Amundsen's Airship Norge
So on this program R. Paul looked to the past and talked about the 100th anniversary this past week of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen being the first person to fly across the North Pole. We also mentioned that American pilot Richard Byrd's claim to have done so looks to be completely false. We talked about more than that and I will try to update this Web page sooner thasn has been my habit of late.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday June 10, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had an LSB meeting this past week, on May 13, and it got messed up at the start by two of the usual disruptors. We heard from the National Election Supervisor regarding the elections that start at the end of June. There's a problem in that only a third of WBAI Unpaid Staff have been registered to vote in these Pacifica elections. Three of WBAI's sister stations have 100% registration, one has 50% and WBAI, the Executive Director told us, only has about a third registered. The deadline for everything is May 31. For listeners you can still make sure that you get to vote by donating $25 or more to WBAI.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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Roald Amundsen was the first person to fly over the North Pole 100 years ago this week. On May 12, 1926, Amundsen and 15 other men flew over the North Pole in the semi-rigid Italian-built airship Norge.
In America Richard Byrd is considered to have been the first to fly over the North Pole, but that does not appear to be true.
In fact three Americans claimed to have arrived first at the North Pole: Frederick Cook in 1908; Robert Peary in 1909; and Richard E. Byrd in 1926, mere days before the Amundsen's flight. None of those Americans actually had flown over the North Pole. The release of Byrd's diary in 1996, really reveals his claim to be fraud. He was given the Medal of Honor by President Calvin Coolidge for what he had not done. Wow!
I'll note that Byrd really did do the 1933, expedition to fly over Antarctica to the South Pole. He had plenty of witnesses with him that time.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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