Mac Folklore Radio, the website which gives voice to old retro computing articles, has once again picked a wonderful start to April. The Douglas Adams penned article, “Under-The-Desktop Publishing” from the November issue 1991(PP213-215) is now available in spoken form from Derek Warren.
In a recent brief Q&A session with A.P.P.L.E. Derek talked about what inspired his trip down memory lane with the Mac articles and his life in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
A.P.P.L.E.: First, tell us about your name?
Derek: The last name is Warren. First name’s Derek. (You would be surprised how many people mix them up.)A.P.P.L.E.: What inspired you to take the time to read the articles for the podcast?
DW: Like many other geeks, I don’t have a lot of friends to talk about computer stuff with. People have always commented on my voice, so podcasting turned out to be a good outlet.
I wanted to listen to the wonderful stories at folklore.org, but you can only listen to the Mac OS X speech synthesizer for so long before you start to go insane.
Back in 2006, I found myself without a job and figured I would try and get some voiceover work, which never happened—but what to put on my demo reel? Naturally I reached for folklore.org, which Andy Hertzfeld generously placed under a Creative Commons license.
I just kept recording stories and Mac Folklore Radio was born. The cruel irony is that I still can’t enjoy folklore.org in audio form since I cannot bear listening to myself!A.P.P.L.E.: How long does it ordinarily take to prepare the podcasts each month?
DW: A 15 minute episode is about eight hours of recording, editing, and polishing. It’s an unbelievable amount of work.
“That Vision Thing” and the recent HyperCard epic took about 30 hours apiece.
I know people want weekly episodes but I have a day job. 🙂
A.P.P.L.E.: Anything else you can think of which would be of interest to our readers?
DW: Reviving MFR in 2018 was also an expression of my frustration with modern Apple. I want people to remember what the Old Apple stood for. (Tim Cook smugly repeats “We love the Mac!” enough to make me sick. As my English teacher would say: “Show, don’t tell.”)
I’m not into collecting old hardware, so MFR is sort of like my version of a garage full of old stuff. Memories.
My listenership is disappointingly tiny (<500). I’ve tried a little promotion but I don’t do social media, and all the old Mac news sites have died or turned into clickbait farms. I guess that’s the price we pay for escaping beleaguered status.
I might eventually fire up an alternate podcast for long-form stories and articles relating to other platforms, but that’s far, far off in the future, and other podcasts already cover non-Mac platforms quite nicely.
The picture below is of me editing the latest episode.
To listen to the Mac Folklore Radio episode, check out their website at:
https://macfolkloreradio.com/
