Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal battle with polio, and his steady hand while overseeing a national eradication campaign, highlights decisive leadership against a virus that terrified America.
When the USSR launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1 didn’t do much other than regularly “beep” over the radio. Yet, this simple sound is associated with the beginnings of space exploration.
The Portuguese colonisers were not the only ones who could use radio for control. A new book tells how popular radio broadcasts from Angola’s liberation fighters were used as weapons in the struggle.
Even though they were a product of apartheid’s propaganda broadcasting machine, Zulu language radio dramas proved subversively powerful by reflecting communal black life and creating new stars.
In the 1920s American sports became big business, a billion dollar industry with “stars” created by the media and represented by professional agents and promoters. One of the pioneers of this new industry…
The strange northern hemisphere tradition of the television “Christmas Special” is somewhat alien to us on this end of the world. No Mr Bean with a turkey on his head or fantastically awkward Christmas…