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This chapter examines the ways in which the spaces where rebel radio was produced (the ship, at sea) created intimate soundscapes infused with geopolitical capacities. The chapter charts how the architecture of the ships and their location at sea were imbricated in the social conditions for crews of DJs on board, and how those situated crews were then themselves enfolded into the production of intimate, geopolitical soundscapes through the spatial organisation of their offshore workplace. The chapter draws upon literatures concerned with ‘intimate geopolitics’, pushing these in new directions through an investigation of radio—the most intimate of mass communications mediums.

Having examined the political registers enlivened through listening practice on land, this chapter turns to the air and to radio waves, considering the ways in which the British government sought to regulate ‘rebel’ radio and the threat to order which it posed. The chapter begins by examining government objections to the soundscapes of the radio pirates, before exploring the responses put in place to contest sound waves reaching listeners onshore. Notably, the chapter explores the challenges of attempting to regulate an invisible medium through efforts of jamming to the removal of physical media infrastructure. It contends that more attention must be paid to ‘wavelengths’ as a means of understanding transboundary geopolitics.

This chapter argues that it is essential for geographers to take seriously the spatialities of radio, which remain under-examined in the literature. Focusing on contemporary examples of rebel radio and its continued significance, it is argued that there is no better time to explore the production, consumption, and regulation of such soundscapes and the geophysical spaces that shape and are shaped by broadcasting. Drawing conclusions, this chapter summarises the central contributions of the text and paves the way for future studies of sound and radio, highlighting potential avenues of further exploration.

This chapter introduces the case study around which this book is developed: offshore, rebel broadcasting stations such as Radio Caroline. It also justifies the relevance of this example for understanding sound–space–society connections. Offshore radio piracy marks a pivotal moment in social history. The soundscape of the British Isles was dominated by the radio transmissions of one, authorised broadcaster: the BBC. Yet by the 1960s demand for alternative forms of radio broadcasting were rising. This chapter charts the context of the emergence of the radio pirates; how the spaces of the air and sea legally enabled their activities; the subsequent style of sound broadcasting that was made possible; and the key moments of the phenomenon that led to its eventual closure.

This chapter moves from the sea to the shore and to the millions of listeners on land, investigating how they consumed rebel radio broadcasts. Arguing that listening is a practice that shapes and is shaped by relations between bodies and an expanded field of non-human materials, and more-than-human life, the chapter considers how the intimate soundscapes described in Chap. 3 were received, generating atmospheric spaces of listening. These atmospheric listening spaces, it is argued, were affective as listeners became immersed within the politics surrounding the pirate broadcasting phenomenon, namely the ongoing fight for free radio. The chapter demonstrates how a contemporary concern with affective atmospheres can be rethought through the example of rebel radio stations.

Why examine the relations between sound, space and society, and why do so through the lens of rebel radio stations? This chapter sets the scene for the book, attending to the turn towards multi-sensory geographies, geographies of sound, music, and mediated geographies, before outlining the need to take radio seriously within such work. Notably, this chapter argues that current scholarship related to radio could push further through investigating how the very aesthetics of sound shape (and are shaped by) space, and society. The chapter closes by signposting the book to follow, with a brief overview of chapters.

You start out by stepping foot from the outside, to the inside. You are directed to enter a long, thin room that unfolds in front you. A series of information boards introduce you to where you are standing. This is not just to the start of a convict story, but a convict journey. You have just stepped inside the prison ship. (Ethnographic Diary, November 2013) Convict ships have been the subject of academic attention for the past century from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: maritime history, colonial history, and legal and penal history (see Anderson 2000; Bateson 2004; Campbell 1994; Vaver 2011). In this chapter, we attend to convict ship histories through the lens of penal tourism, focusing on how this period of carceral history has been conveyed and expressed through the tourist site of the Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK.