Tag Archives: David Goren

Radio Documentary: World Wide Waves ’24

World Wide Waves ’24 – The Documentary (BBC World Service)

Radio can be a lifeline for women: a place to speak out in safety; a place to find their voices. We hear from women taking to the air and making waves in the cracks left by the Taliban in Afghanistan; in Fiji’s scattered archipelago threatened by climate change; in the migrant farmworker community of the Yakima Valley in North America’s Pacific north-west; and in the Ecuadorean Amazon, where indigenous women are coming together to save their land from pollution and destruction by oil companies. A feast of women’s voices from around the world: open, brave, joyful, and full of life and music.

Click here to listen to World Wide Waves ’24 on the BBC website.

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Saturday: WGXC Rebroadcast of live performance from Radio Preservation Task Force

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Goren, who wites:

Wave Farm is airing/streaming a rebroadcast of a live performance from the Radio Preservation Task Force…which was really great…Anna Friz and Jeff Kolar performing on radios and other devices using clips from Rick Prelinger’s archive of what he calls “useful radio” aka utility radio. He gave the keynote at the RPTF and the next day Anna and Jeff performed this response and RP spoke again afterwards.

https://wavefarm.org/radio/wgxc/schedule/hsed8h


Jun 17, 2023: 3pm – 4pm

WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears

90.7-FM in NY’s Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/

Standing Wave Radio

wavefarm.org/listen and 1620-AM at Wave Farm
https://audio.wavefarm.org/transmissionarts.mp3

Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Artistic Director Tom Roe.

Welcome to “The Radio Art Hour,” a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. “The Radio Art Hour” draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. “The Radio Art Hour” features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner, Jess Speer, Andy Stuhll, José Alejandro Rivera, Tyler Maxin, and Iru Ekpunobi. The Conet Project‘s recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about “The Radio Art Hour” and Wave Farm’s Radio Art Archive.

In addition, here’s Jef Kolar’s tweet announcing the show:

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“Tea With the Queen”

I asked the AI image-generator DALL-E 2 to create a an image based on this song title.

For those of you who attended David Goren’s Shortwave Shindig at the virtual Winter SWL Fest were treated to a song called Tea With The Queen. This was no ordinary song–as David notes:

This is what happened when I asked ChatGPT to write a country song about a trucker who has tea with Queen Elizabeth whilst they listen to BBC on shortwave radio. Then I got Chris Johnson, an extremely talented and savvy musician, to set it to music.

You can listen to “Tea With The Queen” via the embedded player below, or directly on David Goren’s Soundcloud Page.

Note that David has many more audio goodies on his website Shortwaveology.net.

Thanks for sharing this, David. I think it’s absolutely brilliant!

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BBC World Service Documentary: “World Wide Waves ’23: The sounds of community radio”

In celebration of the upcoming World Radio Day 2023, our friend David Goren has produced another amazing World Wide Waves episode with Maria Margaronis presenting. You can listen live, but the audio will also be linked to The Documentary website once it has aired:


World Wide Waves ’23: The sounds of community radio (BBC World Service)

(Image source: BBC World Service, The Documentary)

The Documentary

For World Radio Day, we celebrate four vibrant community radio stations on four continents, tuning in to their sounds, their music, and their missions. Northern Malawi’s Rumphi FM supports the Tumbuka tribe while giving young women a space to speak out against early marriage and for education.

From Budapest, Radio Dikh broadcasts “about the Roma, but not just for the Roma,” presenting Romany culture in its own distinctive voice.

In Nunavik, Northern Quebec, Inuit radio beams Inuktitut music and talk to 14 remote villages, helping to keep an ancient language and threatened tradition alive.

And in civil-war-torn Myanmar, brave journalists risk their lives to resist the military dictatorship with news and views sent out from portable transmitters, sometimes under fire.

Presenter: Maria Margaronis
Producer: David Goren

Click here to view and listen on the BBC website.

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“The Texas Tank: A Prison Radio Station Changing Lives”

SWLing Post friend and contributor, David Goren, notes that a piece he’s produced and Maria Margaronis has presented is now available to listen to online via BBC Radio 4: 

(Source: BBC Radio 4 with Photo credit from Michael Starghill))

The Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, used to be known as the Terror Dome for its high rates of inmate violence, murder and suicide. Polunsky houses all the men condemned to death in Texas (currently 185) and nearly 3,000 maximum security prisoners. But since the pandemic, a prison radio station almost entirely run by the men themselves has helped to create community–even for those on death row, who spend 23 hours a day locked alone in their cells.

The Tank beams all kinds of programmes across the prison complex: conversations both gruff and tender; music from R&B to metal; the soundtracks of old movies; inspirational messages from all faiths and none. The station’s steady signal has saved some men from suicide and many from loneliness; it lets family members and inmates dedicate songs to each other and make special shows for those on their way to execution. Maria Margaronis tunes in to The Tank and meets some of the men who say it’s changed their lives—even when those lives have just weeks left to run.

Produced by David Goren.

Click here to listen to The Texas Tank: A Prison Radio Station Changing Lives on Radio 4.

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Radio Waves: Brooklyn Pirate Radio Interview, Emergency Radio Evolution, SOTA Hams Prevent Forest Fire, and Morse Code Documentary

Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!


Interview about Brooklyn pirate radio (Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive)

Although Irish pirate radio is our main interest, today we explore the lively pirate scene in the Brooklyn area of New York City. The Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map is a fascinating project established by radio producer and audio archivist David Goren and provides interactive maps and historical and contemporary recordings of the many unlicensed stations in Brooklyn.

This is a longer version of an interview by John Walsh with David Goren first featured in Wireless, a series about radio, audio and media on Flirt FM in Galway. It covers the history of pirate radio in Brooklyn and New York generally, attempts to crack down on the unlicensed stations, the role of low-powered FM, the background to the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map itself and plans for the future. Many thanks to David for taking the time to explain this fantastic project for us. [Read the full article and listen to the interview on the Irish Pirate Radio Audio Archive…]

The Evolution of the Emergency Radio (Radio World)

From AM-only portables to multi-function machines

With the advent of the 9V battery-powered transistor radio in the 1950s, the “Emergency Radio” was born.

Unlike vacuum tube receivers with heavy batteries or unpowered crystal radios, these handheld AM portables were small and simple enough to keep in a drawer. They could then be retrieved whenever man-made or natural disasters knocked out the power, providing listeners with lifeline connections to news, weather and relief information. Continue reading

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Soldering is Easy: An amazing soldering primer in comic book form

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Goren, who shares a link to this PDF which is a primer on soldering…in comic book form!

Thing is, this primer is brilliantly illustrated and all of the soldering techniques are truly textbook. No wonder, though: the amazing Mitch Altman provided the “Soldering Wisdom.” (You might recall my love of Mitch’s TV-B-Gone kit.)

David didn’t know this, but I use this comic guide very heavily when teaching classes or individuals how to solder. It connects with all generations of makers and tinkerers.

It is the benchmark, in my opinion!

Mitch specifically designed this tutorial to be spread widely, so he licensed it under Creative Commons. Share this widely!

Click here to download the full PDF.

I’ve also stored a backup copy here on the SWLing Post.

Thanks for reminding me about this tutorial, David!

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