logo
episode-header-image
May 2018
17m 52s

Peter Hoar, “The World’s Din: Listening ...

Marshall Poe
About this episode

In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland University of Technology, explores how new technology shaped how New Zealanders experienced the very act of listening in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Hoar traces how this cultural revolution in sound reflected new global possibilities in recordings, radio, and film that New Zealanders made all their own.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

Up next
Today
Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour" (Oxford UP, 2025)
A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly been described as an upper-class gentleman, often exemplified by well-known men such as Beau Brummell, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar ... Show More
43m 52s
Aug 21
Mario Livio and Jack Szostak, "Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life" (Basic Books, 2024)
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Ma ... Show More
55m 44s
Aug 21
Stacia Kalinoski, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)
The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of ... Show More
31m 1s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2023
New Zealand: everything you wanted to know
New Zealand has a short history in terms of human settlement – but according to Professor James Belich, that makes it all the more interesting and worthy of study. In conversation with David Musgrove, James answers listener questions on the history of New Zealand, in the latest i ... Show More
58m 41s
Jun 2024
Music on the move
Many of us remember the first portable music device we owned: a transistor radio, a boombox, a Walkman or perhaps an iPod. We might even recall the songs we played on it. But we might be less aware of how profoundly audio technology developments from the 1950s to 2000s changed th ... Show More
49m 25s
May 19
Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)
Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by what was known as the Radio Craze. Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home (Bodleian Library, 2025) expresses what the radio's arrival ... Show More
52m 57s
Dec 2024
How Old is America?
When fossils were discovered in the US during the 19th Century, it altered American understandings of science, religion, race and more. So what was the Hadrosaurus Foulkii, and why did it have such an enormous effect? Caroline Winterer, William Robertson Coe Professor of History ... Show More
27m 55s
Nov 2021
Voices in the Air: Sarah Johnston on 100 years of radio
Sound historian Sarah Johnston explores 100 years of radio in a talk at the National Library, focusing on the early decades and the innovative World War II radio Mobile Unit recordings. Sarah Johnston celebrates the first hundred years of radioRead the full text of the talkKia or ... Show More
57m 59s
Mar 2025
Jurassic America
Tristan Hughes explores Ancient America's true age; how 19th-century fossil discoveries across North America revealed a history far older than previously believed, challenging the notion that the Americas were a 'New World.' Tristan is joined by Professor Caroline Winterer as the ... Show More
43m 13s
Dec 2024
Andrew David Field, "Rocking China: Music Scenes in Beijing and Beyond" (Earnshaw Books, 2023)
Andrew Field, in his new book Rocking China (Earnshaw Books, 2023), documents one of the most exciting moments in the history of Chinese indie music. Through interviews with key players in these scenes over a period of two decades, Field explores the meanings of rock music in Chi ... Show More
1h 15m
Mar 2025
How Books About Things That Changed the World… Changed the World
Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chickens—there are books about all ... Show More
58m 24s
Jun 17
Inside America's Famous Sex Study
How could recording people having sex be 'for science'? Same question for sleeping with your colleagues? Well, these were just two of the practices embraced by the subject of today's conversation.Donna Drucker is returning to the podcast to discuss pioneering sexologist, Alfred K ... Show More
44m 11s
Sep 2024
Bonus: The Global Story - The secret battle for the Murdoch empire
A bonus episode from The Global Story. Rupert Murdoch is locked in a secret court battle with three of his eldest children, over the future of his media empire. 
26m 53s