Bob Mondello
speaker
1,878 appearances
201 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard today
Bob Mondello’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 180 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 27.
Appearances
By 1919, his company had graduated from recording on tinfoil to recording on wax cylinders.
That was the year fictional movie characters Lionel and David took their song-preserving trip to Maine, and my dad was born.
And as far as audio recordings, I thought that was where Dad's story ended.
Because although I have spent my entire adult life recording myself and other people, I never recorded him.
I feel stupid about that now, but it wasn't really something people did before smartphones, and the iPhone had only just been introduced when Dad died in 2007.
So the only audio I had of him was the message he'd left on my work phone.
Turns out Edison was right about that.
It was Dad's 87-year-old voice, diminished by Parkinson's, cracked, barely audible.
Just five words.
Bobby, this is your father.
Before I picked up and the system stopped recording.
I used to play it back after he died so I could hear his voice again
Then NPR moved to a new building and changed phone systems, and it was gone forever.
So a scene in the history of sound caught me up short.
And forgive me to fully explain why, I have to talk about the end of the film, so if you hate spoilers, maybe hum to yourself for the next minute or so.
The movie's student researchers part unhappily at the end of their summer in Maine, and Lionel later learns that David has died.
In his grief at losing the love of his life, he tries to locate the wax cylinders they recorded...
But he can't.
For decades.
And then, when he's in his 80s, having spent his whole life as a musicologist chasing other people's voices, the wax cylinders turn up.
Showing 1341–1360 of 1,878 · page 68 of 94
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