Your host for Audibly Speaking, Rick Reiman, speaks with Gabra Zackman about her career in the ever-more-popular field of audio books and narration. Gabra had narrated over 500 books, including such titles as The Sound and the Fury, Nobody’s Girl, Catch the Devil, G-Man, and I’ll be Gone in the Dark, among many others. An accomplished actor, I ask her about how she got started in the craft, what she thinks about the parceling out of assignments to male and female readers, how she works best and what one ordinary listener (me) would like to know about the business. If you like audio books or just wonder what this field is, you may listen to them in a new way after listening to this conversation. I hope that you enjoy it.
Tomorrow is America’s 250th Birthday as an independent nation. Your narrator for Audibly Speaking rings in the birthday in suitable vocal style with an audio narration of that fateful document. The Declaration of July 4, 1776 was not just a statement of independence but a declaration of ideals that has changed the world. Will we, the generation that is the heir of the founding fathers, allow its ringing words to continue shaping the world, or will the American people themselves today be the authors of its destruction? For God’s sake, and for their own sake, the American people must decide. This narration is delivered in the style of the great Orson Welles.
On July 4, 2026, Americans will celebrate…what? Obviously they will celebrate what they intend to celebrate. That means American’s “Independence Day.” But what does that mean? According to the Cato Institute’s poll released today, 46% of Americans are clueless as to what it means. The reason is clear: their ignorance of history. This should not be surprising since Americans popularize “history” as something to be considered over and done with. But that popular stance, and shield for ignorance, won’t work when it comes to the vital work of learning from the past to create a viable future. For all of Americans’ pride in being American, one thing they cannot boast of is the knowledge of history without which they, and our future, are doomed. Americans must stop relying on hunches, and learn their history, if they want the founding fathers whom they are so proud of to be more than footnotes in the national dustbin of the future.
Ai is perhaps the ruination of higher education, at least as it is currently being used by many students with a shameless push from the new barbarians at the gates, the techies who come up with this stuff and promise that it will solve all the individuals woes and help them “succeed” in school. Well, evidently “success’ does not include learning, because there is no more effective if deadly way to squelch learning than through machine learning, where only the machine “learns,” not the luckless human who puts it through its paces.
Stephen Fry, the great British writer, condemns AI’s cost to creativity in a Youtube Video that says it far better than can I:
In this episode, Audibly Speaking denounces the clown car of politicians (in Florida, of course!) presuming to be the voice of history, only without any educational credentials. Shamelessness aside, they just can’t stay in their lane. In this episode I look at one of the mainstream textbooks in American History, The American Yawp, the work of 500 historians who have the credentials and the “receipts” of American history to portray the pageant of that history, warts and all. The main “problem,” as politicians seem to see it, is that American history contains both triumphs of fair treatment as well as outrageous violations of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. If we are to learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, we must know what they were–not treat history as a celebratory buffet about which the student has to be misled with “red smoke and mirrors.” We need professional history and with The American Yawp we already have it. Pity the poor, misguided Florida students let down by their so-called political “leaders.”
Presidential Leadership 101 holds that no President should enter a war without first cultivating the support of the American people. Efforts to do so without securing public support–the Mexican War, Vietnam–have been disasters. No president should just suddenly and unconstitutionally attack another country without Congressional consultation, approval or public education, like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. In the aftermath of such an act, it became more important than ever that Trump do what he should have done before the war–explain the reasons for the war, why it was necessary, and how it was consistent with our national security interests and our ideals. Trump utterly failed to explain why with even a scintilla of coherence why the war was necessary. He promised to commit war crimes, besmirching and weakening America’s moral reputation. He set the stage by his failure of leadership for another disastrous failure in American foreign policy.
This episode analyzes and identifies these mistakes and shows, with the “Arsenal of Democracy speech” by Franklin D. Roosevelt in December 1940, how presidential speechmaking and the cultivation of public opinion in support of a successful foreign policy ought to be done.
No one, going back to the interpretation of William Gillette in the early years of the silent screen cinema, interpreted the Sherlock Holmes character with the authenticity that Jeremy Brett brought to the role in the ITV Granada series on British television (1984-1994). That series went back to the canonical short stories and lovingly adapted them to the screen, clearing away the distortions that past (and future) representations have rained down and continue to rain on the reputation of the detective. This new recording is my latest attempt to interpret the Sherlockian short stories in a twenty-first century podcast adaptation, with respect to the great interpreters of the past, going back to Doyle, the originator himself, and moving forward to Brett. With apologies to Jeremy Brett, here is my acting effort to portray the style of Jeremy Brett in a Holmesian short story that Brett was not to portray in the TV Series (that series failing to film ALL of the short stories). One of the best of the stories that it left out was “The Reigate Squires,” from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. And so, here is an attempted corrective to that omission, in the form of a pastiche of Jeremy Brett portraying the famous detective in the real Conan Doyle short story, “The Reigate Squires.”
I have never recorded an abridged version of a Sherlock Holmes mystery short story, not wishing to truncate the words of the great Conan Doyle. However, it occurred to me that the time of three half-hour sitcoms may be too much for listeners to bear to listen to a Holmes short story. In order to guard against this pity, I have recorded this abridged version of a humorous yet exciting Holmes short story, abridging it to under two half hour sitcoms in length. I started out the recording thinking I could do so in twenty minutes. It can’t be done while still doing justice to the story, to the writing and to the detective or the author. And so here in 47 minutes flat, is the abridged version, hopefully with all its essential glory retained. –Your narrator, Rick Reiman.
We lost Ruth Paine this year on August 31. Ruth was a great lady, one of the few heroes and persons of kindness in the run-up and the aftermath of the JFK assassination. As Thomas Mallon has noted, we know so much about the moods, mind and appearances of Lee Harvey Oswald in the critical six weeks before the assassination because Oswald sometimes stayed at Ruth’s house, used Ruth’s typerwriter, and visited Ruth’s home the night before the assassination to retrieve something from her garage that she did not know was there: the rifle that Oswald used to kill JFK. All this was possible because Ruth befriended Oswald’s wife, Marina, who certainly needed friends. HIstory might have turned out differently if Marina had returned the favor to Ruth and told her all that she knew, including the existence of the rifle in Ruth Paine’s garage. This is my tribute to Ruth, who richly deserves it.
In my series of brand new readings of earlier recordings I had released in my more inexperienced narrative career, I introduce the latest of these: The Conan Doyle story. “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Here again, Holmes must battle against no ordinary villain, but against a blackmailer of the most sinister antecedents. Has there ever been a bad guy more oily and rotten than Charles Milverton? Maybe the Grinch, perhaps. But Milverton was a villain for all seasons, not just Christmas. I hope that you enjoy it. –Your audio narrator, Rick Reiman.
For Christmas this year, I roll out an encore presentation of my narration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest short story, “The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans.” The English government is paralyzed by fear as its most closely guarded secret is stolen or bought by an international spy. Its “most exalted person” (obviously Queen Victoria herself) is closely following the one man who can “save the state,” Sherlock Holmes. Noth even Sherlock’s older and smarter brother, Mycroft, the other man vital to the state, can unlock the secret and save the plans. Can Sherlock? Hold your breath as Queen Victoria does in this story, and listen and find out.
If you enjoy these recordings, send an email to rreiman33@gmail.com and let me know. They may be labors of love, but they take a lot of time and energy and I would like to know if people are listening and enjoying them. Thank you! –Your narrator, Rick Reiman
I continue the narration of A. C. Bradley’s famous lectures on the Tragedies of William Shakespeare, one of the finest in all of the critiques of these legendary plays.
In keeping with the other two encore recordings of major entries in the Sherlock Holmes canon of short stories, the “Abbey Grange” and the “Second Stain.” I narrate once again, in what I hope will be a new and improved cover of “The Adventure of Black Peter.” I hope you enjoy this entry in Sherlockean entertainment, on the eve of this holiday season. Sincerely yours, your narrator, Rick Reiman.
Here is an audio introduction to the English literary critic, A.C. Bradley, and his legendary lectures on the high tragedies of William Shakespeare: the plays of Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. Bradley has been mute too long, buried in the mass of materials not properly advertised or displayed to the public in Project Gutenberg. If to live in the light is to to live in the light of Shakespeare, to hear the light of truth is to listen to A.C. Bradley. These obscure podcast episodes of mine will hardly rescue either the Bard or Bradley. But if you enjoy this episode please let me know with a brief note to rreiman33@gmail.com and I will record more of the great lectures on Shakespeare of A.C. Bradley. Signed, your narrator, Rick Reiman.
Close on the heels of the brilliant “Adventure of the Abbey Grange” was one of Conan Doyle’s masterworks, his short story, “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.” Any writer who wishes to toss into the ring a Sherlock Holmes pastiche of his own, will likely think twice before doing so upon reading this story, which bids fair to be close to the pinnacle of Doyle’s work. While I recorded it some years ago during the early days of my acquaintance with the art of podcasting, I have refined that art to a degree. Be however much that may be, this second version pushes the limits of that art, at least to farthest horizon of which I am today capable. I hope that it will be found by everyone to be enjoyable. –Rick Reiman, September 26, 2025.
I have had the pleasure of recording nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories for this podcast, but one stands out among all the others, both as a recording effort and as a story by the great Conan Doyle. That is THIS story, a BRAND NEW RE-READING of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.” I first recorded this in the summer of 2022, in the early stages of my recovery from my first bout with COVID-19. You can still listen to that version, if you go back through my episodes to that one recorded in mid-2022. My raspy voice is unmistakable, but I soldiered on and did what I always do when I record these short stories: act the parts with all the fervor and ability that I can possibly muster. And why not make the effort even as I gasped for breath? Conan Doyle was the master mystery structuralist, and a writer without peer in melding mystery with wit. Never has the Holmes character seemed so keen or brilliantly drawn by the author. The clues are parceled out just well enough that the reader feels he is on the path to a solution right alongside Holmes, although of course it is all a conceit that Doyle’s character Holmes (if he was just a character) shows is impossibly pretentious.
In this NEW READING AND RECORDING, I have tried to create as sonically and theatrically perfect a rendering of the story as possible, befitting its pride of place as first in the Sherlock Homes canon. It represents my learning as an audio narrator of the past six years. If you listen to no other of my recordings, LISTEN to this one. And, if you do, I dare you to stop listening then. Congratulations for chancing upon this rare opportunity to listen to the nearly-perfect recording of a nearly-perfect tale.
“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, was one of two stories in the canon which was told not in the voice of Dr. John Watson but in third-person. Intended as the basis of a play, a one-act drama, it consists mainly of dialogue between two individuals at a time. Most of the time Holmes is one of the two persons, but not always. The device was necessary to make the surprise of the story possible. The story was published in the UK and in the US in 1921. It is one of Doyle’s later compositions, but it is a crackerjack story all the same. Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman.
Well, it has been quite an odyssey. Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic episodes have been narrated by readers like Stephen Fry, for a cost; and by readers like your host, for free, in the spirit of the 18th century Enlightenment. This series has been other-directed–directed to others–without charge or fee. The hope is to spread cheer and enjoyment of the mysteries of an extraordinary writer and his remarkable detective. Please let me know, at rreiman33@gmail.com, if you have enjoyed this series. And may I suggest that you listen to some of the best of these recordings, which I will identify soon, but which have long been available here at Audibly Speaking, my podcast.
–Your host, Rick Reiman, wishing you happy listening.
In this year of 2025, we celebrate the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I have recorded the first three chapters of the heartbreaking novel, and the latest chapter is out today! I have links to all three chapters below should you wish to listen to them in order. Perhaps you, too, admire the green light on the far horizon. Watch out, because it may be the chimera of the “American Dream,” an apparition best left in quotation marks as airy as the cocktails on Gatsby’s West Egg veranda.
