Some 84 percent of Irish listen to the radio daily, and Pat Herbert has been one of them since he was 10.
It was 1947, and Herbert lived in a deeply rural area of the country, Rathmanagh in County Mayo, where there wasn't even electricity yet, and World War II had left the local economy devastated. So, his first encounter with radio changed his life for good, as he told Danish audio producer Rikke Houd at the HearSay International Audio Arts Festival.
Houd went on to collaborate with illustrator Anthony Calvert and Radio National Australia to animate Herbert's story, along with some of his archival audio. You'll have to watch it, but here's a clue to what you'll hear and see: It involves Gaelic Football, the national game of Ireland.
Herbert now has a collection of broadcast and recording paraphenalia so vast, he needs a castle to house it all. In 2003 he opened the Hurdy Gurdy Museum of Vintage Radio in Martello Tower, part of an old castle north of Dublin.
There, with a team of volunteers, the 78-year-old shares his knowledge and love of the early days of broadcasting with visitors from around the world.
Special thanks to Jesse Cox and Que Minh of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Creative Audio Unit for permission to premiere this piece in the US.
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