The Theory of Radio 1927–1932

Berthold Brecht’s Theory of Radio is a critical survey of the function of radio: the first means of mass information to achieve universal dissemination during the 1920s.

German playwright and art theorist Bertolt Brecht’s Theory of Radio presents a critical overview of the radio’s function as the first ever media against the backdrop of its worldwide integration throughout the 1920s. Brecht shares ideas on the media’s further improvement that remain as relevant as ever in our 21st-century world of proliferating technologies, advising that radio must “make the listener not simply listen, but also speak, and not isolate him, but establish a relationship.”