Julia Barton

3 weeks ago | continuous-wave.beehiiv.com | Julia Barton

Dear George, Of course, we have never met. You are a famous actor, currently headlining Good Night and Good Luck, one of the highest-grossing Broadway shows of all time, based on a 20-year-old movie you co-wrote about famous newsman Edward R. Murrow. In a couple of days — June 7, 2025 — you’ll be live-streaming your next-to-last performance on CNN. So your movie about television has been adapted to a play that will be on TV: you are truly “platform agnostic,” as they say.

1 month ago | continuous-wave.beehiiv.com | Julia Barton

“You just flip it” McBride set a pattern for a type of program that’s more popular than ever: the personal interview show. These shows are based on free-ranging, informative conversations that we, as listeners, get to eavesdrop upon. At their best, personal interview shows pull us into a kind of flow-state with the guest and host. But these shows have a paradox built into the format: the guests are always changing. What keeps the listeners coming back is the host.

1 month ago | continuous-wave.beehiiv.com | Julia Barton

Take for instance, how you perceive your own voice when you hear a recording of it. Do you think, “That’s not me! I don’t sound like that…do I?” 🙉 Yes, you do sound like that — but also not as bad as you think. There are anatomical and neurological reasons why our recorded voices may feel weird to us. Those reasons have to do with how sound waves are funneled into our inner ears and turned into electrical impulses that are then interpreted by the brain.

1 month ago | transom.org | Julia Barton

Intro from Transom: Despite being called "The First Lady of Radio" during her time, few today have heard of Mary Margaret McBride. In this, the second of her new series on our "audio ancestors," story editor, producer, and reporter Julia Barton highlights the life and career of McBride and the interview techniques that continue to profoundly influence today's productions. New York City added extra train cars on routes to Yankee Stadium the morning of May 31, 1949.

1 month ago | continuous-wave.beehiiv.com | Julia Barton

Plans for the US Naval airship Shenandoah (National Geographic via airships.net) We no longer look to the skies and expect to see giant balloons the length of a stadium, but shaped like suppositories, carrying people to and fro. I am fascinated by these blimpey anachronisms. One of the favorite podcast episodes I ever got to edit was Tim Harford’s The Deadly Airship Race, part of his Pushkin show Cautionary Tales.