Radio America

Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content. Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts' playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades.

Adventures in Oddity is a light-hearted, informative peek into the inter-relating minds and personalities of two veteran voice actors and the characters they bring to life. Katie Leigh and Will Ryan, a pair of voice-over professionals with thousands of film and television credits between them, interview each other regarding their work on America's favorite dramatic radio series Adventures in Odyssey (heard on over 2,400 radio stations in North America since 1987).

Before Derek Christian became the confused hero, pawn of the universe, and reluctant cosmic adventurer of the Intergalactic novels, he was a simple copywriter at a radio station in Atlanta, WRFA: Radio Free America. This story tells how his writer's block set off a domino effect of murder and cosmic intrigue as The Fear chases him to his breaking point, and how he manages to escape into a world not of his own making.

Cold War Radio is a fascinating look at how the United States waged the Cold War through the international broadcasting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Mark G. Pomar takes listeners inside the two radio stations to show how the broadcasts were conceived and the impact they had on international broadcasting, United States-Soviet relations, Russian history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On Halloween eve 1938, people across America gathered around the radio to listen to their favorite Sunday evening program. Expecting to hear the latest drama from Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, many were alarmed when news bulletins interrupted the show. New Jersey had been rocked by mysterious explosions. The announcements continued, each more frantic than the last. An invading army's strange and powerful weapons had killed thousands. Listeners feared the worst. Was America under attack by the Germans? Could this be the start of another world war?

With the advent of several controversial social movements in subsequent decades, a non-traditional style of editorial persona began to take control of the news machinery in America. The weighing of ideas gave way to exclusive promotion of a specific world view, and the omission of all opposition within a devotee’s range of hearing. The American right found the voice it needed in the supremely gifted Rush Hudson Limbaugh III. Limbaugh possessed an unmatchable rhetorical reflex, a well-informed sense of each argument’s gist, and a flair for the politically incorrect.

On Amazonia, succession to the throne is simple. The Queen (Barbara Harris) is simply cloned, thus avoiding all manner of complications. When the queen's first clone is found to be imperfect, it is discarded and they try again, but the first clone survives. When that clone goes to Earth to get the diamonds she needs to run the cloning machine back on Amazonia (which can repair her imperfections), she seeks out Anne Manx (Claudia Christian), the finest Private Eye in the galaxy, and enlists her help.

Wendy McCloud is ordered into Anger Management Therapy. But it's not much help when pirates murder her father, Planetary President of Chromius. Now that Anne Manx has left, Chromius still needs someone else just as smart, relentless, incorruptible...and sexy.