Radio today remains the most accessible and widely available communication medium worldwide, despite technological shifts and a host of upstart challengers. Since its origins in the 1920s, radio has innovated a new world of sound culture - now expanded into the digital realm of podcasting that is enabling the medium to reach larger audiences than ever before. Yet radio remains one of the least studied of the major areas of communication arts, due largely to its broadcast-era ephemerality. With the advent of digital technology, radio''s past has been unlocked and soundwork is exploding as a creative field, creating a lively and diverse sonic present while simultaneously making critical historical analysis possible at last. This volume offers newly commissioned chapters giving readers a wide-ranging view of current critical work in the fields of radio and podcasting, employing specific case studies to analyze sound media''s engagement with the arts; with the factual world of news, talk,