Today, Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 17th, sees the start of a new set of radio dra­ma series from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion. Begin­ning as a com­mune of radio pro­duc­ers in an island stu­dio farm in upstate New York, the “Zee­bers” start­ed by cre­at­ing radio com­mer­cials and oth­er projects includ­ing albums for DJs to pro­mote new record com­pa­ny releases.

In 1972 they cre­at­ed their first radio dra­ma series, The Fourth Tow­er of Inver­ness, about an intre­pid and unin­ten­tion­al adven­tur­er, Jack Flan­ders, who sets about dis­cov­er­ing the mys­ter­ies inside a hid­den tow­er in an old Vic­to­ri­an man­sion. We’ll be broad­cast­ing The Fourth Tow­er start­ing next week, Fri­day 24th.

This week, we are bring­ing you a spe­cial 80-minute intro­duc­tion to the work of ZBS Foun­da­tion, at 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic / 8pm or mid­night in the UK.

Meat­ball Ful­ton, the pseu­do­ny­mous cre­ator of Jack, Ruby, The Android Sis­ters, and many oth­er char­ac­ters and tales that we will be broad­cast­ing over the com­ing months, was asked by “Hear Now: The Audio Fic­tion & Arts Fes­ti­val,” to put togeth­er a ret­ro­spec­tive for the festival.

He select­ed scenes from many of ZBS’s con­scious­ness-rais­ing “Sto­ries for the Soul”, which mix SF, fan­ta­sy, mys­ti­cism and humour, start­ing with “The Fourth Tow­er of Inver­ness,” and on through the decades.

In fact, he cre­at­ed quite a lav­ish pro­duc­tion, weav­ing in his com­ments along with Tim Clark’s music which is used exten­sive­ly in ZBS series. You can hear it today.

Our grate­ful thanks to Tom Lopez at ZBS for mak­ing their record­ings avail­able for us to broad­cast. You can read more about Tom and ZBS here.

“ZBS is a not-for-prof­it arts orga­ni­za­tion. We have been in exis­tence since 1970. For over 50 years we’ve been pro­duc­ing radio/audio sto­ries. These are com­ic and cos­mic adven­tures, sci­ence fic­tion, mys­ti­cal mys­ter­ies – some with spir­i­tu­al wis­doms woven with­in. Our inten­tion has always been to raise con­scious­ness by using the media, radio and audio. Of course, some of these sto­ries are just down right fun, fine fam­i­ly enter­tain­ment. Laugh­ter is a great heal­er, as you know. We’re all liv­ing in the Cos­mic Joke, and one day we may actu­al­ly “get” the punch line. But in the mean­time, remem­ber, kind­ness to oth­ers, peo­ple, plants, ani­mals, even the earth and the clouds, we can all do. It makes us feel bet­ter, it prob­a­bly even makes the clouds feel bet­ter. We hope you enjoy our stories.”

And don’t for­get that if you enjoy what you hear from ZBS, you can buy many of their series as down­loads, on USB sticks and oth­er media, at the ZBS.org web site, or stream them for the cost of an inex­pen­sive sub­scrip­tion at  ZBSmedia.com.