Transmissions
Harness Your Hopes: Ola Owodunni reads ’A Road Often Travelled’
Alan Meaney (2022)
Alan Meaney (IE 2022)
30 min Episode 5 of 6
Harness Your Hopes is a series of 6 podcasts investigating and showcasing fiction. Six of the West of Ireland’s upcoming authors have written a new short story inspired by the theme of ‘harness your hopes’. In each episode the author reads the story and then speaks with the presenter about their craft and inspiration and how the theme inspired them. The aim of the programme is to place the listener at the heart of the artist’s creative process, while finding common ground and some positivity in these difficult times.
Ola Owodunni reads her story 'A Road Often Travelled'. She discusses how the story is based on the life of a friend of hers, the struggles that people in Direct Provision face and the hope in both the story and in life for asylum seekers.
Written and read by Ola Owodumni
Produced by Allan Meaney
Eliza: A Robot Story
Ella Watts / Emma Hickman (UK 2022)
Crowd Network / Ella Watts (UK 2022)
47 min Episode 1 of 4
A dark, near-future science fiction fairytale about a robot who can feel, and the world that attempts to control her. When a robot called Eliza falls in love with Him, they work together to make her fully sentient. But consciousness doesn’t come without consequences. As Eliza gets caught in a web of both loving and abusive relationships, she has to fight to survive.
This all female production explores age-old fantasies about sentient AI and female robots becoming more than they are programmed to be. Unlike ‘Her’ or ‘Bladerunner’ this is from the robot Eliza’s perspective as she analyses the humans around her, especially ‘Him’
Eliza: Tanya Reynolds , Him: Arthur Darvill, Her: Dominique Tipper
Additional Voices: Sarah Griffin and Tom Crowley
Writer: Emma Hickman
Director and Producer: Ella Watts
Sound Design and Mixing / Mastering: Alexis Adimora
A Crowd Network original made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust / Manchester Women’s Aid
No Big Deal
Charlie Billingham (UK 2022)
Charlie Billingham (UK 2021)
17 min Episode 1 of 1
A bit of light relief with this new true-crime comedy thriller. Join acclaimed journalist Emily Stephenson as she delves into the murky waters of a 2004 undercover police operation gone horribly wrong.
True Crime podcasts are ripe for comedy and we’re keen to hear more from Emily and these incompetent undercover cops - you can donate a coffee here ko-fi.com/charliebillingham to get more made.
Written by Charlie Billingham
Starring : Gayaneh Vlieghe, Mungo Russell, Calum Maclean, Lydia Cook, Henry Whaley, Chesney Fawkes-Porter, Cait Mahoney & Charlie Billingham.
A Walking Scientist
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
10 min
Drawing thin lines between imagination and reality in an odd, yet common life situation- missing a flight. The monologues take the listener through different noisy layers of one voice changing tenses, presenting a possible future-past self which is just a coping mechanism for diverting racing thoughts of guilt. The play is centred around creating a new identity in a possible future: a walking scientist, a humorous being, but also an occasion for social critique from a dissident to conforming with a life ruled by capital. The piece is created with vernacular sounds: computer cooler, street shop alarms, walking sounds - mostly translated from noise to voice and back.
Written, performed and produced by Jasmina Al Qaisi
This piece was a recipient of Works for Radio from The Lake Radio and a longer version 2nd place in Burning Mic non-german speaking category for Berliner Hörspiel Festival of free Radio Plays
Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel
Pejk Malinovski (DK/US 2014)
Pejk Malinovski (DK/US 2014)
20 min
Finding inner peace is difficult... especially when you're sitting next to Harvey Keitel. This story was produced by Pejk Malinovski as a Falling Tree production, and originally aired on BBC Radio 3. Featured on the Truth Podcast.
Narrated and Produced by Pejk Malinovski
Selected by guest curator Cristana Marras
This amazing piece by Pejk Malinovski. “Everything, nothing, Harvey Keitel” is a crazy ride inside the head of the author. I love the apparent spontaneity of it all, the understated way of tell the story so that you feel you might as well be in the same room in which Harvey Keitel appears, completely unexpected and out of place. Amusing, compelling, beautifully written. It’s the kind of storytelling that makes me feel like dropping everything I’m doing to go producing something beautiful. :-)
In The Dark: The Everything Is Fine Forecast
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
7 min
The Shipping Forecast but it's you having a panic attack.
Produced and performed by Ewan Cameron as part of an ongoing podcast called Randomly Generated Thought.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: Static Winter - 83 and The Visitation
Pete Hazell (UK 2021)
Pete Hazell (UK 2021)
10 min
Somewhere in a remote outpost, amongst foul weather and radio static, a lone operator scans the bleak signals and reports his findings to HQ.
But why isn't HQ responding?
Is something trying to visit the outpost?
And Who's Leonard?
Improvised and sound designed by Pete Hazell
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
Soundworlds: Town Is By The Sea
Soundworlds (CA/UK 2022)
Anna Rheingans / Joanne Schwartz / Patrick Eakin Young (CA/UK 2022)
19 min
An audio picture book conjuring impressions from a childhood spent in the coastal mining communities of Nova Scotia. We follow Davey as he describes his daily routine: from waking up with the sea sparkling outside his window, to playing with his friends, buying groceries for his mother, and visiting his grandfather’s grave. Throughout the day, his thoughts keep returning to his father, working in the coal mines deep beneath the town.
Soundworlds is not just a podcast. It’s an audio stage for diverse stories told in extraordinary ways. It’s a place for an exciting new form of audio drama that we call sonic theatre. Created by musicians, writers, theatre-makers and sound artists, sonic theatre pieces are more than radio plays. They’re immersive sound worlds, intoxicating blends of music and storytelling, sound design, documentary and fiction.
Directed by Patrick Eakin Young
Music composed and performed by Anna Rheingans
Sound design and mixing: Ross Flight
Text by Joanne Schwartz, adapted from her 2017 book with illustrator Sydney Smith
The Painting
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
9 min
This we much we know. The woman in the portrait is wearing pearls, leaning forward, smoking a cigarette. But the rest is unknown – who she was, her relationship with an unknown artist. It is open to speculation. This absence of information invites those who see her to project their own stories onto her. She is like a mirror. Knocked off balance by the painting, the narrator ponders what lies behind his obsession with the woman in the portrait. He revisits an upheaval in his life and a stark truth that he has been avoiding.
Writer/Narrator: Neil Sandell
Producers: Neil Sandell with Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime & Sarah Geis Sound Design: Mira Burt-Wintonick & Neil Sandell
Selected by guest curator, sound artist and podcast producer Cristina Marras
“I find this piece fascinating yet disquieting for the way in which it manages to embody absence, making us feel all the melancholy of not knowing, that transcends the search for information on the object at the centre of the narration, to become subtle nostalgia, a sensation well known to all expats around the world.”
Cassie and Corey: I Need Jam Now
Chris Hogg (UK 2020)
Chris Hogg (UK 2020)
13 min Episode 1 of 6
Cassie and Corey is a Drum & Bass Musical Podcast About Eating Disorders
It’s the night before his gastric-band operation and Corey is terrified. He’s 16 years old, weighs 300 pounds and has a BMI of 60*. However, if Corey doesn’t have the operation, his hypertension will literally make him blind. None of this stops him from stealing, in the dead of night, an electric motor-scooter from the hospital. He picks up his best friend Cassie, a recovering anorexic. Like Corey, Cassie has found solace in the jungle beats and liquid rhythms of D’n’B and they toast together all. the. time.