During the late Depression, intimate and kaleidosonic audioposition schemes were the prevailing conventions used to structure many innovative works in radio. These two aesthetic schemes were ideal for an exploratory sound and offered a range of effects, either transporting listeners through environments alongside traveling characters or teleporting them around the earth. In addition, the intimate style and the kaleidosonic style amounted to what Michael Denning has called an “aesthetic ideology,” one version of which is Norman Corwin's hybrid of the intimate and kaleidosonic styles, dubbed...

During the late Depression, intimate and kaleidosonic audioposition schemes were the prevailing conventions used to structure many innovative works in radio. These two aesthetic schemes were ideal for an exploratory sound and offered a range of effects, either transporting listeners through environments alongside traveling characters or teleporting them around the earth. In addition, the intimate style and the kaleidosonic style amounted to what Michael Denning has called an “aesthetic ideology,” one version of which is Norman Corwin's hybrid of the intimate and kaleidosonic styles, dubbed “People's Radio.” This chapter focuses on the radio plays written by Corwin, including “We Hold These Truths,” and examines the aesthetics of his People's Radio.