Importants

Radio is important. I'm not talking about clear channel corporates who shovel out the same manufactured bands every hour every day like clockwork. And I'm not going to pretend like I know everything about NPR and talk radio. But there are a select few radio programs out there that are and have been doing some important stuff. This American Life has been around for over ten years but it upholds all the originality of its first shows. Ira Glass is calming and charming and sometimes he puts me to sleep, but I can't name a TV show that is as engrossing as one story from this show. Take one I just listened to, Kindness of Strangers. One of the stories took us back to Harlem and the Renaissance that happened there and you are transplanted there, your imagination fires up and you want to be part of something like that and where is that happening today?
Then there's Radiolab. It simply makes science interesting. It's like listening to a movie and it's so aurally inventive that you can forget everything going on around you. Two days ago I listened to one of their short podcasts where we learned that what we see might not be what we think we see because our eyes have yellowed over the years and children, babies have such pure lenses that the world is a bright blue blur to them.
I don't tune in to either of these shows, I subscribe to the podcasts along with ones available from the New Yorker. I suggest you download iTunes and listen to them too.