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Welcome to Down These Mean Streets, a weekly trip back to the Golden Age of Radio where we rub elbows with the era's greatest private eyes, cops, and crime-fighters. Since 2013, I've been podcasting everything from cozy mysteries to police procedurals, spotlighting characters ranging from hard boiled gumshoes to amateur sleuths. 

Be sure to tune in each Sunday for adventures of a radio detective and the behind-the-scenes stories of their shows. Join me as we spend time with Sam Spade, Johnny Dollar, Sgt. Joe Friday, and more!

Jun 25, 2017

Long before he was an award-winning journalist, Mike Wallace was a radio announcer and actor. The longtime correspondent for 60 Minutes had a stint as a radio crime solver when he starred as Lt. Lou Kagel, a New York cop who investigated Crime on the Waterfront. Though the show didn’t materialize into a series, both...


"Rogue speaking..."

Jun 24, 2017

Following his star turn as Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, Dick Powell found himself at a new stage of his career. With the acclaim he’d earned for his hard-boiled performance, Powell could finally shed the baby-faced crooner image that had defined his work up until that point. He used his clout and the momentum...


"Friend to those who have no friend..."

Jun 23, 2017

“Boston Blackie” was the nickname of Horatio Black, a reformed thief and modern day Robin Hood in the vein of The Saint. Emerging from the pen and mind of a real-life convict, Blackie went on to become one of the most popular radio detectives of the 1940s and 1950s.

He was created by Jack Boyle, whose writing career...


Match wits with Ellery Queen!

Jun 18, 2017

Most of the fun in reading (or listening to) a detective story is the chance to play detective ourselves. We meet the suspects, process the clues, and weigh the evidence alongside the sleuth, and we have the chance to see if we can reach the same solution to the crime. But rarely do our fictional gumshoes pause...


Jun 18, 2017

To moviegoers and radio listeners of the World War II years, Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes were practically one in the same. Rathbone starred as the master detective of Baker Street in 14 films and in hundreds of episodes of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on radio. In honor of the star's June 13th birthday,...