Long before cable TV, YouTube, and social media, there was radio. We grew up listening to local AM and FM stations, sometimes on our very own portable transistor radios. But there was another type of radio broadcast out there in the ether, one with a secretive, faintly Cold War flavour to its name: shortwave. Once the domain of international broadcasters like Radio Free Europe, the BBC World Service, Voice of America, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, and hundreds of others, the new world of the Web left the old world of shortwave radio gasping for air.

This week’s episode of Rabbit Holes explores the history of shortwave radio; who’s still broadcasting; software-defined radio dongles that let those so inclined (like us) more easily tune in and turn on to wavelengths of more modest proportions; antennas and radio shacks; pirate radio; Lord Haw-Haw; Tokyo Rose; and more.

Music and Image credits
Podcast “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Radio Tower image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay
Car Crash from BBC Sound Effects
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com

The guys are back on-station after an undeserved two-year hiatus during which time there was no personal growth other than Dave's pants size and two beards, one of which belongs to Richard. This week's episode was taped just before the Big Slack Off and continues a series dedicated to music albums that left a mark.

In 1971, a musical duo from New York State who'd named themselves after a steam-powered dildo called “Steely Dan III from Yokohama” in William S. Burroughs’ 1959 novel Naked Lunch appeared on the music scene. We're not making that up.

In November 1972 Steely Dan's debut album, “Can't Buy a Thrill,” was released. It was an enormous hit featuring songs like “Do It Again,” “Dirty Work,” and “Reelin' In the Years.” Much success ensued, but something about that album caused it to resonate across the decades like a vapour-enabled sex toy.

And so it begins...

Music and Image credits:
Podcast “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Car Crash from BBC Sound Effects
Record albums photo by Joyce G on Unsplash

According to industry statistics, only 11% of podcasts make it to fifty episodes, and 90% never publish more than three episodes before drowning in a raging torrent of abject shame, humiliation, and self-abuse. (We may have made up the part about the torrent.)

Founded in August of 2022, the same month the FBI raided Donald Trump's Palm Beach bolthole looking for classified documents he ripped off from the White House on his way out the door, we are now proud members of the elite 11%. In this week's episode, we celebrate our historic Big Five-O by re-living some of Semi-Retired's more or less memorable moments.

As a bonus, Dave recounts his recent fall from social media grace at the non-corporeal hands of an Instagram AI "team member."

Warning: Some content verges on self-abuse. Listener discretion is semi-advised.

Music and image credits:
Episode graphic by Richard Bonomo and ChatGPT (or is it the other way around?)
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Not a day goes by without news about AI making the headlines. From last summer's actor's strike, to AI-assisted documentary film-making, to a recent AI beauty pageant, even AI podcast co-hosts (take note, Richard), there's no telling where this rapidly metastasizing technology will turn up next.

In their latest guaranteed100% Grade B+ human-generated episode, the guys take a look at some of the latest AI escapades and wonder aloud: where's it all going?

Music and image credits:
Tsunami image by Erik Nikolai Halsteinrud from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

On the eighth day of April 2024, Montreal found itself in an extremely unusual and fortunate position. For the first time in ninety-two years, and the last time for another eighty-two, its citizens were directly underneath the tiny shadow cast on the Earth by the Moon as it passed in front of the Sun AKA the Path of Totality. And if you're hearing the 5th Dimension's shimmering pop hit from 1969, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" playing inside your head, you're not alone. Although that's astrology, not astronomy, and never the twain shall meet.

In this week's double-barrel episode, Richard and Dave talk about their eclipse experiences, but only after indulging themselves in a discussion about recent sci-fi movies and streaming series that cast dark shadows across their notoriously fickle attention spans.

Music and image credits:
Totality as seen from Montreal by Megan Ranco
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Is it even possible to imagine a cultural vocabulary that doesn't include phasers, photon torpedoes, communicators, the bridge, the transporter room, sickbay, beaming down, beaming up, the Enterprise, shuttlecraft, warp engines, dilithium crystals, The Federation, Star Fleet Command, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, the neutral zone, Talosians, Andorians, Gorns, Metrons, tribbles, subspace radio and open hailing frequencies? And what about Harcourt Fenton (Harry) Mudd and his mummified wife Stella? What about them?

In our opinion, a universe without Star Trek would be like a day without starshine.

Music and image credits:
Starship Enterprise by p2722754 from Pixabay
Star Trek theme "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by Alexander Courage
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Sir Winston Churchill (not the guy who ran the Crescent Street pub) described the United States and his own country as being two nations "divided by the same language." The same could be said of the generations, each of which develops its own set of expressions in order to assert its sense of linguistic individuality by infusing their day-to-day conversations with terms, phrases, and metaphors that reflect their life and times.

In their latest bad ass pod, hep cats Richard and Dave groove deeply on some of the newspeak jive they've heard recently, and ask themselves where all this kludgy word salad could be heading.

Music and image credits:
Episode image graphic courtesy of ChatGPT
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock

Ah, the wretched excesses of late-70s English rock bands with roots in the kaleidoscopic, Swinging London days of the UFO Club, Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Vidal Sassoon, and Sgt. Pepperland. Rob Reiner's first-of-a-kind 1984 'mockumentary' follows fictional hard rock has-beens, Spinal Tap, as they try to get it together for just one more US tour to promote their pungently titled new album, 'Smell the Glove.'

Richard and Dave take their love of rock music to 11 this week with a characteristically freeform examination of this riotous masterpiece of cultural satire, in an episode that somehow devolves into fond reminiscences about paintball-related injuries in the closing minutes. For added content value, Dave provides a progress report on his avoidance of using five really stupid expressions.

Long Live Rock and Roll! Long Live Tap!

Music and image credits:
Dial at 11 by Three-shots from Pixabay
Semi-Retired “flipz” theme by tubebackr from SoundCloud
Music promoted by free-stock-music.com
Perforated steel by YuriyC from VectorStock