family. It’s the prototype, by Science & Sons, for a CBC Radio radio. The idea is it only gets two channels. CBC Radio One and CBC Radio Two. That’s pretty much all the radio (on the radio) that I listen to.

CBC Radio radio

Sez Science & Sons:

The RADIO CANADA concept is a homage to the cultural significance of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This radio console design was inspired by the dedication of the many CBC listeners who keep their radio dials permanently set to our national broadcaster. After setting the radio to local CBC frequencies, listeners can toggle between CBC Radio One and CBC Radio Two without hearing the static in between.

The elegant design of RADIO CANADA celebrates the immediacy of the medium and reflects the quality of the broadcasts it receives. Additional features include MP3 player compatibility.

If this thing ever gets released with a built in CBC Radio podcatcher, I will buy at least one.

[via the Inside The CBC blog]

P.S. Speaking of CBC… Hey, CBC I haven’t forgotten that J. Michael Straczynski radio drama series that your sitting on. Give it up!

Posted by Jesse Willis