RadioDoc Review Volume 3 Issue 1 Article 5 January 2017 The Arts of Amnesia: The Case for Audio Drama, Part One Neil Verma North-Western University, Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr Part of the Audio Arts and Acoustics Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Radio Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Verma, Neil, The Arts of Amnesia: The Case for Audio Drama, Part One, RadioDoc Review, 3(1), 2017. doi:10.14453/rdr.v3i1.5 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] The Arts of Amnesia: The Case for Audio Drama, Part One Abstract This article examines what the relationship between audio drama and radio drama might illuminate about both forms. Drawing on some 40 podcasts and other audio forms that take a serial structure, I explore the rise of audio drama podcasts since 2015 and situate them in both a more recent historical context since the late 1990s and in a broader history stretching back to the first Golden Age of adio.r By listening closely to key works on Serendipity, Homecoming and other podcasts, I argue that contemporary audio has profound potential to change both how we listen and how we relate to the sound media of the past. This is Part One of a two-part series. Keywords Radio Drama, Audio Drama, Homecoming, Serendipity, Radio History, Podcasting This article is available in RadioDoc Review: https://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr/vol3/iss1/5 The Arts of Amnesia: The Case for Audio Drama, Part One By Neil Verma, Northwestern University Audio Drama / Radio Drama No genre stirs dust into the shafts of sunlight in the attic of media history quite like radio drama, so it is no surprise that the recent rise of fiction among podcasters has clouded a problem that has been vexing critical and historical thought that surrounds the medium.