I teach communication & media at Saginaw Valley State U in Michigan. Author of Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke U Press, 2024) and Karaoke Nights: An Ethnographic Rhapsody (AltaMira, 2001).
This week's guest, author Rob Drew, traces how a lowly, hissy format that began life in office dictation machines and cheap portable players came to be regarded as a token of intimate expression through music and a source of cultural …