Brief amusing look at the end of bad-for-you food days in Texas school cafeterias. Always love hearing what kids have to say about enforced change. No depth, but good to attach to more serious reporting on new public health enemy #1, obesity.

PDs at newstalk stations, don't be put off by the slightly glib title -- if you audition no other PRX piece this month, listen to this one. You don't have 20 minutes to listen, so do this instead: Listen to the start, then go about 6 minutes in, then about 16. You will know then whether this terrific piece can work for your station.

This is a lovely and compelling story of a daughter and a mother whose relationship is transformed by a stroke. (The mom almost dies, and emerges, superego impaired, a new and delightful person: "I love sex now; I wasn't so crazy about it before.")

This piece, or a condensed version of it, would work well as part of a show that touches on topics including:

*mother-daughter relationships
*the cutural phenomenon of hospitalization
*kids caring for aging parents.

This is serious business, certainly, but the story is told with a light touch and an easy sense of humor. The hospital scene six minutes in is riveting, and realized beautifully as radio. There's some more amazing tape 16 minutes in -- a lovely unforced scene of disagreement between mom and daughter.

The BIG question is: How do you program this warm, amusing, deeply stereotype-busting piece? Of course this piece deserves to be heard in the full glory of its 20 minute version, but I'm afraid that length may limit its usefulness for many stations.

The most obvious local market for this -- if it's not snapped up by TAL -- may be local news-talk shows. This story could be used to focus a discussion -- by callers, by local in-studio guests -- of some of the topics mentioned above. But a local show can lose it's own sense of identity going 20 minutes without standing down and bringing in local voices. So if there is a shorter version, or a version that occurs in three or four segments, I urge the producers to make these alternatives available to stations via PRX. I think this could add significant flexibility, and could get this on the air more often, in more places, and at times of day when more people are listening. Personally, I think this is some great radio, and I want lots of people to hear it.

This interview provides an informative context for Franti's music and inspiration. I'm not sure if Michael Franti is well known, but both he and his band definitely should be. Their songs are ecclectic--a little soul, a little funk. In any case, this little interview is a snapshot of the influences that create some really powerful music.

The piece is short, quick, and amusing. Ian's speedy verbal interpretations of text-messaging are performed with aplomb, providing ample payoff to this essay.

Karaoke - the great equalizer. As someone in this piece says, everyone likes to sing in the car, and karaoke takes that desire to the next level. This piece has the right balance of self-deprecation and amateur performances, it is entertaining and fun and it is over just as you begin wondering where karaoke afficionados hang out in your town. Who doesn't have a secret desire to sing neil diamond songs with abandon?

Always interested in music. Was more interested in the technical info on glasses than in the person making the music. Started to lose me towards the middle, subject was not as articulate as one would have liked. I personally would have liked to have heard more extended musical excerpts from the glasses. A nice piece, just about the right length.

The first episode brings me back to a high school moment: standing in a classroom doorway, the packed room of students and teachers silent, alert, eyes glued to the television, watching the moon become mysteriously concrete. Richard Paul’s nimble narrative of the funding challenges involved in transporting humans from here to there enriches my memory by providing a full banquet of information and experience leading up to that televised landing. I didn’t expect a program on budget funding to be so engaging, but this one is. We hear lively interview material from various historians, and scientists, as well as former White House Budget Director Charles Schultz; also, archival tape of Presidents’ Kennedy and Johnson, and other prominent voices from the sixties. Walter Cronkite offers perspective, and congressional testimony (read by actors) is included. Well-chosen music excerpts help the flow. The moon landing is considered one of our great national achievements. It is fascinating to look at it through the budget lens, as a budget line item in competition for tax dollars with the war on poverty and the war in Vietnam –– and to remember its morale boosting power in the midst of so much national turmoil –– a country divided, serious economic problems, the country at war. Kind of like right now. It’s timely listening all right, especially since Bush, however briefly, has floated a Mars balloon. Perhaps, like JFK, he sees the morale boosting potential, and similarly plans on being long gone when the bill comes due.

The second episode in many ways moves like a page-turner about tragedy and destruction. You’re immediately drawn in by an administrator’s recounting of the 1966 moment when Gemini 8 went out of control. Tape from the space docking gone awry runs alongside and underneath his compelling first-person account. It seems odd that space ships exploding in air no longer come as a shock. What almost shocks is to remember that the first astronauts to die in the space program died on the ground. Somber news reports after the Apollo One flash fire that killed three astronauts, and taut narration lead us into the heart of this piece, the aftermath and investigation into what went wrong. So much sounds familiar: NASA outsourcing work to shoddy contractors, NASA administrators scrambling to keep control of the investigation, congressional committees looking into what went wrong, concern about political influence affecting contractor appointments, investigative reports kept secret, conspiracy theories, a man’s death days after testifying before congress, a corporate culture in chaos, damage control in full force. This is the stuff of the Apollo movie that’s yet to be made. This series is timely now, or near any significant NASA dates. Can be aired as space, science, economics, history programming, or as a historical echo in light of current events today. And what was going on forty years ago, in fact, isn’t all that different: we’re at war afar, and culturally at home, the economy is rocky, poverty growing, privatization increasing. It touches on many issues on many levels.

I found this piece very striking. The pure and simple delivery (undecorated straight narration) was surprisingly effective in relaying complex concepts and emotions. The steady tone and poignant imagery completed the piece's ability to completely engage the listener. This is definatly a work that draws discussion of global development trends back to the very tangible, human realm.

“The Power of the Novel” is a celebration of reading, an homage to the healing, redemptive power of literature. But what makes this story so moving is the sad, surprising analogy made between the little girl Lolita and the women of Tehran. The women in the story, who meet in secret to read the bizarre, disturbing, and beautiful Nabakov classic, see themselves as victims of a man’s monstrous dream—The Ayatollah—just as Lolita is a victim of Humbert’s monstrous dream. Reading helps the women escape their lives and to re-imagine themselves. Fiction, discussed in this context, reminds you of its great subversive power. And bonus: Jeremy Iron’s reading of the text is fantastic. This piece could go into a show that deals with education, the Middle East, the treatment of women, or reading. Really, it could go anywhere; it’s interesting enough.

Listening to Merle Kessler, aka Ian Shoales, is like careening down a steep mountain road in a sports car with no brakes. But he makes all the curves, and when he screeches to a stop with his signature "I gotta go!" sign-off, the listener is finally allowed time to breathe. With enough caffeine you can probably keep up. And maybe even notice how astute many of his observations are. He's a character, and I think one that your listeners will appreciate, maybe right away, or maybe after several hearings. He's neither bland, nor vanilla, nor beige...which is a good thing.