Mixtape: Cassetternet

It was the early '80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again, and again, and again they would hear it near their secret military bases, in their h ...  Show more

When no one seems to be listening, how far do you go to be heard? In December 2008, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad for a press conference. And at the very end of his remarks, a shoe came flying past his head. It was “the shoe heard around the world,” and countles ...  Show more

The development of the magnetic recording process changed the entertainment industry. In this episode, we look at the rise of tape, including the 8-track and the compact cassette. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener ...  Show more

Andrew Simon, a historian of media, popular culture, and the Middle East at Dartmouth College, discusses his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2022) , with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Media of the Masses is an engagi ...  Show more

Mo’min Swaitat unearthed a vast trove of forgotten Palestinian music. Not only did it hold long-lost recordings of his own Bedouin family, but also a mysterious yellow cassette of protest songs set to an electro-disco beat. Mo’min became captivated by the yellow tape. It would op ...  Show more

Andrew Simon talked about his latest book "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt." Media of the Masses investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cas ...