Payphone Radio

Payphone Radio is an online radio stream comprising hundreds of calls made from New York City public pay telephones. Most of the audio is spoken commentary by Mark Thomas, but other sounds float through as well. Other audio includes some of the pre-recorded messages heard when calling disconnected payphones. There are also sounds of musicians performing in the New York City subway system, recorded using nearby subway payphones. Virtually all of New York City's payphones are gone. On account of that inevitable reality Payphone Radio, containing 1600 calls and over 63 hours of content recorded from 2010 until the pandemic struck in 2020, is not expected to update with new content. This project had many aims but keeping the grey, monochrome, sometimes poor-quality sound world of the public pay telephone alive for posterity was high among them. Payphone Radio is a spinoff of The Payphone Project, the Internet's original payphone website, online since 1995. The Payphone Project has been featured by The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning, LA Times and numerous other media outlets.