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Saturday, September 3, 2016

Timothy Leary's speech on the radio



I recently finished Jesse Walker's excellent Rebels on the Air, his alternative history of radio broadcasting in America, which devotes a great deal of space to community radio stations, a "third way" instead of commercial stations and government stations such as NPR. One of the stations he discusses is KRAB, formerly (1962-1984) a community station in Seattle.

Jesse forwarded me a recent email listing additions to the online KRAB archive, and one of them is a recording of a 1963 speech by Timothy Leary, "Beating the Game."  You can listen online. Here is part of the blurb:

"Timothy Leary speaking at the 2nd Annual Symposium on American Values at Central Washington State College, Ellensburg. His subject is the "Individual In The College Community - His Commitments and His Work". This was recorded just before Leary was fired from Harvard, and well before his Mexican misadventure. The slightly edited speech was later published in The Politics of Ecstasy, where it was retitled American Education as an Addictive Process and Its Cure.

"This recording was incredibly popular on KRAB, played at least eight times between 1963 and 1979, after which it disappeared. There was so much interest that someone at KRAB transcribed it and made copies available for $1.00 each."

A quick look at the archives reveals material from Alan Watts, more Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Robbins, Thich Nhat Hanh and other persons of possible interest.

Did RAW ever appear on any community radio stations, and are there relevant archives?



3 comments:

fuzzbuddy said...

There's a good Wilson radio interview here from KTAR radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDA-E4nashI

Jesse said...

This was recorded on Pacifica's Los Angeles affiliate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2b3MF8Jh5c

Jesse said...

So was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hisq3A-u_Is

I'll bet there are more floating around on YouTube.