Radio Lear Call-Out – Contributors For A New Podcast On Sound, Myth And Metamodern Culture

Radio Lear is developing a new weekly podcast exploring sound, myth, depth psychology, symbolic narrative, and metamodern culture.

The working title is The Lear Field: Sound, Myth And Metamodern Culture, though this may change as the core contributor group begins to take shape. The podcast will start with an examination of Shakespeare’s King Lear as a recurring symbolic field: the storm, the broken crown, the Fool, Cordelia’s silence, Gloucester’s blindness, exile, madness, kinship, power, loss, and the exposed human figure after inherited identities have fallen away.

This will not be a general arts podcast, an introductory discussion group, or a public learning circle. It is being developed as a serious but accessible conversation between people who already have sustained interest, knowledge, or practice in one or more of the following areas: sound art, experimental music, field recording, radio art, theatre, Shakespeare, Jungian psychology, myth, folklore, philosophy, cultural criticism, poetry, performance, storytelling, archetypal narrative, community arts, place-based creative practice, or metamodern thought.

The podcast will ask how sound and story can help contemporary culture listen again to its own depths. It will consider what comes after irony, fragmentation, identity performance, and cultural exhaustion. It will ask how music, voice, silence, weather, found sound, field recording, mythic images, and symbolic imagination can help rebuild shared meaning without pretending that older certainties can simply be restored.

At the centre of the project is the idea that King Lear can be understood as a post-identity story. Lear begins as a figure held together by title, family role, public speech, authority, and inherited status. These forms collapse. What remains is not a simple recovery of self, but an encounter with suffering, exposure, humility, madness, and symbolic truth. This makes the play a powerful point of return for artists, writers, musicians, performers, thinkers, and listeners concerned with what happens when the familiar structures of meaning no longer hold.

Carl Jung and depth psychology will provide one grounded approach to this work. Jung’s language of archetype, shadow, dream, individuation, symbol, and collective imagination offers a way to discuss myth and meaning without reducing them to opinion or abstract theory. The podcast will not require technical language. Its concern is practical and interpretive: how do images, sounds, stories, and inner patterns shape cultural life?

Sound will not be treated as decoration. It will be treated as a way of knowing. Each episode is expected to include a sonic element: a field recording, found sound, spoken passage, sound artwork, musical fragment, archive recording, or atmospheric trace. Contributors may be invited to bring a sound, a passage, an image, an object, a question, or an example from their own work.

The format will usually be one host with two or three contributors, recorded in a quiet and reliable venue. Episodes are expected to run for around forty-five to sixty minutes. The tone will be reflective, serious, plain-spoken, and exploratory. The aim is not debate, performance of expertise, or promotional interview. The aim is careful listening, symbolic depth, and conversation that allows meaning to unfold.

Radio Lear is now looking to identify potential contributors for the first phase of development. This may include sound artists, musicians, writers, theatre practitioners, performers, field recordists, independent scholars, Jungian readers, cultural organisers, poets, philosophers, storytellers, and people working at the edges of art, myth, psychology, sound, and place.

Formal academic credentials are not required. Depth of engagement is. Contributors should be able to speak clearly, listen carefully, connect ideas across disciplines, and bring something substantial from their own practice, study, or lived creative experience.

The first practical step will be to form a small core group, identify a suitable venue and recording time, and develop a pilot conversation. The preferred arrangement is likely to be an early weekday evening or late Sunday afternoon, depending on contributor availability. The first series is expected to run for eight to twelve episodes.

Radio Lear is especially interested in hearing from people who feel that sound, myth, story, and symbolic imagination need a more serious place in contemporary cultural conversation. This podcast is intended to become such a place: not a lecture room, not a therapy circle, not a panel debate, but a reflective gathering around the broken crown, the storm, the voice, the field recording, the old story, and the question that remains open.

Expressions of interest are welcome from people who feel they can contribute to this work with care, depth, and imagination.