Podcast Drama · 2026-09-15

Socrates on community radio

Why would anyone found a radio station in 2026? Why does a local public sphere matter in the life of a community? Does a community need a medium of its own? If so, why sound? And what happens when a free community radio station can go no further?

These are the questions explored by Khairephón – Conversations on the Voice of Community, a series produced by the Első Pesti Egyetemi Rádió (First Pest University Radio) at ELTE together with Civil Rádió. Civil Rádió is an independent community radio station run by the Civil Rádiózásért Alapítvány (Foundation for Civil Radio), operating for more than three decades.

The starting point is a task that sounds simple: let us found a small local radio station. It soon turns out, however, that quite a few awkward questions need answering before the microphone is even switched on.

What is a community? Who may speak in its name? Who is left out of it? Does something really become more democratic just because we call it community-based? Is it right to intervene in a community from outside? What do money and funding do to independence? Is there a place for politics in a community radio station? And how can we hear those who speak more quietly to begin with?

The makers turned to a method more than two thousand years old: that of Socrates. The master and his pupil, Khairephón, try in dialogue, with question after question, to take apart everything we tend to take for granted about community, neighbourhood, media, participation and the public sphere. This time the more than two-thousand-year-old method is joined by one of the newest technologies of our day.

The makers also used artificial intelligence in producing the series, among other things to synthesise the voices of the dialogues, and the conversation often teeters on the line between fiction and reality. Is it a radio drama? A podcast? An interview? It perhaps most resembles the Magyar Rádió series of the 1970s and 1980s Magyar Anekdotakincs (Hungarian Anecdote Treasury) or Az olvasás gyönyörűsége (The Pleasure of Reading), which likewise worked with pre-scripted dialogue.

Small community radio in Hungary saw its heyday in the early 2010s, when the number of small community stations was at its highest. It has been in deep crisis ever since, because running a small community radio station has become extremely difficult.

The series can be heard in weekly instalments in the stream broadcast of Civil Rádió, and as a podcast on the websites of EPER Radio and Civil Rádió as well as on Spotify. Full written versions of the conversations in Hungarian, German, English and Romanian are available on the EPER Radio website.

One of the makers of the series is also the editor of Rádiójáték-kereső.

🎧 EPER Rádió — a sorozat és az írott változatok

🎧 Civil Rádió — podcast (CBA)

🎧 Spotify