Radio On - A Review

Flickr User peetje2

"You will never understand radio by listening to it."

I liked reading this article a lot, mostly because it gave me a whole new outlook on the whole medium of radio. The line quoted above really embodies the main aspect of the article, which is that radio goes far beyond simply listening - it is a dream that you are guided through by your auditory senses.
The thing I enjoy a lot about radio, especially when broadcasted as stories (like the one in the article, and the one we heard in class), is how personal the experience ends up being. In that I mean that when listening to a story, your mind has a way of taking you there so you experience it on a whole new level. I think that by listening to a story you become so much more engaged by it, only because that is how we originally were exposed to stories - by word of mouth. Listening to a story through radio broadcast brings back these animalistic senses we once were so fond of and now have through reading, video, watching and more (not to undermine these mediums, which also have their own unique qualities). This is exactly what I think puts radio aside from all other mediums of storytelling - the familiarity. We understand, learn about, and interpret our world through listening and hearing, so when we listen to a story we are automatically transported to a place where other mediums would have trouble taking us. I believe this is the magic of radio, which is far, far too often underrated.