#105: The Car Radio

On the fascination of disembodied voices.

Katie Harling-Lee
Aug 23, 2017 · 4 min read

It’s not much to look at, my old fashioned car radio, but it is more than it looks. Dating from before 2005, this little radio cannot connect to my phone. Instead, I must choose from either my eclectic CD collection (stored in the glove compartment of course) or the radio, and for the past week I have been working at an internship, which includes a half-hour commute morning and evening. What better way to entertain myself on the drive than to switch on the radio?

What I particularly love about radio is its randomness, that you can come across almost anything if you flick through enough stations. Even when you stick to just one station — as I have this week, choosing BBC Radio 4—you will hear so many different shows.

I have chosen Radio 4 partly because it purely features talking. I need something to keep me focussed in the morning, entertaining me on an otherwise monotonous route. Listening to the radio, I find myself totally absorbed. It is a strikingly different experience to watching TV or reading a book. I hear people talking, but I cannot see them. I do not know what they look like, so I find my mind focussed purely on their voices, on every cough and hesitation, and that unique sound of disembodied voices on the radio.

The other main difference from TV is radio’s personal side, at least to the shows I am listening to. I am not listening to fictional stories or soap operas (the Archers is not really my style). I am listening to real people talking about real every day events, topics, and issues. I am hearing about their lives and thoughts as I listen to interviews with people on a whole range of subjects.

I also have little clue as to what is going to play next, or even indeed what will start playing when I first get into my car. It’s a surprise, and always a welcome one. I happen to have timed my commute well. From 8–8:30am I am listening to the ‘Today’ programme, featuring a broad range of information on the morning news and current affairs, where I have even started picking up a little sporting news knowledge. In the evening, I am driving 4:35pm-5:05pm, providing me with an interesting and eclectic 25 minutes of various radio shows and interviews, finished off with 5 minutes of the latest headlines — just the right amount of news for me to be listening to each day, without making me despair at the world.

One of the things that has really struck me about my radio listening experiences, apart from how fascinating it is, is the vast variety of topics I have learnt about in the last week. I was given a brief history of the Voyager ships, 1 and 2, including original radio broadcasts from the launch and further discoveries in space. I have heard a discussion on the difference between sermons in a Jewish Synagogue, a Pentecostal Church, and a secular church called the Sunday Assembly. I was regaled with the great life of Norman Lewis. I have been educated a little more in the confusing history of the Afghanistan War, something that I had previously been too young to understand. And today, I listened to a discussion on how the relationship between politics and the media has changed over the years, before then learning about a new LGBTQ+ podcast, inspired by Woman’s Hour.

People fear, like with all technology, that one day radio will die. For now, it is going strong, thriving in its uniqueness as a communication system using only sound. It is changing, widening in its forms as its cousin the Podcast grows more popular. Providing an eclectic mix of shows in this medium, radio gives you the opportunity to come across interviews and topics you may otherwise never have known existed. When those disembodied voices start talking about something on the radio, you start listening before you decide to. When we watch TV, we look at the guide first or, increasingly, only stream specific shows online. When we read, we first read the headlines, titles, subtitles, and blurbs, using these snippets of text to decide whether to spend our time actually reading that particular article, magazine, or book.

With radio, you are listening before you realise it, caught up in the discussion before you have decided that you are or are not interested. You hear one or two words and become intrigued. Listen a few seconds more, and you find yourself engrossed, trying to find out just what it is you are listening to. In this way a car radio, that unremarkable looking machine, starts to hold a fascination far beyond its physical presence. As you hang onto every word and take in every sound, you never quite know what you will hear next.


Katie writes a weekly blog post about random objects that she finds in her everyday life. If you’re interested in reading more, check out her blog Object, a collaboration with fellow Medium blogger Eleanor, and sign up for the monthly newsletter below.

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Katie Harling-Lee

Written by

Musician, reader, writer, and thinker, studying for a PhD in English Literature at Durham University. Interested in all things objects, music, Old Norse & cats.

Objects

Objects

Adventure into the world of objects - their significance, their stories, their histories - from the mundane to the obscure, one random thing at a time.

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