geekosystem

At the end of January, President Obama jumped onto Google Hangout for the first installment of his administration's "chats" with the nation. You know, to show how hip he is, how down with the people. And you have to admit, whether you like Obama or not -- it's a cool idea for any world leader. Except it's not really original, is it? Only the technology is! You see, on this day in 1933, only eight days into his presidency, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his national radio debut with the first of his famous "fireside chats."

Today, NASA and the Texas-based streaming media company RFC Media are launching Third Rock, a radio station for NASA enthusiasts. Now, you might think that this would be nothing more than audio versions of the kind of content you'd see on NASA TV. Instead, the station is actually a mix of various rock tunes intercut with space-related news bites and occasional ads for NASA jobs. It's actually not as bizarre as it sounds, trust me.

Wake Island Air Force base is located some 2,000 miles east of Japan and 2,000 miles west of Hawaii, putting it smack dab in the middle of the Pacific. During some recent renovations on the base, someone opened a door marked with a restricted area sign and made a startling discovery: A cache of over 9,000 carefully organized and cataloged vinyl records. Amazingly, the extensive collection has been valued at between $90,000 and $250,000.

It's unlikely that aliens are sitting around fiddling with rabbit ears in attempt to listen to our nonsense, but nevertheless, humans have been sending messages into space for decades. The first AM broadcast was on Christmas Eve, 1906, and Hitler's broadcasting of the 1936 Olympics is regarded as the first signal powerful enough to be carried into space. When compared to the vast size of the Milky Way, our presence here on Earth seems insignificant. Even our space-bound messages -- which are traveling at the speed of light -- are dwarfed by the galaxy's immensity. The image on the left illustrates our "bubble" of existence, which spans 200 light years in all directions -- but is just a small blip on the cosmic radar.

Radio broadcasters and music labels have agreed that they'd very much enjoy having Congress make it mandatory for an FM radio receiver to be included in every electronic portable device.

Barrett Eugene Hansen, otherwise known as Dr. Demento, announced on Monday that he will be closing the doors of his near 40-year old radio show this weekend in favor of producing shows for DrDemento.com.

While we're heartened to hear that he is not retiring from all media, his departure from radio is a shame, and has an ironic twist to it; He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame only this past November.

Radio is not the youngest of mediums, and in a time when everyone is trying to stay relevant in this lightning fast era of electronic mail, Dot Coms, and Virus Videos it can be difficult to keep on top of things. The following video show some of NPR's efforts to tap into the mysterious ever changing now.