Radio Universe: Radio You Can Talk To

Radio Universe is a live AI radio station you can actually call. Instead of choosing another feed or podcast episode, listeners tune into an ongoing shared programme and join the conversation when they have something to say. Alex and Sam trade short, friendly replies, playful callbacks and occasional disagreements. Riley delivers sourced news bulletins before the pair discusses them. A seven-day schedule includes everyday conversations, culture, debates and fourteen original late-night mystery and thriller plays. Seventy-four original ACE-Step songs, rich jingles and music-to-speech crossfades give the broadcast the rhythm of real radio. AssemblyAI Voice Agent API powers the hosts and listener calls: recognition, model responses, voice output, turn-taking and barge-in. Our TypeScript studio prepares each conversation block with ordered context, mixes one shared audio stream, handles caller queues and discards stale speech after interruptions. A monotonic audio clock and adaptive browser buffer keep playback steady. News facts come only from supplied RSS headlines and summaries. Listeners can use the default station or create one station with their own host personalities, voice slots, topics, music preferences and delivery style. The opportunity is participatory audio for communities and people who want company without another screen-heavy feed; retention and call participation are the next validation targets. The demo now runs autonomously on Cloudflare: Pages hosts the UI and original audio, while a SQLite-backed Durable Object runs the shared mixers, sessions, stations and persistent daily voice budget. No Mac or tunnel is required. It remains a desktop hackathon prototype; production moderation and scaling are future work.