Adam Stoner

2022 started in the best possible way. Four days into the new year, I launched Mission Transmission on the UK’s children’s radio station, Fun Kids; our record-breaking, history-making project to send the voices of our listeners to deep space.

Mission Transmission got some nice tweets, was on the front page of Express.co.uk, on RadioToday, in the Week Junior magazine, First News, and Science+Nature too. There’s an entire episode of Mysteries of Science dedicated to it – that one’s called How to Talk to Aliens. The Radio Academy interviewed me – that’s forming part of a new podcast they’ve got coming out this coming month – and I was on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. My university also spoke to me about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into something like this.

By far the most rewarding thing this month has been hearing literally hundreds of voices sent in around-the-clock from kids across the world who want to be a part of our broadcast. I feel so grateful to share this experience with them and know that if I were twenty years younger, I’d be submitting my own voice too.

This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done. It’s filled with prestigious people and places; the Royal Observatory Greenwich, Guinness World Records, KIDZ BOP creating a song for us, covering two of the biggest bands in the world, BTS and Coldplay. The 1975 are letting us use their song featuring Greta Thunberg and there’s loads more up our sleeve.

214 email chains (some 40 messages deep), 24 hours of submitted audio, 12 interviews with space experts around the world including Jon Lomberg, creator of the Voyager Golden Record, and over 120 other people have been involved in making this thing a reality. Soon, we’ll reach a point where the radio programme is finished. All it takes is the click of a button to stream it to 10,000 of Earth’s closest stars and start it on a journey that will last forever.

Honestly, most of my time this month has been spent between audio editing software and in conversation with those who are making this thing a reality. That said, here’s a quick list of what else I’ve been up to…

The path of the sun over six months is what you see in the image above, a result of a long-term analogue photography experiment with Sam from Solarcan. Hear Sam in my podcast and more in Activity Quest.

My article on the mystery of the megalodon shark – a prehistoric beast, the largest fish to ever exist – is within the pages of Science+Nature on newsstands right now. It’s right alongside Mission Transmission.

I’ve been reading The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of NASA’s Interstellar Mixtape. I’ve also been reading A Walk From The Wild Edge too.

Speaking of wild, I got a bunch of plants from Patch and my home now looks like a jungle. The 1.5 meter high Fidel (a Fiddel Leaf tree) and 1 meter high Sarah (a Laurel Fig) are stand-out purchases.

Alongside loads of kids audio, in terms of what I’ve been listening to, The Wombat’s new album – Fix Yourself, Not The World – is great as is HRVY’s new EP, Views from the 23rd Floor.

I think there’s a valuable lesson to be learned around the #cancelspotify drama. I’m not a Spotify user and I don’t like Joe Rogan’s podcast but if you’re going to take on the world’s top streaming platform hosting the world’s top podcaster, you really need to come with more in your arsenal than ‘I don’t like what they’re saying’. Every public failure harms your chance of future success.

On TV, Ant and Dec’s new gameshow Limitless Win is fun. On Netflix, Snowpiercer is back. Designated Survivor is a bingeable watch, as is trash telly US sitcom Superstore.

There’s still time to get your voice into space at FunKidsLive.com ????

Say hey ???? The address is me@adamstoner.com

You’ll next hear from me on February 22nd 2022.

Oh, and make a note in your calendars: Fun Kids, February 21st, 7pm.