WEST VIRGINIA RADIO SILENCE ZONE SERIES
WEST VIRGINIA RADIO SILENCE ZONE FREE

Will we someday rue the day when we got our first cellphone? Kurczy makes a good case against its use. We each have to decide how much we are going to allow electronics to take over our lives and even more importantly, our children's. But he also discovered some surprising things there too. He says he came to Green Bank presuming that the less connected life would be richer, and it is. Kurczy, a journalist, has gone to this area many times and gotten to know the residents well, spending quite a bit of time interviewing them, doing research and digging into local history in order to write this book. And the local economy is largely supported by tourism with popular places like Snowshoe Mountain Resort about nine miles from the observatory. Nowadays it's becoming a great deal harder to control that usage with residents, schools and businesses clamoring to have access to cellphones and WiFi. To detect signs of life from outer space coming to earth in radio waves, the observatory was built back in 1956 and there they have tried to maintain a 'quiet zone,' restricting the use of things that emit electronic noise by people in the surrounding area. If so, you might like Green Bank, West Virginia, where the nation's oldest radio astronomy observatory is located. Are you shaking yet? Going into withdrawal? Or does that sound like an attractive idea? Shades of Henry David Thoreau? And he hasn't had one for the past ten years. Stephen Kurczy has to be one of very few Americans with no cellphone in his possession. I wish we could interview the author of every one of these books because I'm so impressed by the creativity, thoughtfulness, and wisdom shared through the temporary books I get through NetGalley. I request, read, and review many books prior to publication to explore possible future guests for the podcast. As always, my opinions are my own and do not represent my co-host or the podcast. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sending me a temporary digital advance reading copy/advance review (ARC) galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Note: I voluntarily requested, read, and reviewed this book.

WEST VIRGINIA RADIO SILENCE ZONE FREE

(also available free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Podbean, Overcast, PlayerFM, Castbox, and Pocket Casts). He described many of the compelling people he met (and also some of the scary ones!) We interviewed Stephen for the The Curiosity Hour Podcast (episode 196) and he talked about his three-year journey to thoroughly research and write this book. Stephen's multi-year journey and hard work really paid off in getting beneath the surface and into the very real human lives of those in the area. There are many journalists who travel to Green Bank for a day and cover the myth as they don't know better. I love the juxtaposition of the myth of the place with the reality of what it is really like. He does such a wonderful job of demystifying Green Bank, WV and in each new person the reader gets to know and in each new anecdote of research/history that Stephen describes, it makes Green Bank more nuanced and complex. There are so many people in this that seem as if Hollywood created them because of the wide range of personalities and backgrounds.

WEST VIRGINIA RADIO SILENCE ZONE SERIES

This book really should become its own multi-episode podcast or some type of TV series (reality TV or fictionalized drama based upon book).

West virginia radio silence zone