White Noise: The Radio, Morphed

Credit: Tivoli Audio

Somewhere back in the Cretaceous era, when televisions were as big as refrigerators, with screens as small as postage stamps (OK, we exaggerate, but not by too much), media pundits tolled the death knell for radio. The once-dominant entertainment and information medium was a goner, they said. But with all the evolutionary adaptability of a flu virus, radio has outlasted most of those who wrote its obituary.

AM gave birth to FM; variety shows segued to all talk, all news, all music; Top 40 spawned lite rock, oldies, smooth jazz, classic country, ad audiam; networks made way for independent stations, which were bought up by conglomerates, which engendered cable radio, which prompted satellite services Sirius and XM. Clearly, radio -- a moveable feast that you don't have to watch -- is so quick to accommodate new technology that it's good for at least another century.

The latest boost for radio's fortunes is the iPod, and the advent of podcasts, giving on-demand access to lectures, radio documentaries, news, and event coverage, means a whole new mother lode of listening, learning, and teaching. Tivoli Audio [1] has produced the perfect classroom companion for the iPod and podcasts: the iSongBook, a lightweight, portable combination of AM/FM radio, digital alarm clock, stereo speakers, and a flip-down iPod docking base, so that those Scientific American presentations can be broadcast in clear, volume-controlled sound.

Tivoli continues to be inspired by the engineering and design brilliance of the late radio pioneer Henry Kloss, so the iSongBook takes its visual cues from the classy-looking iPod, with a water-resistant white-and-silver case and clear, instinctual controls. The entire unit is less than 1 foot wide (though the detachable speaker can be placed up to 6 feet away from the transmitter), so a teacher can easily move the radio from class to home and back. When the radio is plugged into a wall outlet, its batteries charge automatically.

At around $330, the iSongBook isn't cheap, as portable radios go, but as an elegant broadcaster of podcasts, it's like having a teaching assistant with graduate degrees in just about everything.

Owen Edwards is a contributing editor for Edutopia and Smithsonian magazines.