It is amazing what human beings do to one another. This short piece is chock full of information that shows that while music might have charms to soothe the savage breast, it can also be used to scare, humiliate and destroy human beings. A sound-rich piece, the listener will learn that, two centuries ago, the British banned the bagpipe and declared it a weapon of war. Now the bagpipe is used as a heartwrenching instrument during funeral marches. (Is any instrument more plaintive? Maybe the harmonica.)A variety of other musical artists,instruments, and sounds are featured as weapons of torture. It would be the sound of a dental drill that would finally break me. This piece would fit in whenever there was any news from Iraq. The piece could also stand alone. Five minutes well worth a listen, it would grab me wherever I was and whatever I was doing. I would turn to my friend and say, "Shhh . . . listen to this."

In reading the previous review, I'm reminded of just how subjective listening can be. While finding a way to appropriately credit the source of the ideas here is important, this piece struck me on the whole as an unusual and thought-provoking talk+music essay, in the upper tier of what's available on PRX.

Henkin's strategy of unexpectadly stepping back in time to Waco at the end was, to my ears, an effective and powerful narrative choice. It allows the piece to end on a note that engages listeners pretty directly in the psyops experience, and I think will cause them to reflect on what they've heard in more depth (and with less ideological polarization) than if the piece ended with the more straight-forward scenes from Iraq.

Hadn't remembered the details of how crickets and Nancy Sinatra were used at Waco, and Henkin's dramatization, adding sound on top of sound, felt quite effective. This is an audio essay, not a news report, so I wasn't greatly bothered by the use of sound effects — though it would be simple for the producer to tweak the narration to make it clear that we're not listening to actual sound from Waco, by saying that it sounded "something like this."

Presented as an essay or commentary, and perhaps followed by a phoner interview with Kerr Houston as Henkin suggests, this could work nicely on a station-produced magazine show.