Why do we climb? Why do people look at the tallest mountains in the world — vast, inhospitable places — and say, “I want to climb to its summit”? When you’re up there, what do you become? What do you give up? We’re exploring those questions today in a new drama by JJ Wang from […]

This week, it’s the Stories of Mahabharata, retold by Sudipta Bhawmik, a multitalented playwright, storyteller, and engineer. With music and immersive sound design by Avi Ziv, Bhawmik animates this ancient Indian epic, rendering it in English to delight those that have never heard it before as well as those who were raised on the stories. […]

This week, it’s The Axe and Crown, the fantasy miniseries from Eli McIlveen, creator of Alba Salix, Royal Physician. Eli’s brought his tight comic timing and snappy writing to bear on a different part of the magical kingdom of Farloria. The less elegant part. The part on the bad side of town. The part that […]

This week, we play an episode of an experimental podcast called PODCAST MEANDER, which kind of skirts the borders between autobiography and fiction. Dan Leone plays/is a character, also named Dan, who has thrown away his old life (or attempted to). After secretly saving for years, Dan quits his job in Connecticut and heads west, […]

This week Matthew continues hosting for David as we feature B.I.L.I. from London’s own O’Neill and Freeman. For more O’Neill and Freeman https://soundcloud.com/oneillandfreeman Check out James O’Neill’s terrific sculpture work: http://aplaceforclay.wixsite.com/sculptor

Line producer Matthew Boudreau takes over while David Rheinstrom is away in France. This week’s story is A Dread Light Shine in the Serpent’s Sky, a collaborative audio fiction piece created for 11th Hour Productions by the folks at Audioblivious Productiobs, Jim Robbie and the Wanderers and Koach Studios. 11th Hour Audio – http://www.11thhouraudio.com Audioblivious […]

Professor Neil Verma joins me to discuss his essay series, “The Case for Audio Drama”. He’s a professor of Sound Studies at Northwestern University, and a longtime scholar of audio drama. We discuss the history of the form, and areas of his particular interest: radio drama from the 30s through the 50s. But we don’t […]

This week, Alexander Charles Adams of SMASH/CUT joins me to discuss their piece, “Hi, I’m Mattie (HIM)”. Matthew Cavan is an actor and drag queen in Belfast, Northern Ireland; he came out about his HIV-positive status in 2010, and has since faced a torrent of criticism, shaming, and even death threats. The piece we’re playing […]

We conclude our two-part conversation series around The Handmaid’s Tale, which you can find in an Audio Drama form over at Secrets, Crimes, and Audiotape. This week, I had the great pleasure of talking to Mallory Ortberg, a writer, culture critic, and advice columnist. She’s Dear Prudence over at Slate, and she used to run […]

Podcaster, culture critic, and ne’er-do-well Margaret Willison (of Appointment Television and NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour) joins me to talk about THE HANDMAID’S TALE — specifically, the 2000 production by John Dryden that ran recently on Secrets, Crimes, and Audiotape (our sibling show on the Wondery Network). Join me and Margaret as we alternate between […]

This week, things are going to get spooky at Radio Drama Revival as we delve into the world of horror audio fiction. David talks to Marc Sollinger and Dan Powell, the evil minds behind Archive 81 and The Deep Vault. They discuss the horror fiction that makes them tick, how to construct audio fiction that’ll […]