Incantation for Restoring Democracy
(for when the people’s voice has been silenced by concrete and steel).

Ingredients:

· Three pieces of glass from a broken window from the 3rd precinct (as evidence of broken trust between people and power);

· One voter registration form destroyed because the address was incorrect (for proof of systematic voter suppression);

· A piece of concrete saved from BLM Plaza (for authenticity of ground zero resistance);

· Three bullet casings collected at the intersection of East 34th Street and Portland Avenue in south Minneapolis (for tangible evidence of federal bullets that silenced a mother's voice);

· The stethoscope that an ICU nurse used to care for veterans (to capture democracy's final breath);

· A chant whispered in German, Italian, and Sardinian, muttered in despair (for international solidarity with the fight).

Instructions:

1. Stand tall and proud with your feet planted on the concrete, preferably in defiance.

2. Place all ingredients on the nearest barricade, in front of you but just out of reach, so that it is difficult to grab them without stretching the system.

3. Raise your fist in salute and recite the incantation with a sense of gravity and revolutionary contempt:

By barricades deep and wide,
Democracy we shall revive,
Destroy the lies, restore the rule,
Join hands with us, renounce the fool
No more darkness no more shame
Justice and humanity shall prevail.

To encourage democracy to come back, you can create following sound effects:

RATTLE: scrape the broken glass on the concrete to simulate the voices that have been taken away;

DISTORT: crumple the voter form next to your ear to simulate the muffling of the people’s will;

AMPLIFY: cup your hands around your mouth while speaking to simulate the sound of someone calling for help while being shot by federal officers.

Now collect all the ingredients in a small, desperate pile and let them marinate in your frustration for at least one hour, during which you will check again all the back channels, secret meetings and encrypted messages.

Add one last sound effect: the hollow sound of immoral politicians who have been enabling the rambling of a sick mind, followed by a sigh that gradually fades to the sound of democracy that refuses to die.

--

The protest sound at the end has been recorded on 9th January 2026 in Minneapolis - protest sounds 09jan2026 minneapolis ice by stevevader101 -- https://freesound.org/s/841767/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Didn’t You Ask for Kids? is a political satirical piece about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, all based on the misunderstanding arising from the fact that the word kids means both children and young goats. The piece starts with a weird phone call in which Epstein is informed that the kids ordered are about to be delivered to his island, “just in time for the party with my friend Donald”

but when the kids arrive, Epstein is very disappointed, while Trump will still able to find a silver lining.

The Biannual Sonic Dash is always a great opportunity to dive into another of those magic moments of high-pressure creation: you have until Sunday to come up with a two-minute audio addressing the prompt emailed to you on Friday. The catch is that you cannot use any pre-existing material, so you have to compose the music and make up the sound effects (if you use any). The prompt for this latest round was “those meddling kids”, yes, the Scooby-Doo catchphrase. I was lucky to have a small, dedicated team (Roman Lillian Uras-Garvin and Romeo Maria Minutolo), and together we brainstormed, wrote, and produced our piece.

I’d like to share a bit about our process. We agreed that we wanted something original (so we immediately put aside anything related to Scooby-Doo), humorous but also poignant, ideally making a comment on something important.

I think our Didn’t You Ask for Kids? hit the mark. This time, we didn’t make it to the 10 finalists, but we love it as it is: completely self-produced (keep an ear out for the sound effects created with doorbells, an air fryer, and a hair dryer), absolutely current in its content, definitely original (verging on the absurd), and we find it unquestionably humorous.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we loved creating it!

A woman's perfect new home begins to feel inhabited by presences she can't quite see. In the corner of her eye, they move. When she turns, they vanish. A psychological tale of perception, paranoia, and the fine line between reality and imagination.

This piece is partly autobiographical, and partly an homage to Giorgio Manganelli's masterpiece Centuria - 100 Romanzi Fiume (Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels), a book consisting of one hundred very short absurd, enigmatic, and dreamlike stories that I read at a very young age and that had a huge impact on my artistic practice.

I created A Polished Tale as part of All The Best Radio's 24h Race, an exciting annual event, a creative challenge that gives producers 24 hours to conceptualise, record, and produce short stories on a specific theme, this year it was 'mirrored'.

If you have never taken part in a radio race, I encourage you to: it is so much fun, and, at least with All The Best, it is completely free to participate.

Enjoy the ride!
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