Podcast: "Tiny Dreams" from ZBS - The Fictional Café

We welcome a new podcast to Fictional Café which can hardly be called new. The folks at the ZBS Foundation have been producing audio/radio stories since 1970, and I’ve been listening to them since those times as well. The brave, intellectual, spiritual adventurer Jack Flanders lives in my memories. I’ve listened to many ZBS stories and turned many others onto them as well, perhaps notably my son Josh who shares my passion for audio drama.

I hope you will too, beginning with a premiere taste of some new stories from ZBS: “Tiny Dreams,” very short pieces which will appear here at the FC every Friday evening in July. I encourage you to visit the ZBS website, where you will find a treasure trove of fun listening. More about ZBS in coming weeks.

A Short Introduction to “Tiny Dreams”

by Tom Lopez, ZBS

Earlier this year, we were commissioned to do a series of short pieces for a group of radio stations, what they call “Triple A,” commercial rock & roll radio! And so our writer, M. Fulton, spent two days listening to one of their stations. He woke up the next morning with an idea, a series of dreams that could be inserted between songs.

The one restriction he was given – the pieces had to be super-short, preferably no more than 90 seconds. He loved the challenge, figuring out how to tell a story, take someone on a little adventure (or trip into dreamland), and bring them back again, and do it all in 90 seconds! Speak about “Fast Fiction,” this was it.

His stories were inspired by the strange movies that are projected inside our brains while we’re asleep. But not to worry, we haven’t included even one horrific nightmare. We figured the daily news covers that just fine. We also felt we could use a few laughs … or at least some smiles.

Please click on the arrows below to listen to the first eight episodes of “Tiny Dreams.”