Immaterial Culture engages with texts that are now largely unread and dismissed as trivial or dubious: the vast body of plays thrillers, narrative poetry, comedy sketches, documentaries and adaptations of literature and drama that aired on American network radio during the medium s so-called golden age.
For a quarter century, from the stock market crash of 1929 to the introduction of the TV dinner in 1954, radio plays enjoyed an exposure unrivalled by stage, film, television and print media. As well as entertaining audiences numbering in the tens of millions for a single...