News

Super fast updates, to be expanded upon soon!

1. The Messenger, a podcast series by the Wheeler Centre (including Jon) and Behind the Wire, continues to sporadically publish updates from Aziz, a refugee on Manus Island. The series has won a bunch of major audio awards in the past couple of years – and Aziz was recently awarded the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, which is huge! Listen to the series or find out more here.
2. ‘Changes Again’ was included in the ‘cinema for listening’ and the Movement session at Nina Garthwaite’s and Eleanor McDowall’s Soundhouse: The Listening Body exhibition and event series at London’s Barbican Centre. Very exciting! Jon also wrote a short essay for their accompanying booklet, which you can read here.
3. Last year, Manus Recording Project Collective contributed how are you today, a new commission, to Eavesdropping – a very in-depth and fascinating exhibition/listening/events/working group/touring programme by Liquid Architecture, Melbourne Law School and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Each day during the exhibition, a ten-minute recording made by a current detainee on Manus Island was produced and played back in Melbourne. You can listen to the archive here. The exhibition will tour beyond Australia later this year.

   Meanwhile, there’s some interesting writing about it in The Wire, The Monthly, and Un Magazine. The Manus Recording Project Collective is comprised of Kazem Kazemi, Farhad Bandesh, Abdul Aziz Muhamat, Behrouz Boochani, Samad Abdul and Shamindan Kanapathi on Manus Island, and Michael Green, André Dao and Jon Tjhia in Melbourne.

4. ‘Fine Tune’, a panel discussion at Audiocraft 2018 featuring Jaye Kranz, Jess O’Callaghan and also Jon, can be heard here.
5. Starting a podcast? Here’s some advice you probably shouldn’t take. (Lemme guess – it’s paywalled?)
6. I guess we never shared this mix, but it’s pretty good. Hm. Or this one!
7. Constellations Audio Playground was fun.
8. Finally, for this content dump – a new work! ‘As far as the I’ is a new story we’ve made for BBC Radio 4’s wonderful Short Cuts programme. It’s one of our favourite podcasts, so – what a trip! The story is inspired by the writing constraints of the French literary collective called the Oulipo – an abbreviation for what roughly translates to ‘workshop for potential literature’. Anyway, won’t spoil it any more, but suffice to say, very happy this is happening. Hope you’re in rude health!

Our website is semi-cute, web 1.0, not accessible and needs love/work!

We’re on it. Slowly, but on it. Sorry about the side menu. Sorry about the audio players. Adobe Flash died just when our free time did too.

Dunno about making it responsive, though. I mean, we’re not gods.

While you wait

Go listen to some stuff we made elsewhere?

Jessie produced Ruff Love, which aired on Soundproof in early January.

Jon’s been working on The Messenger for a year. It’s a longform narrative series about a Sudanese refugee detained in Australia’s extremely contentious Manus Island immigration detention centre in Papua New Guinea.

In The Podcast Review, Jessie Borrelle reviews some of the highlights and lowlights 
in the international podcasting spectrum. 

Originally commissioned by and published on Kill Your Darlings Journal 2012/2013.

In January 1930, Harold Vivien invited 250 volts of electricity to pour through his body. Vivien was the chief control operator at the Columbia Broadcasting Company in New York, and he didn’t become a human transmitter for shits and giggles. He did it so that an address by King George V ­– the king chronicled in that film ­– would be heard by millions of transatlantic listeners.

During the live broadcast, a now nameless butterfingers in Vivien’s control room had tripped over the generator wires that energised the network. In a flash, Vivien grasped the disconnected cables, restoring the circuit, channelling the king’s speech with his agitating body. Shaking with electric shocks, he held on for twenty continuous minutes.

In the last decade, we’ve witnessed remarkable advancements in mobile communication technologies, further augmented by the Web 2.0 evolution. While many traditional print giants have crept glacially, suspiciously, towards future technologies, progressive organisations and independent publishers have emerged as victors in this new online ecology. Authority and autonomy has shifted from institutions to individuals.

We are now all Harold Vivien. We have the medium in our hot little hands (the technology, the wires) and we can mediate the content (the current, the broadcast) and serve it directly to the audience. Acting as both a publisher and distributor for cultural producers, the internet’s capacity to harvest and host independent media environments is enormous. And it’s also very exciting.

Firing up a microphone to record a conversation, or pulling words off a page and pushing them into sound, is a cinch thanks to the proliferation of user-friendly (and often open-source or free) software for recording and sound-editing. Uploading and publishing podcasts is also easy with online blogging platforms and hosting sites. Subscribing to podcasts is painless: your computer or mobile device laps them up using syndication or RSS services – web feeds that provide a update of a website’s recent content.

Succinct and digestible, short-form multimedia content has acclimatised effortlessly to this new media ecology, testifying to the internet’s promise of accessibility. The adaptable nature of the web capitulates perfectly to remote and isolated places, peoples and cultures. An exercise in hemispheric dispersion, this digital democracy grants us access to and from the world. ­Offline, national borders are defined by political demarcation; online ­– with the exception of censored states – geography finds purchase through interest bases.

We can listen to conversations made in a parking lot in Montreal or a diner in San Francisco, and in turn, we can listen to stories made on a wharf in Auckland or in a warehouse in Melbourne. We can listen to each other’s stories on a tram or in a sedan, as we clip our toenails or shampoo the dog.

Over the next few months, we’ll review some of the highlights and lowlights in the international podcasting spectrum, looking at how adventurous and creative radio makers have secured audiences outside their traditional broadcast range. We’ll see evidence of how the medium is often best employed to discuss the form and function of culture, with online broadsheets and classic magazine-style formats well represented among podcasts.

We’ll dip into the following programs: Wiretap, created and hosted by the idiosyncratic author Jonathan Goldstein, from CBC Canada; Chicago Public Radio’s cult This American Life; WNYC’s Radiolab; and the BBC’s unmatched Jon Ronson On. These shows inspired Sydney independent radio station FBi to launch All the Best, a catalogue of harbour city stories – now syndicated nationally – and Melbourne-based antipodean audio journal Paper Radio (of which I am an executive producer), as well as many other local and independent producers we’ll shine a light on.

We are basking in content, and though not all of it is necessarily good, the luxury of discernment is now held by the audience and not by the institution. Writers, producers and artists are no longer dependent on industry resources or recognition to arbitrate their work. What is most thrilling about the podcast as a literary and cultural destination is that it exposes independent producers to an expansive and diverse host of listeners, and vice versa. If you find your niche, you can scratch it. And if your niche can find you, it can subscribe to you.

Podcast review: 

99 Per Cent Invisible

‘A tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.’

Roman Mars is the kind of person who makes a thing I was convinced no one could make much better – heaps better. That is a pretty big claim, and a mighty grand claim to pin on a such modest little podcast.  Read more…

Hey, so, what do you know? Turns out we’re not particularly prolific bloggers. While we’ve certainly been busy, and radio and audio have been very much on the brain, it’s always felt somewhat more natural to let the work speak for itself – to some degree, anyway. It might even be that our other work exhausts our capacity for ‘updates’, or that the time it would require to fully explore, commit to and unfurl an idea or an argument here is too much; I can (and accordingly, will) only speak for myself in admitting that both of those things do figure.

It’s sort of a daft understatement to say that things have been, y’know, happening in the world/microcosm/bubble that is podcasting.

You’ve probably heard about much of it. Serial (and its eponymous ‘effect’), Gimlet/StartUp/Reply All etc, Radiotopia, all the to-and-fro poaches and hires (no dramatic fires…yet) between audio/media/content companies. The Great and Promised Renaissance of Audio Finally Going Mainstream, the accompanying scramble to commercialisation (hi Spotify!) and its natural counterarguments. The new shows, the stretch goals, the excitement in the air.

(If this actually sounds like made up garbage to you, though, subscribe to Nick Quah’s wonderful/oddball/meticulous Hot Pod tinyletter or check out Nieman Lab or just lay back and sip your drink and don’t sweat it, yeah?)

Suffice it to say, it’s a really interesting (and strange) time to be observing everything. It’s especially odd to be doing so all the way from Australia – where, yes, people are sort of taking podcasting more seriously, but where the stakes are…if not lower, at least very different. There’s less (basically no) money in it yet, audiences still feel nebulous and abstract (there are no real physical or cultural focal points for them to gather/talk) and while more people might be picking up the mic, we’re yet to hear a lot of innovation (at least in the ways that American entrepreneurship demands/fosters).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about these questions that seem to be arising (or not). Is the entrepreneurial narrative becoming an essential part of helming a ‘sustainable’ podcast? Are producers/artists who choose to be independent of radio stations thus obliged to be (or pair with) business people? In what ways are podcasts entering the same spaces that were once exclusive to music, and how will the traditionally conflicting licensing/airplay models – for features: license for x plays only, fees for more; for music: play as much as possible to reach widest audience, sell merch/tickets, get royalties – clash or align? Would people buy audio stories like albums again? Are there actually more opportunities (and outlets) for playing with sound and voice in interesting and experimental ways, or is this just about the narrative, the hook, and storytelling?

While I have many thoughts on those things, I’m never sure if they’ve ever landed definitively in any one position. Except in brief fits and spasms, I think it’s fair to say we’ve never really considered we would make a regular income from what we do – whether because we’re shy of asking for money or have found it hard to imagine having that vast an audience.

I will say that while we obviously don’t have the mad concentration of interesting radio producers that cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco (or London, Paris etc etc) can boast, I’m proud of the people we can call neighbours here in Australia. I think – especially in Melbourne – there’s a small but healthy community of people who’re engaged with good things to listen to. It’s always a pleasure to catch up for drinks. Speaking of which, there’s some radio stuff going down at Emerging Writers’ Festival this Friday. See you there?

A handful of other things I’d like to share, briefly:

• We were thrilled to have the opportunity to license The Isolation Solitude Happiness Confinement Freedom Domain (just typed that from memory; who says it isn’t a catchy title?) for broadcast as part of Third Coast Festival’s Re:Sound National programme in The Tight Spaces Show. (We knew it was only a matter of time before Toby went global.)

• Check out (Stylus co-producer) Conor Gillies’ excellent and thought-provoking argument about the emergent economic trends in podcasting (and public radio in the US) in The Awl. While Gillies was kind enough to mention us (in a nice way…whew), this recommendation is sincere and independent of any backslapping/etc.

• Check out Mia Lindgren’s research publication, ‘‘This Australian Life’: the Americanisation of radio storytelling in Australia‘, in Australian Journalism Review.

• One day – one day – we’ll bring this website into the 21st century. Until then, sorry if you’re reading this on a smartphone.

• I’m working on some exciting new audio projects at my day (and, well, night) job at the Wheeler Centre. Very tired, very excited. You’ll hear more about this soon!

• Should we collapse our AM/FM distinctions into one big, mysterious pot of fact and falsehood? Or is that sort of thing sooo 2012?

• Was it wrong of me to ramble so? Seriously, we’d love to know what you think about any of the above.

Alright – I think I’ve exhausted my blogging quota for the next five years. If you bothered to read this far, thanks (and: you’re probably strange). Likewise, if you’re a Paper Radio listener – sincerest thanks for the time you spend with us. We wish we knew more about you, but whomever you are, it’s a privilege.

You’ll hear a couple more stories from us for sure over the next few weeks.

Antennae up,
Jon

Only because we’re self-respecting noise makers, we have released a Christmas album. Radio story, actually. And what better way to hear it than live on air on Sunday 22 December on Auntie (she needs a little care and attention after a difficult year with Tony and Joe. Terrible note to end a sentence with. Onward!).

Christmas bonus! Listen live this Sunday on ABC Radio National!

As you may know, surviving a trip to a shopping complex can challenge even the most agile and patient of humans – and that’s on an average day. Imagine, then, the festive suffering of those brave souls stuck beneath fat suits, writhing children and flashing cameras – the shopping mall Santas.

Writer and and one-time Santa Eric Yoshiaki Dando takes you behind the tinsel to find out what it means to be everyone’s favourite man in red.

Still not moved? NZ’s best Grayson Gilmour designed some epic sound for the story. Don’t be an egg nog – listen live on Radiotonic this Sunday at approximately exactly 3:05pm!

A heap of other podcasts

Our idea of a heap, anyway. Pop over to these pages to get a dose of hypotheticalism, the bibliophilic sounds of silence and a little hesitation. And for the year that has brought us a little bit of everything, we thank you.

Jessie and Jon, aka Paper Radio.

Being the moderately sociable people that we are, we’ve gotten ourselves entangled with Melbourne Writers Festival again. Shall we sub-head? Yes, we shall:

Sound stories (aka ‘sensing a theme here?’)

WTF: Jon will be hosting Benjamen Walker (as above, the very same) as he presents his seminar/masterclass/didactic-life-highlight on Sound stories.

WHEN: Friday 22 August, 12pm at the Wheeler Centre.

Sound is the new story

WTF: Catch Jessie in discussion with Miyuki Jokiranta (Soundproof), Benjamen Walker (Theory of Everything/Too Much Information) and host Vanessa Toholka (Byte Into IT … and Jon’s mum’s friend’s daughter) about how and if Sound is the new story.

WHEN:  Saturday 23 August, 2.30pm at Deakin Edge.

Your words, not mine

WTF: For the inaugural unfurling of Lit Hop Melbourne, we’re inventing the best karaoke you’ve never been to – radio karaoke. Your words, not mine showcases some great short features, with a twist! Actually, it’s not a twist because we just said ‘karaoke’, thank you for paying attention.

Throw your hat (name) into the ring (hat) and perform the radio piece of your choosing. Discover new stories, and take home a menu to hear more.

WHEN: Sunday 31 August. We’re stop three, from 4pm at Loop Bar.

AND: How’s this for a shit hot deal? Book with the promo code LITHOPLOVE to receive 2 for 1 passes to the entire Lit Hop day.

That podcast we make

Bells, whistles and missiles aside, we have actually been making new work, too. You’ll see our latest episode, Noise to a minimum, appearing alongside our last – Toby Fehily’s The Isolation-Solitude-Confinement-Happiness-Freedom Domain – in your podcast feed (AM) this weekend. Tell your enemies!

Stay you,
Paper Radio

We’ve got new work! Take a preview of our newest story – The Isolation Happiness Confinement Solitude Freedom Domain, written by Toby Fehily – at the website of new RN program Radiotonic. Or sit tight and subscribe to our podcast, where it’ll appear on your device (with its gorgeous artwork, thanks to Eirian Chapman) next Sunday.

Additive synthesis: in service of Paper Radio!

If you’re in Melbourne, find us at the Emerging Writers’ Festival tonight. Jon will be chairing a discussion between RN Soundproof’s Miyuki Jokiranta, All the Best/The Rereaders’ Jess O’Callaghan and radio writin’ author/poet/brainiac Aden Rolfe. Book here.

It’s such a nice surprise. And the stupid thing is, you can’t think of a good reason why you haven’t seen them lately…

We know that feeling all too well.

Hopefully you’ve tasted some success since we last wrote to you. Perhaps you’ve even welcomed a new wrinkle or two. Wrinkles are one of the best signs of a well-told story, we reckon.

What comes nationally

Paper Radio’s hushed tones are actually the result of some pretty nice news. The main thing that’s been dominating our time and tentacles is a brand new co-commissioning partnership with ABC Radio National.

We’re working on a bunch of stories for the network’s newly-minted Creative Audio Unit. Some of these new works will be travelling through the ear-waves in just a few weeks.

Story hotline!

We’re often surprised at how stories surface. So we’ve set up a special phone number to capture hot tips, tip offs and the occasional heavy breath. (image: informant) So call us – and tell your friends and fellow gossipers, too: (+61) 3 9016 0303.

You won’t burn your fingers if you dial it. You can leave your name and number if you want a call back – or, if you’re more of a deep throat type, simply say your piece, put down the receiver, look both ways and run. For the informant on a budget, you can also Skype to us. Click here, or just zing us on Skype at paper.radio.

March’s theme: irony

What is irony, really? We might jest that Alanis can’t tell the difference between coincidence, bad luck and irony – but truth be told: we’re not sure if we can, either. The term pops up all the time. You could almost believe that nearly everything these days is ironic. But is it? How do you go about describing it?

Do you have an analogy, experience or metaphor at the ready? Leave us your ironic interpretation on the story hotline – (+61) 3 9016 0303.

Tell us your name and a little bit about yourself, if you’d like. Your state and profession, that sort of thing – if you’re a etymologist*, for example, we’d love to know. And don’t forget your number/email if you’re happy for us to ping you back.

Else?

Just: hi! We sincerely hope you’re in good spirits and health.

* If you’re an entomologist, though… after all that Snowden jazz, we’re just not sure if we’re comfortable having our hotline bugged.

We’ve been thinking about you. A lot, actually. Not all the time, but for maybe an hour or so every evening right before we go to sleep. We even have some treats for you.

First though, that new episode. We’re expecting any minute now. It’s no longer so much a matter of “soonish”, but more a “very soon” or “quite soon indeed” kind of thing. Put it this way: our water broke and we’ve piled into a car and Jessie and Jon are in the front arguing over the fastest route to the hospital. This one’s going to be a doozy.

Until then, your treats:

Weather in the air

For your ears, our episodes Weather 1 and Weather 2, written by the top-notch Thomasin Sleigh, will be airing on Radio National’s Sound. Music. Word. this weekend: Sunday at 8pm, with a repeat on Friday at 9pm. Once again, a chance to imagine a world without meteorologists. (While you’re at it, try to imagine a world without Radio National. Grim, no?)

Melbourne Writers Festival

For your eyes and ears, a couple of us are heading to the Melbourne Writers Festival. Jon Tjhia will be chairing a chat with music writers Simon Reynolds and Chris Ruen about do-it-yourself music culture on Sunday 1 September. For tickets, buy-it-yourself here.

And Estelle Tang will be having two conversations, one with Ruth Ozeki and one with Tavi Gevinson, a.k.a. TAVI GEVINSON. You can even buy tickets to see these conversations! The Tavi talk has already sold out, though, and you probably have 30 seconds at most to snatch a seat for the Ruth Ozeki one. Quickly, over here.

We also strongly recommend you arrange your own conversation, ticketed or not, with Estelle in the next few weeks, seeing as she’ll soon be headed to New York for quite some time. We’re severely bummed about it. We’re also thrilled for her and positively itching to hear about her adventures. Still, bummed.

Radio with Pictures

More news about more stories we’ll be producing: for starters, there’s Jon’s words and Lachlan Conn’s illustrations for Radio with Pictures‘ Disorient Express, which was performed at the Sydney Opera House during last year’s GRAPHIC festival. For now, here’s a video (below). Later, we’ll be releasing a new version with more words and more illustrations.

The Hush

We also have special news, but we have to keep hush about it for just a little longer. At any rate, you’ll be hearing from us more often now (pinky swears). We’re talking regular publishing and posting (cross heart, hope to die, etcetera). You have always been our favourite, you do know that.

…because if he wrote it, it would be littered with good prose, and it would be porous and delightful.

The Toby we speak of is Toby Fehily. Sometimes we call him Tony.

Toby is a freelance writer. He wrote this, which we couldn’t stop reading, and now we never want to go to French Island, we just want to go to Toby’s article.

And guess what else? Toby is our Editorial and Communications Coordinator. 

This is what the view from his Paper Radio window looks like:

Toby makes us faster, better, fitter and more productive, he mans our editorial process, is streamlining our communications and sometimes he dabbles with our social media.

Toby is “Alive. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week“. We just cut & pasted that from his Twitter, which is where you follow him and get familiar with the dimensions of his bright young mind.

We’re really excited to have Toby at the helm of our podcast.

You can visit his LiveJournal here. But open it in another tab, so you can still listen to one of our episodes.

We’re chuffed.

Estelle Tang, our esteemed editorial advisor, has been entrusted with all of your brains.

The newly opened School of Life Australia has wisely taken her on as an in-house bibliotherapist.

Estelle Tang, Bibliotherapist

As such, she’ll be peering into your minds and recommending books to treat any literary (and some literal) conditions you may be experiencing.

To heal a general, nameless malaise, you can find Estelle already recommending placebo books over at 3000books.

And don’t worry: while there’s no book that can dampen our pride for her latest accomplishment, Estelle’s already prescribed us a handful of books to ease the symptoms of our jealousy.

Now off with you, make an appointment to see our two-legged bibliopedia!

Woo Tang!

P.s. We’re a hare’s breath away from publishing our next podcast. Hold tight, or even better,  follow us on Twitter for more sound information.

You know how it is: the sun’s coming out more, the breeze is blowing through your house and, for laziness or pollen, you want to shut your eyelids and have someone tell you a good story.

Your remedy’s a-brewing. In fact: it’s cooling on the stove.

Tune in this weekend

We had a wonderful (if slightly nerve-wracking) time presenting a new story at The Radio Hour last month during the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and being told stories by others too; it was definitely a special night. From today, you can listen to part one of the live recording over at Radio National 360documentaries’ site. It features your host Jaye Kranz (and her hilarious, offbeat phone conversations about a mysterious sum of money), Pico Iyer‘s Cuba and a glimpse at the womb with Chloe Hooper. And, of course, there’s yours truly, spending some time exploring the world through deaf eyes.

Performing live at The Radio Hour

In 360documentaries’ words:

“This was a first-of-its-kind event for the Melbourne Writers Festival. Over 250 people filed into the Fairfax Theatre for a moving and memorable night of documentary radio like it’s never been seen before. Stories on the theme Do You Read Me were narrated live, with live musical scoring, and the kind of visual wonder that rarely comes with a ripping radio yarn.”

If you’re around the wireless on Sunday, you can tune in to Radio National and hear the episode in glorious AM tone from 10am. Whichever way you listen, remember to do the same next week, for part two. And if you have something nice to say about our story or any of the others, please do leave a comment on Radio National’s website and let them know. It does make a difference.

Finally – if the live thing isn’t quite your speed, we’ll be uploading a studio version to our podcast in the next couple of weeks.

Paper Radio meets Graphic Sydney

You’d think that all the stage fright would have scared us back to the studio for life, but alas: we’re doing it again. Jon’s preparing a new non-fiction piece to be delivered live on stage – in collaboration with Lachlan Conn (memory jog) – for Radio with Pictures. (It being graphic and all, you’ll probably need to open your eyes for this one.)

It takes place at the Studio, Sydney Opera House, from 3:30pm on Sunday November 11, with a lineup including Lawrence Leung, Nina Las Vegas, Courtney Collins, Anna Barnes, John Birmingham and All The Best – plus illustrators Biddy Maroney (another memory jog), Georgia Perry, Sara Drake, Leigh Rigozzi, Matt Taylor, Matt Huynh and more. It’s presented by Graphic and FBi Radio. Tickets are on sale now.

Next

We have other exciting projects on the way, which we’ll tell you more about soon, and right now Jessie is in the midst of exploring radio at the Third Coast Conference in Chicago. And as always, if you have a great story that needs to be told, we’d love to hear from you!

Until soon, thanks for your ear – and all the very best.

You might be wondering why Paper Radio has been producing nothing but radio silence for the last few months. And no: the mute button wasn’t stuck ON!

We’ve been busy working on another radio documentary for ABC Radio National’s 360documentaries, but this is a documentary with a difference: it’s live.

As part of this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival (23rd August to 2nd September) Jessie and Jon will be joining essayist Pico Iyer, novelist and author of The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper and fellow sound documentarians Natalie Kestecher and Rachel Maher for The Radio Hour, a radio documentary spectacular.

We’ll be telling stories on the theme ‘Do You Read Me?’ with a live soundtrack by Melbourne musicians Shane O’Mara, Dan Marsh and James Cecil (the latter of Super Melody and formerly Architecture in Helsinki).

Did we mention this is happening live?

Jaye Kranz – writer, editor and radio producer extraordinaire – will host The Radio Hour, guiding the audience through the ideas and imaginations of this impressive line up of literary and sonic talents.

Sounds pretty good, huh?

The Radio Hour is a one-night-only affair, delivered live on Sunday 2nd September 2012 at 6pm. Find out all you ever wanted to know and then buy your tickets here.

Each year in Melbourne, the Emerging Writers’ Festival re-emerges to explore the craft and business of writing. This year, one of the questions it asks is: what lies ahead for reading, and what will tomorrow’s bookshops look like?

One of the ways they’ve tried to explore this is via an exhibition (at the National Gallery of Victoria’s NGV Studio) called, aptly enough, Future Bookshop. We’ve been lucky enough to inhabit a pillar of the space, turning it quite literally into a listening post.

The exhibition is open until this Sunday, when it will culminate in an informal discussion about the future of writing (Sunday June 17, 2-3:30pm, NGV Studio – The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia at Federation Square, Melbourne). It’s a free event.

But hey – maybe you’re not quite sure what all this Future Bookshop business is about? Jessie Borrelle spoke with Sarah L’Estrange – reporter-at-large for Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily – alongside fellow contributor Matt Blackwood and EWF director Lisa Dempster.

Have a listen to the interview here. And a ‘megabrill’ weekend.

Someone wrote this on the 'Ideas Wall'. Cute, right?

Do you put the rad in radio? The wit in switchboard? The beer in the fridge? The boom in sonic?

Since the advent of the banana plug and swivel chair, we’ve had a love affair with the switchboard operator, or as we call it, the editorial and communications coordinator (ECC).

The role of the editorial and communications coordinator is an ideal opportunity for someone with a passion for audio storytelling to work with a small team creating unique and progressive media content.

In addition to tallying and organising our buttons, dials and switches, the ECC will provide us with valuable editorial and communications support.

If you wish to apply, or  add to your impressive PDF collection, you’ll find the full position description below. We don’t want selection criteria addressed – that’s sadistic! Just a cover letter and a resume will suffice.

Applications have now closed. We’d like to thank everybody who expressed interest or applied.

May day! Radio National are airing Me and Run Like a Dream on 360documentaries this Sunday 6 May at 10.30am.

If you are out of range then, it’ll be repeated at 2.30pm the Friday following.

We did tell them it was fiction.

Don’t get us wrong, we do advocate interspecies love, but strictly the platonic kind.

So, if you feel like hearing a horsey tale as you clean your stable, roll in the hay, adjust your saddle or peel your carrots, tune in this Sunday!

A big thanks to Lachlan Conn for the awesome artwork, writer Elizabeth Reale for her intriguing imagination, ‘wife’ Prudence Smith for braving the mic and our own producer Jon Tjhia for keeping the sound so beautifully on track.

(P.s. We’re still looking for stories about language and translation, so sing out if you have one!)

We’re working on something kind of exciting. Kind of definitely.

Part of the exciting means we’re seeking stories about language and linguistics and all the slurs, lisps and slips that occur in everyday communications and miscommunications.

Do you use translation engines – and why?

Have you ever loved (or tried to love) someone who you don’t share a common tongue with?

Do you have an experience or a tale that relates, or know someone who might?

We have a Facebook page where you can pitch in with your thoughts and ideas – or you can give us a yell/bell at: hello@paperradio.net

Please download and circulate our flyer if you like. (This is printable and stickable. Use recycled!, etc etc…)

Thanks. You’re the best.

Paper Radio and All The Best

Our most kind and clever radio cousins at All The Best (produced out of FBi 94.5 Sydney) have very generously invited Paper Radio to co-host and curate their show this weekend. Jon joins Eliza Sarlos for a full hour to talk about Paper Radio, play some of our favourite episodes and share some earlier, pre-Paper Radio sounds produced by our editorial team.

Tune in between 10-11am this Saturday 10 March to 94.5FM in Sydney – or your local community radio station* elsewhere, via the Community Radio Network.

Find out more about All The Best. Listen live or stream-on-demand and check out at the cat who edits their programme every week.

* If your community radio station doesn’t broadcast All The Best, why not request it?

The Cosmic Frequency on Top of the Pods

Radio National’s great new programme Top of the Pods showcasing “the best audio to be found in the podcast universe” is going galaxy-wide.

Coming up on Tuesday 13 March at 2pm (repeated 3am Sunday March 18) is The Cosmic Frequency. In this episode, Jessie meets former Colac schoolteacher Maggie Iaquinto, a radio ham who befriended cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station, taught them to use packet radio and made history in the process.

Top of the Pods have excellent quality control – proven when they aired part of our episode Tone Deaf, writer Benjamin Law’s account of his linguistic adventures in their episode ‘Hyperpolyglots and Cantonese‘.

While you can listen any time on our website, this is a great opportunity to share us with your friends and family. And, if you really enjoyed it, tell your radio station and help us foster a culture of creative sound and great stories on the radio.

Find out more about Top of the Pods. Listen on your radio or stream it live online.

That’s all from us, for now. Have a wonderful weekend!

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Hi. How are you? We’re pretty, pretty good. This is why:

We were lucky enough to work with Tom Cho on our latest Australian FM episode ‘The Sound of Music’. We were also lucky to secure the talents of Marc Martin; you can blame him for the incredible illustration.  If you’d like to listen to it, well, it’s waiting for you right next door, here.

“explore the development and growth of sound cultures that began life outside of commercial and mainstream circles. The conference aims to provide a forum for discussions concerning collections, recordings, research and technology based on alternative perspectives and paradigms. We hope to learn more about the individuals and groups working on the ‘outside’ as well as their unusual uses of recorded sound.“

We’re so excited about this conference. Here are a few highlights that we think will pique your interest:

The provisional program is now online as a pdf, and you can still register for the conference. Bargainesque.

So, um — be there or be square.

Paper Radio AM2 is coming soon.

Acronym Index:

ABC: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
ASRA: Australasian Sound Recordings Association
NFSA: National Film and Sound Archive
SLV: State Library of Victoria

* Image: The CSIRAC, via Keko on Flickr