Is there some reason that this show isn't on public radio every week, every station? It's really really good--a child of the TAL era of radio, with the great transitions., perfect pacing, and a sound that somehow combines polish and comfortable familiarity (as opposed to fakey intimacy). But I would guess its prime audience would be a few years younger, which is just what we want, no? And it's about a world that older listeners should understand too. It makes listeners work a little bit--it's about five minutes into most shows that you've figured out enough about the subject to feel comfortable. But I like doing that work.

Hey, this is great. Why isn't this series on my radio station all the time? This is very thoughtful stuff, and extremely well-done. The sound is lovely, the interviewing is great, but msot of all there's a neat human brain behind it all. Some of the best stuff I've heard in an age.

This is a tremendous piece of radio--somehow it manages to take a topic that could easily crash over into sentimentality and make it instead deeply deeply moving, because the narrator has managed to think so clearly about what it all means. In fact, it would be a great piece even if there were'nt a Karmapa involved--he's almost a shaggy dog in this story. I think no listener will complain that this is too long--it's the kind of lovely thing that one wishes were on ATC every night.

This half hour does one of the things radio should: brings us a mind and a voice we would not otherwise have encountered, and not in an interview format but in performance. In fact, I've often wondered why more things like this don't appear regularly on radio--people would listen with real fascination to this. The only problem is with packaging: in this case, the performance artist tells two stories. They are very different in tone. the second one is much the stronger. It would be wonderful were it longer, so it could carry the whole half hour by itself.

Unless something is wrong with my computer, the first two minutes of this piece sound as if they were recorded in a blender. It gets better after that once you can hear what's going on--but there's insufficient attempt to answer the questions that would occur to any listener. For instance, how endangered are porpoises? Is it not necessary to protect them? More reporting would have benefited this piece.

This is a truly nifty piece of radio--the voices are powerful and specific. it raises a question that pertians generally, and it manages to capture the experience of incarceration without sentimentality. All it needs is some kind of intro to set the scene--explain who is doing the recording and under what circumstances.

Here's the thing--this is quite a good piece (especially the introduction about the 80 million uninsured) but as it currently stands it won't be of any sue to any station outside Oregon. It wouldn't be that hard to repurpose it as a story about one example of the collapse of the larger health care system. And that's what should happen, because this is obvioulsy one of the nation's msot important and underreported topics, and the people doing this piece have the chops to make it a national piece if they choose to.

It's not entirely clear why we're hearing so much from the particular Philip K. Dick fans quoted at such length; still, there is no question that by the end of the piece one would want to go read a PKD novel, if only to find out where this intense devotion comes from. And the spooky sound of Dick in the middle of the piece sealed the intrigue.