Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums

Join us for a Chats in the Stacks book talk with Jeremy Braddock, professor of Literatures in English, to discuss his latest book Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums (University of California Press, 2024). In his expansive book, Braddock writes about the Firesign Theatre, an American surreal comedy troupe working in the heart of the culture industry at a time of massive social and technological change. In five chapters devoted to the book, radio, cinema, television, and artificial intelligence, Firesign examines how a psychedelic group made the emerging multitrack recording studio a basis for thinking ludically and critically about the past and future of media forms. Join us as Professor Braddock discusses how Firesign meditated on radio’s World War II history — as a medium of art and of propaganda — as they confronted the crisis of the Vietnam War. To attend the talk virtually, please register here: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dzoPhdIZR3inur3_Yeovyw#/registration