New York 1835: A City at its tipping point. It’s ten years since the completion of the Erie Canal. New York City’s population is now over 270,000. Most of these people live below Fourteenth Street in wooden or brick buildings no taller than five stories. The gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding as each week thousands of new men and women pour onto New York’s dangerously overcrowded streets. Many come to earn an honest living. Others for more nefarious reasons. Several historical lives converge in this scripted audio fiction series about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.

Burning Gotham—The New Audio Drama Set in 1835 New York City

41 Episodes of this incredibly well written, directed, and acted series known as Fort Laramie. Norman MacDonnell created and produced this series. He insisted on historical accuracy of the names, places, authentic native American practices, military terminology, etc.  I guess you could sum it up in saying the program "payed attention to detail" This is the 17th episode posted in the "Fort Laramie" playlist on this podcast.

Fort Laramie - Epi 17 - Sgt. Gorce's Baby  May 27, 1956  - Western Adventure Series

Do you remember a time when wars were cold and people fought them in the shadows? It was a time of spies and secrets with each side trying to outdo the other using any means necessary. Join us as we drop in on a highly classified meeting at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., where even the uncanny is not off the table, in the play "Spooky"!

Tonight’s episode was written by Josh Horowitz 
Produced by Aimee Pavy
Sound edit and sound design by Josh Horowitz
Heard in tonight’s play were: 
Josh Horowitz as the KGB Scientist and Spy 2
Lena Horowitz as Katya
Bob Telford as Colonel Sweeney
Michael Carnegie as the Military Aide
Brett Stillo as Agent Lansing
Audra Wolfmann as Agent Meadows
Regina Yermus as Vasimovna
Edward Champion as Deputy Director Cartwright
Aaron Seymour as Agent Gusterson and the Doctor
Beth Damiano as Patty
Aimee Pavy as the Room Service Lady
Landon Hood as Spy 1
Dana Kelly Jr. as the President’s Aide
And JFK as the President, courtesy of NVIDIA Natural TTS Synthesis and Tacotron 2

Music and sound effects from FreeSound.org
Additional music arranged and performed by Josh Horowitz 
Episode cover by Peter Wiberg from Pixabay 
Logo design by Michael Dern 
And yours truly Josh Horowitz

Learn more about the show at www.twelvechimesradio.com.

And a shout out to podcast friends of the show: The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society, Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Radio, The Gray Area, the Narada Radio Company, and our new friend Horror Shop Radio!!  

If you enjoy our plays, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or drop us a line via email (twelvechimesradio@gmail.com). We’d love to hear from you. Thank you for listening and hope to see you again...at midnight.

25 - Spooky

This November, experience New York City like you’ve never before.  Will you make the right deal? Or fall to greed? But whatever you choose, just make sure you get out in time. 

Coming This November to your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham — The new audio fiction soap opera about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.

Subscribe anywhere you'd get a podcast and find out more at BurningGotham.com

Burning Gotham: Coming November 2022

BURNING GOTHAM 001: MOVING DAY
May 1st, 1835 — It’s a cold and rainy Moving Day. Every renter in New York is out on the street looking for lodging. Most of the city’s quarter-million live below Houston Street in buildings four stories or smaller, but construction is booming. 

New people are pouring onto New York’s dangerously overcrowded streets by the thousands. Rich and poor, many come to earn an honest living. Others for more nefarious reasons. It’s the perfect place to begin.

Aaron Columbus is an illegitimate son, desperate to make his fortune. Together with Aaron’s brother Wyndham Bowen—an African man born in Europe—they involve themselves in backroom deals, Abolitionism, potential war with France, and City politics. 

Aaron has struck an illegal import deal with John Jacob Astor, America’s richest man. The import? Two exiled Russian Countesses; Sorina and Raisa Zubov, and their inheritance—eleven pounds of diamonds.  

The two women have just arrived in New York.

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Download Episode Transcript

___________

Written By:
Olga Lysenko & James Scully

___________

Cast:
Eirik Gislason
Kacie Laforest
Roland Lane
Mary Murphy
Anna Pirogov
Nancy Pop
Matt Roper
James Scully

___________

Music:
The Hesperus Early Music Ensemble
The Itinerant Band

___________

Engineer:
Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio

___________

Director & Post-Producer:
James Scully

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Support Burning Gotham on Patreon

Burning Gotham 001: Moving Day

Right now, experience New York City like you’ve never before.  Will you make the right deal? Or fall to greed? But whatever you choose, just make sure you get out in time.

Out now on your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham — The 2022 Tribeca Select audio soap opera about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.

Find out more at BurningGotham.com

Burning Gotham: Out Now

Kat Epple's musical description of an Osprey in flight. 

Flight Of The Osprey

Since about the 1830s until today, there has been a tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas eve. In the spirit, ha ha, of this tradition, regular cast member Crystal Why tells us a ghost story, told on location from a haunted house on Russian Hill in San Francisco. Turn off your lights and bring out the candles. Do you hear a noise? Did that candle move? Tune in and find out what happens! Happy Holidays!

Written/Produced: Aimee Pavy (yep, it's completely scripted!)
Voices: Crystal Why "interviewed" by Aimee Pavy
Holiday Music: “Carol of the Bells” by Jill Tracy from her Christmas album "Silver Smoke, Star of Night."

Thank you for listening and supporting audio drama podcasting!

Find us on iTunes, Podchaser, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts. If you enjoy our plays, please SUBSCRIBE and leave your review on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please drop us a line via email at twelvechimesradio@gmail.com and check out our website www.twelvechimesradio.com. And thank you for listening!

Twelve Chimes It's Midnight

19 - Christmas Ghost Story

George Hicks D-Day excerpt

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

A demo tape I did in June 1991.  I did this on a hunch in the pre-internet days when I heard there were stirrings in Hollywood to revive the great Jay Ward cartoon characters. It worked!! And I got the job of voicing immortal characters like Bullwinkle J. Moose for 20 wonderful international years. Thanks to Bill Dowling from the old Top Spots studio for recording this nearly 30 years ago.

Keith Scott  Jay Ward Voices Demo DE - BEEPED

COMING SOON 
New York, 1835: A city at its tipping point.

It’s ten years since the completion of the Erie Canal. New York City’s population is now over 270,000. Most of these people live below Fourteenth Street in wooden or brick buildings no taller than five stories. The gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding as each week thousands of new men and women pour onto New York’s dangerously overcrowded streets. Many come to earn an honest living.

Others for more nefarious reasons.
___________

As New York grows, widening old streets and creating new ones is paramount. It raises property value, but property taxes can only increase if the land is improved upon. Buyers are purchasing land on credit and selling to someone new before needing to pay back the original balance. 

This artificial inflation is creating a very unstable economy. 
___________

The city has no reliable source of drinking water. Although New Yorkers vote in favor of the Croton Aqueduct in April, construction is yet to begin. The aqueduct needs to be paid for. That same month, officials place a twenty-four hour guard in the cupola of City Hall to ring a large bell and hang a light in the direction of any fire. The potential for a cholera epidemic or a crippling blaze is a constant source of fear.
___________

These fears are stirred by the City’s penny papers, chiefly The Sun and The New York Herald, whose publishers Benjamin Day and James Gordon Bennett are battling for readership. In August, this battle leads to the greatest literary hoax of the nineteenth century—fooling both layman and scholar—portending the existence of intelligent life on the Moon.
___________

Even as he calls the hoax remarkable, Phineas T. Barnum is orchestrating one of his own. With the help of William Niblo, Barnum is set to display a woman named Joice Heth: Ms. Heth claims to be the one-hundred-sixty-one year-old nursemaid of George Washington. Remarkable indeed. 
___________

New York is a powder keg. On the frigid, blustery night of December 16th, 1835, it finally explodes as the worst fire in city history sweeps through Manhattan. The East River is frozen solid. The undermanned and exhausted team of volunteer firefighters are no match. Everything south of Maiden Lane and east of Broad Street—the chief merchant district and the one with the highest property value—turns to ash.

The fire causes the modern equivalent of $500 million in damages. The official investigation finds it to have been caused by a leaky gas valve near a lit coal stove. No public blame is assigned. 

But what if New York’s greatest fire was no accident?
___________

Coming soon to your favorite podcast app: Burning Gotham, the new audio drama about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.

Burning Gotham Teaser 001: The New Audio Drama Set in 1835 New York City

March 1835: Paris, France.

What does an inheritance, a proposition, and two lovely Russian countesses have in common?

Don’t be fooled, danger is coming.
___________

Premiering soon on your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham, the new scripted audio fiction podcast, set in 1835 New York City. Subscribe to this audio feed to learn more, or go to BurningGotham.com.

Burning Gotham Teaser 002: The Letter

This Halloween 1944 episode of the Chase and Sanborn program starring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy featured Orson Welles. It aired on October 29th, 1944 on NBC. 

Welles was then heavily campaigning for President Franklin D. Rosevelt's third re-election. Election day was the following week.

10/29/44, episode 340

The Charlie McCarthy Show: Guest Orson Welles—10/29/1944

Jay - Z - People Talking (Nas Diss)

When her girlfriend is kidnapped by bandits, Cordelia sets out on a journey to rescue her true love. But when she comes across the town of Oxgate, Cordelia is confronted with an injustice she simply can’t ignore. Will she be able to save the local lesbian saloon from a corrupt Sheriff and his band of thugs, or will she fall short — losing a chance at reuniting with her soulmate in the process?

Out Skirts (Teaser)

Breaking Walls: The Podcast on the History of American Network Radio Broadcasting.

Burning Gotham: Out Now

The WallBreakers

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