As you can see, I got back here quite late and missed your kind offer last night.

Thanks for being so thoughtful, you’re the best!

I love what’s at the link you provided and will let you know if I’m up for even more goodies once I’ve scoured what’s on offer.

FDL pupsters are the best! And you, Selise, are a prime example of the thoughtfulness that makes this the best online community I’ve ever come across.

Selise —

Ooooh, thanks for the tip! Can BBC7 be found through the main BBC website?

I’ll be sure to check it out, sounds great. I love radio plays.

the url for bbc7 is http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/

a nice thing is the “listen again feature” – with the last 6 days of episodes available.

if you have any favorites you’d like me to share with you… email me, at speakeasy dot net, and i’ll send you a cd or post some on line for you to down load. i have lots of mysteries (agatha christy, sherlock homes, brother cadfael, falco, dick francis, le carre, dorothy sayers, and lots more) but also drama (jane austen, charles dickens, …) and even some scifi.

Ann in AZ @ 132

I like Charlie Chan too! Haven’t seen any of his films in way too long! BTW, I watch “Murder She Wrote” whenever I get a chance. Seein’ a pattern yet?

Ach. I used to visit Bodega Bay (where Murder She Wrote was filmed) regularly, but I lived in Maine in the 60s and moved back in the 90s. I enjoyed the show for about a year, until trying to pretend Bodega Bay was someplace around Rockland just got to me.

(And actually, I was thinking of the scene where Katharine the unbelievably Great Hepburn pours out all of poor Humphrey not far behind Bogart’s booze.)

Every scene in that movie was great! There was something about the way Hepburn says “Mr. Allnut” that’s magical. And Bogie had never been better. What a great movie.

Ooooh, thanks for the tip! Can BBC7 be found through the main BBC website?

I’ll be sure to check it out, sounds great. I love radio plays.

Another advantage of listening to internet radio (via wireless speakers which allow us to play it in any room in the house) is that we can do other things at the same time — work on cleaning the kitchen, Mr. K8 working on fix-it jobs etc.

i do the same thing… even with c-span!

do you ever listen to BBC7? they have lots of radio plays, i’ve recorded lots and gotten others from podcasts (also old time radio plays) and people willing to share. there kinda fun for something lighter.

GordonM @ 124

I like Charlie Chan too! Haven’t seen any of his films in way too long! BTW, I watch “Murder She Wrote” whenever I get a chance. Seein’ a pattern yet?

Ach. I used to visit Bodega Bay (where Murder She Wrote was filmed) regularly, but I lived in Maine in the 60s and moved back in the 90s. I enjoyed the show for about a year, until trying to pretend Bodega Bay was someplace around Rockland just got to me.

(And actually, I was thinking of the scene where Katharine the unbelievably Great Hepburn pours out all of poor Humphrey not far behind Bogart’s booze.)

sometimes i like having sound on in the house too. in addition to listening to music, i like to listen to podcasts. there are so many public lectures at university all over the country and planet… and nowadays many of them are available to listen to over the toobz.

i especially like listening to people give talks about books they’ve written… helps me decide what i want to read. but there’s also symposiums, and classes and all kinds of interesting stuff… and i have airtunes hooked up to my stereo, so i can listen anywhere in the house (it’s small) via my laptop wireless.

if i turn on the tv regularly it just hypnotizes me… i hate that.

but, like you said – each to their own.

zennurse @ 66

I agree with you about taking it all in, I just don’t want to take in Tweety or Couric or MTP when they don’t give enough access to the truth. Online you can read newspapers from all over, blogs from everywhere and access folks like John Dean, FDL, Marcy, Dan Froomkin, etc, etc, etc. I had this nasty habit of turning on TV and getting tranced by the bright shiny objects. Checking in with Media Matters tells you that most of what is on TV is overwhelmingly gooper and even centrists get short shrift.

But I do wish I could watch Jon Stewart, KO and Colbert as well as Discover, Animal Planet and movies. But the risk of getting hypnotized by the other stuff was too high for me.

JMO

You may also have family that lives with you that you can listen to. I don’t. I have 2 dogs and four cats and a TV near my computer, one in the living room and one in my bedroom. The TV is on quite a bit, mostly for background noise, but also for some programs that I want to see, like some of the C-span programs, some PBS, some discovery channel, some history channel, some animal planet, and some just fun stuff like Monk or Num3ers or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. What can I say. Just corrupt, I guess.

Let me just pop in here and make some added suggestions for folk who want more choices.

From havint spent lots of time in the past as an enforced “shut-in” with only my pupster as company, I know what is meant by the need sometimes for something besides silence.

Discovering internet radio has been a wonder for me.

We listen quite a lot to a station out of Chesapeake called “The Nineteen-Twenties Radio Network.” In spite of the name, they play lots of stuff 24/7 from 1900 through 1949.

In the evenings, every weeknight, they play the old radio shows. Such as Green Hornet, Phillip Marlowe Mysteries, the Mel Blanc Comedy Hour, etc. etc. My favorite is the Hallmark Theater — just like the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” specials on teevee, but the radio format it had many years prior to television.

On the Hallmark program, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing a very young Gregory Peck doing an Ernest Hemingway short story. They play lots of these Hallmark programs, radio’s version of “high-brow” stuff.

And they don’t just play the programs themselves, but the original commercial advertising which aired at the time — they are always a hoot.

Turns out there was a program I had never heard of called “Gangbusters” which put out alerts for citizens to help catch criminals on the loose (sort of like Adam Walsh’s teevee show, America’s Most Wanted). On a recent episode, the person interviewing and FBI agent was noneother than “Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf”!!!

When it’s not a weeknight evening, they play music from the twenties with lots of Bessie Smith and Lady Day and New Orleans jazz, and flapper music for dancing, and then other special shows featuring WWII-era music, lots of fun with the Andrew Sisters and Vera Lynn and suchlike. I especially enjoy programs from during the Depression era — they make me feel like I’m boning up in the morale department for what’s coming in Depression Part Deux.

During the deep dark middle of the night they play music from BEFORE the twenties, and in that respect they’re just like another station which features music from the EIGHTEEN-NINETEENS on wax cylinder through up to 1920.

But beyond my quirky choices, there are zillions of other internet radio stations with every type of music imaginable, and PLENTY of interesting talk stations, talk of every stripe – both political and non-political.

The music can be as unusual and exotic as you like — Greek folk music, French chansons, South American music from the Andes, etc. etc. Every type of jazz imaginable. Many thousands of options out there.

We’re never bored. And we never watch teevee when teevee sucks (which is most of the time).

Another advantage of listening to internet radio (via wireless speakers which allow us to play it in any room in the house) is that we can do other things at the same time — work on cleaning the kitchen, Mr. K8 working on fix-it jobs etc.

And the imagination of creating your own visual images inherent in LISTENING rather than WATCHING (and being glued to the screen) is good for this aging brain, I think. It’s much less mentally passive.

Just an added suggestion for folks looking for something different. We have many more choices for amusement or entertainment or even for learning stuff than what the current corporate powers want to force feed us.