Robert Krulwich of Radiolab fame talks on All Things Considered about how some fruit fly scientists have have stirred controversy by naming newly discovered genes things like "I'm Not Dead Yet."
Producer: Robert Krulwich
Program: Radiolab
Playtime: 7 minutes 34 seconds
A scientist explains how he took issue with the message of a Walt Whitman poem ("When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"). It seemed to be saying science somehow hides beauty. That led him to try to explain what is beautiful about science. He got his answer while listening to Janis Joplin.
From the website: "He explains why Walt Whitman misunderstood the beauty of the universe, and why Maxwell's Equations are like a sexual experience."
Producer: Lu Olkowski
Program: Studio 360
First hand story about being a Killer Whale biologist with some really killer whale sounds. Did you know some people find whales sexy?
Producer: Ari Daniel Shapiro
Playtime: 8 minutes 57 seconds
NPR is running a series on Darwin for his 200th birthday. Talk of the Nation had his Grandson on Feb. And last week there was a piece on his early years on Weekend Edition Sunday.
Playtime: 10 minutes 22 seconds
Dr. Jason Spector joins All Things Considered to talk about how cotton candy is being used to make complex vascular architecture - a web of tissue for transplants and other medical uses.
Program: All Things Considered
Date: February, 2009
The science of smell on Leonard Lopate. Expert claims our noses are about as good as a dogs.
Program: Leonard Lopate
Playtime: 19 minutes 12 seconds
Date: February, 2009
Soundprint.org brings "a portrait of the ebb and flow of life within the Alfred Hospital's Trauma and Emergency Department in Melbourne, Australia."
This piece is done in a cool "kaleidoscopic style" instead of the straight narrative style. Check it out. It one of two stories from SP this week. Title: "Trauma." Alternative link.
Playtime: 28 minutes 29 seconds
BBC interview with David Attenborough legendary host and voice of British nature programs [er, programmes].
Producer: BBC
Program: The Interview
Playtime: 25 minutes 30 seconds
"Darwin has never had a majority."
At no time has a majority of the American public believed in the theory of evolution. Darwin says we are animals. People don't like that.
This is a fantastic podcast.
Program: Radiolab
Playtime: 27 minutes 28 seconds
Studio 360 story from 2007 about the inventor of the Hoberman Sphere.
Producer: Lu Olkowski
Program: Studio 360
Playtime: 8 minutes 29 seconds
Radio Lab asks the question and finds that yes, sometimes (in some ways) it is... Think about CPR for starters.
Playtime: 15 minutes 50 seconds
This is really pretty amazing. In March of 2008, some reseachers at Berkeley found some "recordings" by a French inventor that predated Edison. Sounds like the guy made a device, called a phonautograph, that recorded detailed visual representation of sound. These researchers figured out a way to turn those visual recordings into actual sounds. They've just released a number of new audio. It's not the best sounding stuff in the world but it's an amazing concept.
Her "spiky red hair" - done by Thailand's top hair dresser - protects her. She says the Thai police hate her after she took them on in some high profile cases - even implicating the police themselves in some cases.
Playtime: 22 minutes 34 seconds
Date: June, 2009
Marketplace talks to a 89 year old inventor who is making diamonds bigger and cheaper.
Date: June, 2009
Take home: That thing you think is a miracle... It's not.
Date: June, 2009
New Radio Lab is about the moment of death - when, how, what...
From the website: "[I]n a slight departure from our regular format, we bring you eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die."
Could global warming create greener deserts? This three part doc format he BBC examines the question.
NASA recently released some previously... un-public(?) audio from the Apollo 11 mission.
Documentary on One tells the story of a family that struggles to afford stem cell treatments for their daughter.
Did you know there is a podcast called This Week in the History of Psychology? Well there is. It's out of York Univsersity. This episode is about the psychograph (pictutred). The psychograph was based on the idea of phrenology.
You'll have to get past the intro and the overview of the weeks psychology history to get to the discussion of the psychograph.
The Danish island of Samso creates more renewable power than it uses.
The green burial movement: featuring a 34-year-old woman who would like to have her body composted by worms.
Winner of Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Documentary, from the Radio & Television News Directors Association, 2009. Winner of PRNDI Award for Best Documentary from Public Radio News Directors Inc., 2009.
The BBC's weekly environmental programme, One Planet, goes on an American road-trip. The Englishmen see big cars, generous people, and the inventor of lithium-ion batteries. All on the road to Copenhagen.
- Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 27 minutes 2 seconds
Date: November, 2009
Technology, Science, Interview, Environment, Education, American Issues
The Naked Scientists of Cambridge dissect a chicken – a simple, factual item that pleases and engages. The link points to the complete hour long programme, which is well worth a listen, while the roast-bird item starts 39 minutes in.
– Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 8 minutes 4 seconds
The successful struggle of an immigrant doctor to the town of Twillingate, New Foundland. Dr. Mohamed Iqbal Ravalia is profiled delightfully by the CBC.
– Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 19 minutes 15 seconds
Britain's most renowned natural sound recordist, Chris Watson, has been to Antarctica. In this enhanced podcast, he provides just enough details to set the scene – and then lets the sounds bring you there. Some of the most engrossing audio you'll hear.
– Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 50 minutes 21 seconds
Elizabeth Hauke's documentary 'The Sound of Disease "examines the use of sound in the diagnosis of disease, and features the ground-breaking work of Prof Dan Lloyd, who converts the data in brain scans into music to identify otherwise 'invisible' diseases."
Elizabeth Hauke is an independent radio presenter and producer of Short Science (www.shortscience.co.uk), a weekly science radio show and podcast. She also makes freelance packages and documentaries.
An American artist goes to Ireland to fight time. From the classic Radiolab Beyond Time, starting 10 minutes in.
- Audio Documentary London Bureau
Playtime: 10 minutes 10 seconds
Keep and eye on Third Coast International Audio Festival's "Staff Picks" in the lower right hand corner of their newly designed website. Recent picks have included pics of record grooves under and electron microscope.
And this:
"The german Alfred-Wegener-Institute is transmitting a MP3-livestream from Antarctica. They put four hydrophones 70 m underneath the shelf ice and 90 m above the ocean ground through drilled holes in the thick ice sheet. In close proximity to the open water the microphones catch the calls of sea mammals living in this remote region."
If it isn't T-shirt vendors that stop the next terror attack maybe it will be 'shrooms... Piece sent to us by an AD user. Thanks Matt!
An enveloping tour of the largest inland body of water in the British Isles, Lough Neagh. Tom Lawrence guides you on his adventures around the lake, with a modest manner that allows the richness of the environment reach out and grab you by the ears. From Touch Radio.
Audio Documentary Europe
Playtime: 29 minutes 5 seconds
The book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives gets a radio reprieve with a new story specially commissioned for the BBC's One Planet programme about ageing. But this episode is most noteworthy as the one where the host makes an old lady cry.
Audio Documentary Europe
Playtime: 26 minutes 29 seconds
A girl of Mexican origin in New Zealand is less than impressed with BPs public relations efforts, and phones up Mikey Havoc on Auckland radio station 95 bFM to find out more.
Audio Documentary Europe
Playtime: 7 minutes 11 seconds
Date: August, 2010
The church that condemned Galileo in the 1600s for saying the earth revolves around the sun now has its own observatory to explore the heavens. Radio New Zealand takes you inside.
Playtime: 30 minutes 12 seconds
Colour Matters is a series of seven programmes about… colours. It was broadcast in 2005 on RTÉ, in Ireland, and the colours are at times seen through the filters of domestic sports – along with many other European and universal views: artistic, psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual. And with some catchy songs chucked in for good value.
Connor Walsh, for AD, Brussels.
Listen by colour:
Red White Yellow Green
Blue Orange Black
Playtime: 27 minutes
Sports, Sound Rich, Sex, Science, Environment, Art
Seven snappy and catchy items that do what it says on the tin – why music matters, to the musical, the medical, the military, and the extraterrestrial.
Why Music Matters is produced by radio KEXP in Seattle, and the Association of Independents in Radio.
Connor Walsh, AD, London.
Sound Rich, Science, History, Music, Dance, Health and Beauty
Week in week out, Definitely Not the Opera on CBC Radio 1 engages with two hours of stories and music. This episode is particularly strong. It's all about… sound. Sound sound sound. And no music! You'll hear some familiar voices and names from AudioDocumentary.org entries too. The stories told vary from funny though to quite upsetting.
Connor Walsh, AD, London
Playtime: 1 hour 11 minutes 16 seconds
Interview, Science, Sound Rich, Environment, Health and Beauty, Interesting
An insight into throat cancer that could only be portrayed in audio. From London-based science and medicine producer, Elizabeth Hauke. Don't listen if you have a cough!
Connor Walsh, AD, London
Playtime: 6 minutes 55 seconds
A living volcano, the edge of the American tectonic plate, a glacier, boiling mud, Sigur Ros, writers, painters, and Britain's finest natural sound recordist. Jules Verne's Volcano goes to Iceland with Chris Watson, a man who loves the sound of the place.
There's drama, humour, and bucket loads of awe, in the finest BBC radio feature of 2011 so far. Must-listen.
Connor Walsh, AD, London
Playtime: 30 minutes
James Aldred is on a mission, in the jungles of Brazil, with a catapult. It's him, a tree, and a very big, very strong, very protective eagle. The result is an almost real-time adventure to install a TV camera in the eagle's nest. James and the Giant Eagle is a sound-rich, vivid and engaging BBC Radio 4 programme.
Photo: Michael Schamis on Flickr.
Playtime: 28 minutes
An audio montage of the high and low points of NASA’s 50-year mission of discovery.
Playtime: 5 minutes 28 seconds
Instead of beeping sounds, hospitals may soon have monitors that play music to alert changes in patients' conditions and even track diseases.
Playtime: 5 minutes 59 seconds
Forest to Desert is described best by the producer Sarah Boothroyd: 'An audio doodle about this phrase: "Humankind is preceded by forest, and followed by desert."' Great use of natural, found and sampled sound, composed together to clearly follow that brief. Produced for and featured in the Third Coast Festival's Short Docs Radio Ephemera Challenge in 2008.
Playtime: 2 minutes 35 seconds
Facing the potential damage to Canada's international reputation after hockey riots in Vancouver, the CBC followed a typical Canadian for a day and produced this owl-on-the-wall documentary to reveal just how mild-mannered they really are.
No they didn't, this is a comedy sketch. But they have been producing a light-hearted look at the Strange Animal that is the human being. The series questions why we swear/laugh/lack willpower and more. All the programmes, and that sketch, are avaialble to listen in full on their website.
"It's just what I do: it's who I am" says Dr Stuart Hamilton in the mortury. Christmas is a busy time at work for him.
Winter's Rest is a excerpt from The D-Word, by London producer Ed Prosser, about death – in this case at Christmas. It's rather pretty.
Playtime: 2 minutes 24 seconds
Ham radio operators can build satellites, that can get thrown into orbit from the International Space Station. This item from Radia is more than a factual narration from NASA, it's a building of tension and wonder, a tie between humans on the ground and somehere out there.
Playtime: 28 minutes 30 seconds
People talk about silence on the radio – and it's surprisingly effective. Gordon Hempton is a nature sound recordist, behind the "One Square Inch of Silence" project. The spiritual aspect to Gordon's view of the great forests is very present, and adds to the reflective sense of the programme. There are also some more standalone field recordings on the programme webpage.
Playtime: 59 minutes
"It turns out, Jonah explains, that the part of our brain that is most reasonable, rational and do-the-right-thing is easily toppled by the pull of raw sensual appetite, the lure of sweet. Knowing something is the right thing to do takes work — brain work — and our brains aren't always up to that."
From Smithsonian.com: "You can decide yourself what you think they're saying but it does sound like they're disappointed." [watch to end]