The Thing on the Fourble Board

The Truth

Fiction

4.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Support The Truth by subscribing to our ad-free feed. It’s $5, or $50 a year. You’ll get every story without interruption, but more than that, you’ll be supporting the survival of our show. Go to: thetruthpodcast.supportingcast.fm On this episode, special guest Neil Verma tries to show Jonathan what there is to love about old-time radio drama by playing him the classic 1948 drama The Thing on the Fourble Board by Wyllis Cooper. Here’s a link to Neil Verma’s essay about The Thing on the Fourble Board. He also has two books you might like: Theater of the Mind, a study of how American radio drama from the 1930s–50s developed its own narrative grammar through voice, space, sound, and psychology to create an intimate, interior “theater” uniquely suited to the medium. Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession, an examination of how contemporary narrative podcasts, from true crime to fiction to documentary hybrids, use style, structure, intimacy, and serialized attention-engineering to shape our current culture of listening and fixation. Follow us on... INSTAGRAM BLUESKY THREADS REDDIT To learn more about our show, go to our website: thetruthpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Truth.
0:01.0	This is The Truth.
0:02.0	I'm Jonathan Mitchell, and we're taking a break from new stories in December.
0:06.0	Our next one arrives January 15th.
0:09.0	And while we're taking this pause, I want to talk about something I've avoided talking about for a long time.
0:15.0	It's something I've never really admitted out loud.
0:19.0	As you know, on The Truth, we make modern cinematic stories with actors, sound design, all that stuff.
0:24.9	And a lot of people call that audio drama.
0:27.4	And if you're really old, you might call it radio drama.
0:31.3	But here's my confession.
0:34.2	I've never been able to get into old-time radio drama.
0:40.2	And it's not because I don't respect it, I do.
0:42.6	But the acting feels stiff, the stories feel dated, the sound quality, the noise, the hiss.
0:48.3	It's like there's this veil that I can't get through.
0:51.9	Yeah, I think that's true.
0:53.3	But I kind of think there's something cool about that, actually. You know, like, you're straining to hear it in the same way that, like, a rural listener on an AM radio before the invention of the transistor was also straining to get through the noise to get to the story. This is Neil Verma, who knows more about audio drama than anyone else I know. He teaches classes about it at Northwestern, and he wrote a book about it called Theater of the Mind. And today I've asked him to do something for me, and maybe for you too. I've asked him to help me get past my hang-ups and show me what there really is to love about old-time radio drama. One of the fun things about an anthology series like The Truth is that each episode can be its own experiment.
1:32.4	And so for this experiment, Neil brought in a story he thinks will change my mind.
1:37.0	Neil, what is the story?
1:38.1	It's called The Thing on the Forible Board by Willis Cooper from a show called Quiet Please, which aired in the late 1940s.
1:46.4	It's 1948?
1:47.7	Yep, 1948.
1:48.8	I think it was in August.
	...

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