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You're driving in your car late at night, trying to find something interesting on your radio to keep you awake. As you skip past songs you've heard too many times already, and past the grating talk-show ranters, something catches your ear: an old-style radio drama. The story line, acting and sound effects engage you, and only after some time do you realize you're listening to a religious program. The show is "Unshackled!", a dramatic program with the flavor of radio from long ago, and with production values calculated to draw in even those listeners who are not particularly religious. "Unshackled!" presents what it says are real-life stories, based on real people. The plots vary widely from one show to the next, but most revolve around some gut-wrenching personal crisis that is resolved only when the central character becomes a Christian. If that does not sound like particularly compelling radio, then you've probably never heard an "Unshackled!" broadcast. The show is produced by Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Begun in 1950, it is claimed to be the longest-running radio drama in history. It incorporates professional actors, original music, creative sound effects and other elements to re-create the style of shows from radio's golden age. It is good enough to have won several awards over the years. "Unshackled!" is currently broadcast on 1,550 radio stations. Just search for "Unshackled!" or for "Pacific Garden Mission" to find a list of stations and a broadcast schedule. Also, many of the shows have been archived for listening via the program's own Web site. Stefan Smith is a radio junkie who writes on entertainment and related subjects for the Solid Gold Info Writers Consortium. Recently, he has written an extensive review of amazing new software anyone can use to capture music audio streams from Internet radio broadcasts and break them up into individual mp3 song files--a legal way to download virtually free music. Read the review at: http://www.solid-gold.info/radio2mp3.html |
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