MINDWEBS - Michael Hanson's official tape archive

****************************************************************************************************************************Welcome to Michael Hanson’s personal archive of his creation MINDWEBS! 188 half-hour shows which presented 216 short stories. Originally conceived and produced by Michael Hanson and Steve Gordon, this series aired on WERN/WHA Public Radio in Madison, Wisconsin from the mid 70’s through the mid 90’s with the first episode "Carcinoma Angels" being recorded on March 3rd 1975. MINDWEBS returned with new episodes in 2018 on WMSE in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as Michael publicly released his surviving copies of the show here. The series ended in 2021 after the death of Michael Hanson. Original air dates of the episodes could not be verified with only a handful of air dates currently known. The dates commonly attributed to episodes are not correct. The shows are presented in the order written on Michael’s back up tapes and are believed to be in a chronological order based on available station documentation and known air dates. This is the home of the complete series in it’s highest quality from source material for broadcast. It is made public HERE by the show creator as this will always remain free. Please respect his creative vision and do not sell or appropriate for profit but instead help share the show and link to this web page so that others can also get their lossless copies of the show directly from Michael Hanson which was his wish and the sole intent of this page which was a culmination of a dream and is his personal gift to you. As these are Michael’s master digital show copies, ANYONE who claims to have a different sourced or better sounding collection of this show is LYING. This is the original and DEFINITIVE SOURCE of the MINDWEBS series by the creator of the show for anyone who wants it. It is my hope and intention that this project will bring free enjoyment of MINDWEBS to listeners new and old as long as sound exists. My sincere thanks to Darkman for making this possible. And my thanks to the myriad fans who've help make this entire enterprise viable. --Yours truly, Michael Hanson History:I started this page in 2014 to share copies of the show I recorded off air in the 90’s and obtained through a dozen reels given to me by Jim Blackson in an attempt to collect all available episodes together in their best available quality and replace the low bit rate MP3s of the show that were circulating and correct the errors associated with them. That project inspired me to contact Michael Hanson in 2016 (who it turns out was aware of and very happy with my work :) and we became friends at the same time he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Together we worked on releasing his copies of the show which was something he always wanted to do and had tried to do several times in the past. None of those attempts succeeded and had actually resulted in the loss of the master reels of the show. This collection represents the master digital encodes of MINDWEBS remastered and created using the cassette tape copies made in his first attempt at backing up the shows master reels. While most of his tapes were in great stereo condition, almost two dozen of them did have issues during the original transfer. All episodes were repaired (in some cases using my personally recorded show copies) to the best ability. Thankfully in the end only a handful of the shows have noticeable damage and some of those have alternate mono copies which have been included. If this rescue and repair of tapes had not been done at this time it is very safe to say that the show would never have been heard or saved in this quality and would have most likely been lost forever. Michael himself was so happy that his dream to release the show was actually happening and being back on radio again triggered him to revive the series on WMSE in Milwaukee (our public media help in the release of the show) in 2018 and create brand new episodes which resulted in 19 more episodes of the show. Sadly, on the morning of September 9th 2019 Michael suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. The final MINDWEBS episode ever aired was on the 7th anniversary of this page creation, October 31st 2021. Thank you:I am forever in debt to Mr. Hanson and am so happy to have helped him while he was alive and correct great wrongs that were done to him. I started as a fan and am now proud to be able to say he was my friend. I miss him terribly but we created this to keep his memory and spirit alive after his passing and I was honored to do so. Thank you for the stories you gave, the music you played and the love you created along the way. May you rest now that your dream is over. Big love to Rosie and the Hanson family for their support. I also want to send thanks to Rick Hurdle for all the valuable information at the PLOT SPOT , his work and assistance in the early days of this project and helping it get off the ground. 91.7 WMSE station manager Tom Crawford for all his support of the show, his support of me personally and for being the cornerstone to one of Milwaukee’s greatest institutions. Norman Gilliland for sharing his WHA copies of the show and helping introduce me to MINDWEBS. Kat Schleicher for the amazing photographs. Sarah Stettler, Connie Gehl, Mary Bartlein, Ed and Karl Paloucek for their contributions with the new episodes. Ward Paxton and Kerry Frumkin. John C. Meyer for his earlier attempt at doing this. Finally a continued forever thank you to Jim Blackson who was the spark that ignited a fire. He helped make dreams come true for both Michael and I and he will never fully understand just how much we owe him. This exists because of him.No thanks to those who took advantage of Michael’s kindness with their attempts to sabotage the show, this release and Michael’s legacy starting with the individual who stole the master reels of the show from Michael.Memorials may be made in Michael's name to the ASPCA, 424 E. 92nd St, New York, NY 10128-6804 or the Freedom From Religion Foundation PO Box 750 Madison, WI 53701.*********************************************************************************************************************************