Radio Drama Podcasts

A girl speaks to a police sergeant and will not say what the flying saucer told her. "I can't tell you," she says, and the police decide she is for Bellevue. In X Minus One: A Saucer of Loneliness (01-09-1957), on Classic Streams: Old Time Retro Radio, the whole story turns on that withheld sentence. Someone orders a call to the FBI, a reporter wants the story, and the narrator, who lives alone, warns us early that we must know the teller to understand the tale. Radio handles this better than film. Silence is a sound, and a voice that will not speak can hold a room.

The detective show is the deepest seam, and its best guide is an insurance investigator. In THE ALDER MATTER JOHNNY DOLLAR on 1001 RADIO DAYS, hosted by Jon Hagadorn, Bob Bailey's Johnny Dollar narrates the case as an itemized expense account. Item one is $1.35, "the price of being taxied" to the insurer's office. The trouble is a promoter who changed his beneficiary five times in a month on a $250,000 policy, and the ledger keeps the dread businesslike. That episode, THE SILVER BLUE MATTER YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR and THE CLINTON MATTER YOURS TRULY JOHNNY DOLLAR all run between 63 and 68 minutes, stitched together from installments made for weeknight broadcast. Early in the Silver Blue case, the star previews "tomorrow's" chapter. Clinton is the cleanest entry: Dollar drives into a Colorado town described to him as sleepy and finds the new school building on fire.

Edmund O'Brien plays Dollar in shorter episodes spread across Yours Truly Johnny Dollar - Nighttime Radio, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar - Moonlight Radio and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar - Retro Radio. Johnny Dollar - The Leland Blackburn Matter Rehl turns up on two of them, which is exactly the duplication that makes browsing tiring. In Johnny Dollar - The Joan Sebastian Matter, a jeweller paging through an order book recalls a gold door key, a customer who paid cash, and the fact that it was snowing. That is how a good case moves: one remembered detail at a time.

Boston Blackie is lighter on its feet. The reformed thief turned detective spars with Inspector Faraday across these feeds, from Boston Blackie to Boston Blackie| Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Mystery Dramas. In Boston Blackie - The Sam Bellows Case on Boston Blackie - Moonlight Radio, a man calling himself Seth Peters gives himself away by tearing matches and stubbing out a cigarette after a few drags. The Great Detectives feed adds a host, Adam Graham, who presents episodes and supplies context such as the July 2, 1947 air date of Boston Blackie: Johnny ‘Cash' Burns' Imported Wool. For hardboiled narration, Classic Streams: Old Time Retro Radio has The Adventures of Philip Marlowe: The Covered Bridge (01-14-1950), and the Mystery page goes further.

Saddle-Up Western Radio, Trailblazing Western Tunes and Retro Western Broadcasts share series, among them Gunsmoke, Fort Laramie and Tales of the Texas Rangers. Their best episodes are detective stories with horses. In Hopalong Cassidy - Right Rope Wrong Neck, Hoppy asks why a guard shot from the front would be lying on his back. In Texas Rangers - The White Elephant, a shuttered row of cabins draws the narrator back into town because its electric meter is spinning. Texas Rangers - Jailbird announces that its dates and places are fictitious but "the events themselves are a matter of record." That is the program's claim, and the drama itself cannot prove it.

Daily Lux Radio Theatre is radio as a night out. Cecil B. DeMille introduces Lux Radio Theatre - Alias The Deacon, a 57-minute adaptation of a screen success, and compares Bob Burns's card-playing hero to Robin Hood. The sponsor doesn't hide in these episodes. In Lux Radio Theatre - Burlesque, with Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler, talk about lighting film stars slides into a pitch for Lux Toilet Soap.

Enhanced Radio Classics restores its audio and hands Orson Welles the narrator's chair in (EP34) The Lives of Harry Lime: "Faith, Lime and Charity", where a con man reasons that a donor good for 3,000 pounds is good for five. Its (EP1) The Weird Circle: "The Fall of the House of Usher" plays gothic horror at full volume. The Horror Fiction and Classic Literature pages go further.

Drama - Golden Radio offers a caution. In Encore Theater - Dr. Erchlick's Magic Bullet, Charles Bickford's Dr. Ehrlich makes a microbe visible by staining it red. It is a dramatized life presented on behalf of a penicillin producer, so hear it as a sponsor's hero story rather than history. Science fiction listeners should start with X Minus One and continue to the Science Fiction page.

Sitcoms belong here too, and they show how much timing a microphone can carry. Father Knows Best has a feed. In Junk Around House - Father Knows Best on Father Knows Best - Bedtime Radio, Jim has bought a hundred pounds of putty for $10.86 and explains the per-pound saving as if it settled everything. Our Miss Brooks - Moonlight Radio is sharper. Offered a stash of stockroom supplies in Our Miss Brooks - Missing Electric Heater, Miss Brooks answers, "Walter, I am an English teacher, not a fence." Jack Benny - Retro Radio and Comedy - Sleepy Radio go broader, and period sponsor copy is part of the texture.

Radyo Tiyatral presents Turkish-language radio theatre built on a principle stated in its own description: sets, places and people depend entirely on your imagination. Early in BİR CUMA HİKAYESİ | Radyo Tiyatrosu, a play by Müşerref Öztürk, a woman asks her cat, Boncuk, why they keep a doorbell when no one is expected, and the 51-minute play earns the question. BEYAZ GECELER | Radyo Tiyatrosu builds a friendship on one condition: no falling in love.

Newer productions keep the old forms working. KPFA - Suspense calls itself a new version of the classic anthology. In Suspense – September 16, 2018, two bank tellers run for Montreal with a hundred grand, unsure whether they killed a guard. Don't Close Your Eyes: Live Radio Theatre! plays a three-act frontier caper in Prudence Pearly, Girl Reporter of the Old West: 'Trouble at the Bar-None Ranch!'. The Audio Drama page and the Fiction guide are the next stops.