Painting via Faithmouse

Whedon will be providing "a special musical performance" for an already-special episode of Ira Glass' This American Life on April 23rd. The episode - based around the theme of "Return to the Scene of the Crime" - will also feature contributions from TAL regulars Dan Savage, David Rakoff and Acme Novelty Library's Chris Ware, and be simultaneously broadcast to over 400 movie theaters and art centers around the US. No news, yet, as to exactly what Whedon's performance will entail, but we're hopeful for an appearance by Dr. Horrible co-writers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, we have to admit.

"This American Life," the Joss Whedon musical — live! [Variety]

The radio play Bring Me The Head Of Philip K. Dick just aired on BBC Radio Three today and is online as a podcast for the next seven days. Here's the official description:

Gregory Whitehead's dark, surreal and satirical drama, set in contemporary America, centres on a deadly futuristic weapon in the shape of the android head of science-fiction writer Philip K Dick. Invented by a shadowy research unit inside the Pentagon, the head - which believes it actually is Dick himself - is wreaking havoc on society and must be stopped before it finds its body.

I somehow wonder if an android head of Philip K. Dick wouldn't be more dangerous without his body. [via Total Dickhead]

The Stage, the British weekly newspaper for actors, is reporting that well-respected actors like Derek Jacobi, Jason Isaacs and Alex Jennings will be taking part in the new BBC season of sci-fi radio plays to be broadcast across the corporation's various networks this March. In addition to previously-announced adaptations of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama and Iain M. Banks' State Of The Art, the season - spread across BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and digital channel BBC 7 - will include new original works from Kim Newman and Mike Maddox, amongst others... but what explains the sudden popularity of the genre amongst big-name actors like Jacobi? A familar face, according to Jeremy Howe, BBC Radio 4's commissioning editor - Doctor Who:

There is a queue of people wanting to be in science fiction, because it’s seen to be sexy [thanks to the success of the series].

Of course, not everyone has the looks of David Tennant... but considering it's radio, who can tell?

Jacobi and McCormack to star in BBC radio’s sci-fi season [The Stage]

Illustration via NASA/ARCADE

Last week, the Croatian station Radio Antenna began broadcasting reports of an unidentified flying object, a bright spot of light seen moving through the sky. The reports were apparently a planned hoax by the station’s journalists and Kresimir Misak, the host of the local science fiction show, “On the Brink of Science.” Much as Orson Welles staged his radio broadcast of HG Well’s The War of the Worlds to expose the public’s gullibility, these hoaxsters claimed there was a point to their deception:

The Croatian radio journalists admitted only around noon that their report was a joke, aimed at ridiculing Mayor Milan Bandić’s plans to turn Zagreb into a police stronghold. Bandić intended to supply the police with a helicopter, an unmanned flying device, an armoured car and other special instruments, as well as to build a fortified command centre. The journalists behind the joke had decided to test the authorities by faking a Martian attack on the air.

But the mayor was not the only one deceived by the broadcasts. Zagreb residents jammed up the phone lines with calls to relatives, the authorities, and the local fire department. Police officials are currently investigating whether the reports resulted in any public harm and plan to file charges against those involved.

[Balkan Travellers via Marooned]

Barrowman shared his meat and two veg with the world via webcam during an apparance on BBC Radio 1's Switch show - but, to be fair, he was pushed into it by host Nick Grimshaw, who tempted fate (and Barrowman) by saying,

You're famous, we're told, for getting your willy out in interviews. Is this going to happen today?

Barrowman responded,

Alright. I'll get it out for you then, no problem.

And that's when the trouble started.

The trouble, of course, was pretty minor for the beleaguered broadcaster - Only one listener complained about the pre-9pm (Britain's broadcast watershed, after which nudity and swearing are fair game) nudity, compared with the slightly more controversial Russell Brand debacle from October. Nonetheless, both the BBC and Barrowman have issued apologies; Barrowman saying that the "light-hearted" banter went too far, and an official BBC spokesman commenting that "the programme overstepped the mark."

Of course, that's not stopped them making the show available on their iPlayer app.

BBC sorry over Barrowman 'exposure' [Digital Spy]

Says one of the commenters on Shorpy:

This picture is taken in Atwater Kent's bright new factory on Wissahickon Avenue. Built in mid-1924 at a cost of $2 million, it originally covered 5 acres and eventually covered 32. You can see how fresh and unscarred the tops of the assembly benches are in this excellent picture, taken less than a year after this huge factory opened.

A little over ten years earlier in 1912, women's work looked a lot more old fashioned. Shorpy has this great image of office life at that time, in what the photographer termed the "government printing office, Washington." The contrast is astounding.

Radio Girl [via Shorpy]

Government Office [via Shorpy]

Here's the new plot description:

"Somewhere out there in that chaos of darkness and light, of science and protons, of gods and stars and death... somewhere there's an answer."

The Torchwood Institute was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 to protect the British Empire against the threat of alien invasion. By 2008, all that remains of the organisation is a small team based in Cardiff. And now, following the tragic deaths of two of their colleagues, the remaining three – Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones – have to protect the human race against another unknown force from the darkness.

Martha Jones, ex-time traveller and now working as a doctor for a UN task force, has been called to CERN – the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva – where they're about to activate the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC is a particle accelerator which has been built deep underground in a 27km tunnel under Switzerland and France. Once activated, the collider will fire beams of protons together, recreating conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang – and potentially allowing the human race a greater insight into what the Universe is made of.

But so much could go wrong – it could open a gateway to a parallel dimension, or create a black hole – and now voices from the past are calling out to people and scientists have started to disappear...

Where have the missing scientists gone? What is the secret of the glowing man? What is lurking in the underground tunnel? And do the dead ever really stay dead?

Torchwood is a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Wales TV production Torchwood. Written by Joseph Lidster, it stars John Barrowman, Freema Agyeman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, Lucy Montgomery (of Tittybangbang) and Stephen Critchlow.

Also, D:Ream rock star and physicist Brian Cox will be interviewing celebrity particle physics enthusiasts, including Eddie Izzard, Alan Alda and Torchwood star John Barrowman.
[BBC]

Mmm, tasty mirrored building! Crunchy!
Ships are also good to eat. Especially oil tankers.
And who doesn't love a little stroll next to some power lines, especially if you can take a sip once in a while.
Obviously, power stations are the best source of food for kaiju, or at least the best source of "things the humans really don't want you to step on."

Undead Backbrain has provided a pretty good translation from the German of Gualagon's back story:

In 1966, just off the Japanese coast, the freighter Asahi Maru fights its way through a heavy storm, when something incomprehensible happens: the ship is destroyed and the only survivor maintains that it was destroyed by a gigantic kraken-like monster! Professor Tamblyn, specialist at the Serizawa institute in those forms of gigantism caused by radiation, examines the wreck of the ship and is dismayed to realise that a tremendous danger threatens Japan! While the military mobilises and naval forces patrol the coastline, reporters Keisuke Kusano and Isao Ogawa come upon traces of the monster Gualagon — and thereby put themselves in into deadly danger. Panic breaks out when the monster goes ashore on night and attacks Osaka… The race is on for scientists to develop new weapons to deal with the fright giant of Frankenstein! From the depths of the sea he comes! Inexorably, gigantically, all destroying!

An inexorable, giant, destructive creature from the sea? With tons of tentacles and multiple eyes? We can't wait to see the video trailer that the Gualagon crew has promised to post on its website any day now.

Gualagon [via Undead Backbrain] Thanks, averyguerra!

In the 45 minute episode, to be broadcast in Radio 4's traditional "Afternoon Play" slot, the Torchwood team - portrayed by their television cast - will deal with a mission revolving around a particle accelerator. Why a particle accelerator, you ask? Well, because the episode will be transmitted on the same day as the opening of the world's biggest particle accelerator in Switzerland, and if nothing else, Radio 4 likes to keep up with what's happening in the world.

The episode will be written by Joseph Lidster, who came up with the "A Day In The Death" episode of Torchwood season 2.

Radio 4 to air one-off Torchwood [Digital Spy]

According to Anneila Sargent, a Caltech professor and ALMA Board member:

Most of the photons in the Universe are in the wavelength range that ALMA will receive, and ALMA will give us our first high-resolution views at these wavelengths. This will be a tremendous advancement for astronomy and open one of our science's last frontiers.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory explained ALMA's capabilities in greater detail:

The millimeter and submillimeter wavelength range lies between what is traditionally considered radio waves and infrared waves. ALMA, a system using up to 66 high-precision dish antennas working together, will provide astronomers with dramatically greater sensitivity, the ability to detect faint objects, and resolving power, the ability to see fine detail, than has ever before been available in this range . . .

Astronomers expect ALMA to make extremely important contributions in a a variety of scientific specialties. The new telescope system will be a premier tool for studying the first stars and galaxies that emerged from the cosmic "dark ages" billions of years ago. These objects now are seen at great cosmic distances, with most of their light stretched out to millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths by the expansion of the Universe.

In the more nearby Universe, ALMA will provide an unprecedented ability to study the processes of star and planet formation. Unimpeded by the dust that obscures visible-light observations, ALMA will be able to reveal the details of young, still-forming stars, and is expected to show young planets still in the process of developing. In addition, ALMA will allow scientists to learn in detail about the complex chemistry of the giant clouds of gas and dust that spawn stars and planetary systems.

Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array [Official Site]

This is the enormous radio dish seen from above in 1962. The guy painting you see above is standing over the dish on a catwalk.

Top image via AP. Bottom image courtesy of the NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility (at least for now) of the NSF.

Arecibo Back in Operation [NYT]

• The Green Hornet appeared on the radio back in 1936, pre-dating the first appearance of Batman by only three years. However, both men wear masks, have cars that do neat tricks, and feature sidekicks who save their bacon on more than one occasion.
• Britt Reid, newspaper magnate by day, masked crimefighter by night, is The Green Hornet. He's a distant relative of The Lone Ranger (no, we aren't making this up) who travels around in a car he calls "Black Beauty." Hi-yo.
• The Green Hornet is a wanted criminal in the city, and he uses that notoriety as leverage when dealing with criminals.
• The only people who know the Hornet's identity are his secretary Lenore Case and the district attorney, Frank Scanlon.
• The Green Hornet's sidekick and chauffeur Kato was changed from Japanese, to Filipino, to Korean during the run of the show, although he was famously played by Bruce Lee when the series came to television.
• While he may not have worn a utility belt, The Green Hornet did use two specialized guns. One fired knockout gas, and the other one delivered "Hornet Stings" in the form of electric shocks.
• His car featured drop-down tubes that could fire rockets, had a knockout gas nozzle, could launch a flying surveillance device from its trunk, and even featured "infra-green" headlights that could let the driver see in the dark.
• On the radio, the Green Hornet's theme song was "The Flight of the Bumblebee," complete with a theremin providing the sound of a buzzing hornet.
• When The Green Hornet came to television in 1966, it was on the heels of the success of Batman, and both programs aired on ABC. Although Batman was played up to be campy, The Green Hornet was played straight. Both series featured the same announcer, were made by the same production company, and wouldn't you know it... Batman met The Green Hornet on his show.

Sadly, The Green Hornet never had the sticking power that Batman did, probably because a newspaper publisher who punches people just isn't all that exciting. Batman had scads of nifty gadgets and a Batcave, but all The Green Hornet has is a couple of funky guns and a car that looks... like a car. As a radio serial, The Green Hornet worked best in your imagination, just like The Shadow did. When Alec Baldwin brought that character to the screen in 1994, it tanked pretty hard. Billy Zane's 1930's comic-strip movie adaptation The Phantom did even worse in 1996.

So maybe instead of trying to make film adaptations of popular radio dramas and comic strips from the 1930's, Hollywood should create something new and cool. As much as we love our imagination, there is just no way we can picture Seth Rogen as a pugilistic publisher with a secret identity.