The idea of this programme is good but I think in excecution it comes across as a fairly unsophisticated production. There’s too much intro in the beginning loading the listener with information that comes out as soon as the interview starts. The first interview I felt could really have easily started about 3-4 minutes after it actually began. And surely a piece about theatre could have been done in a more interesting manner than a solid 12 minute interview talking about the theatre session preceding it. Why is there no sound in here at all?
The line of questioning seemed a bit naïve – many of the answers coming back were pretty good, but the way the questions were asked made me itch to get the editing blade. For example on the subject of machismo in Brazil her question is “yeah what’s that about?”
As interviewers we all ask long winded questions with desired answers unconsciously embedded in them or say things like “what’s the name of that place again” but these things shouldn’t be included in final cut of a programme.
In listening to this piece I didn’t really get the feeling I was learning anything I didn’t know about or couldn’t have guessed.

An excellent speaker, a gripping story – really what more can you ask of radio?
Maryknoll Sister, Giang Nguyen is gentle and articulate and tells of young women and girls being sold off in marriage to Taiwanese men. The statistics are hair raising -
100,000 Vietnamese women sold into marriage in Taiwan; marriage brokers earning thousands of dollars while the women themselves get a small fraction of that to send back to their families; 20-30% of the marriages involve abuse; teenagers ending up in brothels or in homes where they're passed around to all the male members of the family.
In the US the powers that be are saying that marriage and the family is something holy and sacrosant – stories like this need to get out to show how this institution is being abused in the worst way so that government action can be taken to curb it internationally.
28 minutes sped by – thoroughly recommended.

When I first heard this piece, my heart sank at the echoing mike and I thought “Oh no, not another recording of a public lecture” but within a minute or two the thought was banished as was my irritation with the technical quality and I was drawn into a fascinating conversation (Justice O’Connor at one stage insists it’s a conversation not an interview and bats a question to Walter Isaacson which he answers with aplomb).

I came to this piece knowing the bare minimum about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor – the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court in the United States, known for her startling swing votes, and her “practical approach” to problem solving.
This conversation fleshes her out to be a woman of character, and one in possession of a steely determination, a razor sharp mind and a not inconsiderable sense of humour.

A teacher once told her “an individual can make a difference in life” and so swerved her off the path from wanting to be a rancher and into law school.
This piece is fascinating for a wide range of listeners: to the legal novice like myself it offers an accessible path to the basic workings of the highest court in the world’s most powerful country; to people with more knowledge of the law, it offers an insight into the mind of an extraordinary woman.
One of the first grassroots feminists who struggled against being slotted into “typing jobs” despite a good law degree, Justice O’Connor is an inspiration any way you look at her. She says “its wonderful to be the first but you do not want to be the last.”
In these troubled times one can only hope that her successors share her sense of integrity and honour.

A must hear for stations looking for serious and fascinating talk content.

This programme is a superb way to give a human face to a potentially abstract concept – the dangers of nuclear material, whether it be for military or peaceful purposes.
Herbert Reed is a powerful weapon himself. An American soldier who talks of his experiences in Iraq and tells of things we don’t normally hear. He talks of breathing in noxious substances that have him coughing up a brown goo every morning. He tells how the army – which should be looking out for its own soldiers – denied the existence of even a test for the effects of depleted uranium until a group of uranium affected soldiers go to the press.
For years, Iraqi doctors have been recording a noticeable rise in cancers especially amongst young children. But it is American voices that carry the most power, so perhaps its the direct testimony of American soldiers that will finally bring this story to international attention. Herbert Reed is a dream interview – an obviously decent and patriotic man with a well founded and articulate rage.
The second piece is also very strong: Aileen Miyoko Smith talks about the dangers surrounding the recent permission granted to Japan to extract plutonium from spent fuel. Her graphic accounts of the dangers of nuclear material is horrifying and again, the calm of her delivery only serves to sharpen the horror.
Since the end of the Cold War, the general public has perhaps become complacent about the idea of a nuclear Armageddon. This programme tells us that that complacency is misplaced.
Strongly recommended listening.

A piece that is dominated by lovely use of sound that really takes gives the listener a strong sense of place. I liked the interviews with the people involved, especially an elder mourning the loss of old ways, the disappearance of animals from the environment, his vanishing language.
We pay fancy prices in the West for designer coffees - politically correct coffees - but it doesn’t seem to really be making a dent in the lives of the people who most depend on selling the coffee they grow – but at least it’s a start. The movement needs to catch on the way that protests against GM products in Britain and Europe did – people demanded the right to eat healthy and safe food. Now we need to start demanding for the rights of the people who grow our food – especially those on the lower economic scale who aren’t in a position to make demands on their own behalf.
This piece at least gives them a hearing.

This is a sweet piece for a feature programme looking for something that’s fun to listen to and that won’t date.
Its well cut. It has entertaining interviews. The music is well mixed and well chosen.
It makes you think about all those tiny little roles that we don’t pay so much attention to in small theatre productions and on the box – every one of them fought for with dedication, ambition and sweat.

On a production level, here is a hiss in even the inside interviews – which is a shame and it could have been doctored better in the editing stage. But all in all, this is a good portrait of those hard working, hard dreaming wannabees actors of New York.

I was enticed by the premise of this programme. After all, we live in a time when relationships are fraught with subliminal games, hidden meanings and endless public and private dissection. I’m not sure this piece adds too much new to our understanding. But it is an engaging piece, and its tone, sound mix, pacing and downbeat narration are all intriguing enough to keep a listener in.

At some point about half way through I lost the plot a bit and wondered if the premise shouldn’t be more along the lines of: “would I succumb to possible the temptations of engaging in a relationship with a man I didn’t fancy but who could offer me the good things of life?”

I was pleased to note however that all turns out well in the end.

I think the delivery of the narrator would benefit being a little less monotonal. But all in all, would be good for a weekly feature programme looking for a soft piece to end on.

Evan is a good speaker and has a story that I imagine would be very new to many American listeners, though he occasionally uses words that wouldn’t be very welcome in most US stations.

My overall impression of this piece is that it’s a great story but radio-wise pretty amateurishly done. The main problems are to do with audio technique

The questions posed are off mic and inaudible – then the answer comes in and you’re left wanting to know the question. The producer needs either to get the mic in front of the interviewer’s face as the question is being asked, or to make sure that the reply is edited in a way that you’re not left with half a conversation.

Also there’s music running under most of this and I wish I could have waved a magic wand to just make it disappear. It neither underlines a statement or adds emotion or in fact anything else – it just feels like someone put on their favourite record and let it play while the interview was going on. The result is that as a listener you’re attention is half on the talk, half on the music and one is essentially missing out on both dimensions.

Having said that, it was interesting listening to Evan talking about his body in such a way. Its an intimate conversation, almost a thinking aloud process which works as a fly on the wall audio piece (though there are mentions for example of “Stacy” and its never explained who Stacy is) – one has to be careful in such a piece to include the listener rather than lock him/her out.

I can’t imagine a mainstream broadcaster would be too keen on broadcasting such a programme, though I think Evan’s story should be heard by a mainstream audience to let them know that people outside the mainstream are, after all, people too.

I had quite a few problems with this piece.
First of all, it seems that the producer chose to give it a triple speed delivery rather than edit down his script which I personally think was the wrong thing to do. He barely pauses for breath as he dusts off the usual cliches - because of course its about Islam - so phrases such as fasting, jihads, muslim extremists are de rigeur.

I'm not a Muslim, or in fact allied with any particular relgion, but I found this little essay as offensive as most people would if one substituted the words Muslim for, say, Jew.

If the writer's point was to say that religion should be replaced by a secular New Left vision because then the world would be a better place, he needs to let us know that he really doesn't believe that its only Muslims who blow up things and that although fundamentalists of ALL religions are dangerous, they really only consitute a small percentage of believers.

By the way its not Islam that believes in an "angry God" - that would be the Old Testament. Islam believes in an all forgiving God who wants all people to be treated the same (fundamentalist interpretations aside.

Haven't we had enough cliches and jokes about Islam? This is a frightening time for us all - and we as broadcasters need to promote understanding between different groups, not re hash old misperceptions in the pursuit of filling in a slot. I'm not saying there's no place for humour, or even that humour always has to be PC. But surely humour lies in the unexpected insight rather than the same old sludge.

unitarian church - whaat?

- usual cliche.
do you know any muslims
"unitarians don't blow anybody up" meaning that only Muslims do?

This topic is certainly a great illustration of the culture clash between Americans and Europeans so I appreciated Jay Allison making that one of the central themes of his essay.
He's right - Europeans just don't get the American attraction to guns, and I'm not surprised that he felt he had to really think for answers that would satisfy this European bewilderment.
For me one of the positive points of the piece was that in these short few minutes, there was an arch of development. The author's evolving attitude to guns. He describes well what makes them so attractive to him, how he derives comfort from things that would scare the life out of me for example.
And I very much liked his open ended statement at the end - leaving the listener thinking that his attitude to guns is still in a process of evolution.
I think the Sinatra song popping up three times in this short piece was uneccessary and distracting. I just wanted to focus on what he was saying and found that focus slipping when the music came in.
I did like the short inserts from the gun shop and of his kid ('oh dad' she starts off and in just those two words, one can hear very well this young person's opinion of dad's toys. Did I detect a dose of disappointment with just a dash of exasperation?)
I do have my own opinions on the subject of gun ownership, and while the author didn't turn me into an instant fan of guns, it was interesting to hear a mild mannered and intelligent man discussing his passion for them. It made me as a resident of Europe think that maybe not everyone who likes to play with guns is a bullet short of a full barrel.

I love the way radio allows you to be a privileged voyeur to a story that sparks emotions in the listener. And in this way I think this piece did a fine job. The stories and their pacing were generally good though sometimes I wanted to hurry the speakers just a teensy bit to a conclusion.
The narrator sounded a bit stilted and emotionless in the intro but she really came to life when responding to the interviewees and when telling her own story which had a crust of humour with a heart of pathos.
The only thing - and its a small matter - I didn't like in this piece was the music - both its choice and the decision to use it pretty much non stop through the piece. It worked well in the beginning and the end, but became musical wallpaper throughout the stories and as irriating as shopping mall muzak.
On the whole though an entertaining piece that will make many listeners think about the love dramas in their own lives.