Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on
culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays.
From 1927 to ’33, he wrote and presented around eighty broadcasts
using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving
transcripts. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of
Benjamin’s thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His
celebrated Enlightenment for Children youth programmes, his plays,
readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative,
rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his
essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover
topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters,
subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and
acuity. Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channelling his
sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from
a new voice for one of the twentieth century’s most respected thinkers.
