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The Spot: Have phone, will phreak

This week on KALW's showcase for the best stories from public radio podcasts and independent radio producers...

Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God,” produced by Cicely Fell for BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts, March 2017.

If you like "The Spot," you're going to love "Short Cuts."

In the 1950’s through 70’s, a subculture of hackers "swung" from telephone line to telephone line, testing the technology and limits of the newly modernized telephone system. Dubbed “phone phreaks,” they’d spend lots of time dialing around the telephone network to understand how the system worked.

This piece features the voices of Roger Haworth, Evan Doorbell, and Mark Bernay and originally aired on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts, an excellent radio show and podcast featuring stories and found sounds that you can listen to on iTunes and Stitcher.

In defence of boredom,” originally aired on the ABC podcast Radiotonic, June 2015.

Radio Producer Tom Wright makes some compelling arguments for powering down our personal devices, as he seeks to figure out once and for all, are we really so bad off without our cell phones?

"In defence of boredom" was written and produced by Tom Wright, with sound by John Jacobs. The piece first aired on the program Radiotonic from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The show has since been reassembled into the podcast, This Is About. You can subscribe to their podcast on iTunes and Twitter, but only once you’re ready to pick up your smartphone again.

This week's episode featured music from: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Harvey & The Phenomenals, Jon Brion, and Claudine Clark.

If you have a suggestion for a podcast or an audio project we should feature, please drop us a line at thespot@kalw.org.

Tune in next week for another episode of The Spot, only on KALW San Francisco.