With Good Reason presents interviews with academics from public universities in Virginia, and in this edition, "Do You Believe in Science?", Sarah McConnell hosts religion professor Mark Wood and Brian Cassel from the Massey Cancer Center, who together teach a course on the cusp of science and religion at Virginia Commonwealth.

"Do You Believe" turns the tone knob all the way down from the television screeching. One of public radio's Core Values is "Belief in civil discourse" and here's a perfect example. Wood and Cassel take the hot issues that have been hijacked for rabid ratings and discuss them with intelligence and humanity.

In the science-and-religion dialog, creationism v evolution is reviewed, with Mark Wood issuing the caution that to damn something as "just a theory" is close kin to deriding something as "just a story". Science and religion both provide stories of origins and transformation, and as these men and this half hour demonstrate, they are not incompatible. Both seem a piece of the species.

The discussion roves to the academic role of women (Are women capable of higher math and science? Well, are men inherently violent – or is that gender trait a social construct?) and sexual orientation, religion, and genetic tinkering. The professors ultimately relate how their students note the strength of religion for end-of-life issues, where science still falls short.

Can a conversation with no resounding triumph be more fulfilling than a well-shouted soundbite? If you believe it can, that's good reason to try this show, and series.

Right off the bat you'll listen to "Inuyama Tofu", and you'll keep on listening, because Kelly Jones has the well-tempered vocal chords of real pro: pitch, volume, timber all support the text and advance the story.

"Inuyama Tofu" describes the evolution of Japanese tofu, the assault of western food and fast food and supermarket food. By-the-book ax-and-trax writing with good, if predictable, field sound, and a v/o interpreter who is comprehensible and not distracting (if a bit breezy) are perfectly presented. In the end, Takuji Yamato's black sesame and green avocado and purple shiso tofu evolutions help him stave off the beige inroads made by McDonald's and mass-produced soy product.

"Inuyama Tofu" would fit seamlessly in any of the network magazines; the other side of that shiny coin is it seems too seamless. This is an American story recorded in Japan – the same message could be conveyed presenting microbrewers or artisan bakers in the US. The frame seems focused too tightly on just one side of the street – no perspectives on the explosion of tofu consumption outside Japan, or the country's culture of absorbing and perfecting alien elements until they turn, uniquely, Japanese. Aside from being on the other side of the globe, there's not much globalism here.

Jones's tofu is a fine entree to her Japan reportage (the way to the heart of a country is through it's cuisine?); in future episodes, more depth and nuance will help flesh out the real Japan, beyond its American echoes.

With "Global Trade: Neither Free Nor Fair", National Radio Project rolls out a half-hour of well-produced straight-ahead radio that takes on globalism in three neat segments – the curious do-see-do of outsourcing, the burgeoning US trade deficit, and the "fair" trade movement that attempts to return mankind to the increasingly monetized equation of international relations.

Rupert Cook leads off with an especially fine piece from not Asia, America (Latin), or Australia, but from globalism's lost continent, Africa. US rice and chicken are now counterintuitively cheaper than homegrown in Accra; on the other hand New York City parking tickets are now processed in Ghana. Cook gets on the ground with poultry farmers and African bureaucrats and then pulls Jorg Bergstermann from a German think tank for analysis, which yields a nicely broader perspective than the usual Beltway suspects might.

Justin Beck follows with an instructional piece on the trends and ramifications of America's overseas shopping sprees, which provides good clarity on deficit issues, but unfortunately allows the Orwellian jargon of Wall Street ("outsourced", "downward pressure on wages", "displacement", "decentralized decision-making") to pass unchallenged.

Vinnie Lombardo wraps with a story about the maturation of "Fair Trade", which began with coffee drinkers who, like Mia in Sideways, mused on their beverage --and who then actually did something about the pickers they discovered at the far end of their substance pipeline, organizing the trade to pay a decent standard of living. Remarkably, this dreamy do-gooderism has been adopted by Dunkin' Donuts and Win Dixie Supermarkets.

This edition of NRP's "Making Contact" doesn't plunge into advocacy journalism, but it does provide more punch than standard NPR fare, while maintaining sharp production standards. "Neither Free Nor Fair" is worthy to pre-empt a roll-over half-hour of one of the magazines.

"In cooking, things rarely get invented, they get modified."

Life may not imitate art, but, as any biologist will tell you, life does follow food. And food and love are two staples in too short supply in public radio's pantry, so PDs -- take " Learning Chocolates in Paris" off the PRX shelf and serve it up for THINK GLOBAL. Listeners will love you for it.

Producer Sarah Elzas mixes simple, fresh ingredients – good writing seasoned with good sound – for a perfect desert feature. The École Ferrandi's "Anglopats" – English-speaking pastry-wannabes from the US, China, Japan, India, Israel, and Mexico – are stirring up a little bit of goodness that's hard to resist.

Nothing forced here, and more a propos how the globe really spins than wonk-drone. Hey, it's Paris and it's chocolate. That's love and food.

Sweet.

Can you whistle and hum at the same time?

That trick contains something of the dissonance of harmonic singing (though Tuvan throat singers don't whistle Dixie, or anything else – they just sound like they've got stereo vocal chords double-barreling out of a singular throat).

Jonathan Mitchell's arts feature "Paul Pena's Kargyraa Moan" is composed of terrific notes: ethereal short-wave radio waves, an international treasure hunt, a serendipitous used record store discovery, a ruined Discman, and howls of frustration that, in harmonic convergence, turn sweet. Eventually, "Big Old Jet Airliner" lands in Central Asia for some Tuvan throat singing. There's a lot of story here.

Jonathan Mitchell is a marvel, a musician in producer's clothing. All his work is informed by his training, background, and talents in music. Here, interview is overlayed on interview, producing a richness of time and location that's astonishing in five-and-a-half minutes. And all the while, Mitchell is masterfully orchestrating a quartet of otherworldly songs.

The sheer focus of "Kargyraa Moan" is its broader limitation, though. It's a microscope set in the laboratory of Studio 360's "The Voice" edition, and MDs will be required to build out something more than the accompanying Host i/o to land this Big Ol' trippy tremolo back onto the public radio dial. Mitchell has "carried me too far away" to come back to regular melodic music so fast. Maybe Jonathan will refashion this vision for wider redistribution

Bingo: "A totally different world" is a portrait, but without a frame. True, it's very verite and nicely black and white, but with no caption or focused composition, we get blurry Brownie camera instead of proof-sheet insight.

The actualities are bingo-quality, fine grainy grit, but the back-office interviews, where more control is possible, are muddy, pocked with plosives, and swoon through tromboning levels. Then there are some ragged-razor edits that should be either dressed up or stripped down – here they are the ¼-inch of slip showing, nobody's idea of fashion.

"Totally different" contains a documentary concept that with attention could succeed, but it will require more than four-and-a-half minutes and demand the thread that disciplined editing confers – not didactic, but at least engaging the listener's participation. Alternately, it could be a soft feature, but there we want sharp focus and likely a narrator.

"Bingo...totally" is worth restructuring to create a piece intentionally made for broadcasting, with an ear for the other side of the box. Ultimately what airs is the product of a long series of choices, beginning with the choice to take sound out of reality and place it into imagination. Unless those choices are resolutely affirmed, it's not fair to ask that listeners join the effort – that collaboration that's the essence of radio.

Milking the 25-year old Monsanto slogan "without chemicals, life itself would be impossible" for an opening smirk, Sean O'Connor unwraps his "Just Like Mom Used to Buy" essay with the mass-produced predictability of the Oreos, Chips Ahoys, Fig Newtons, Ginger Snaps, and Lemon Coolers he seeks to parody.

The concept and writing are a half-step up from the current menu of national magazine commentators, but still, that yields just a one-and-a-half trick pony. With four full minutes to ruminate and regurgitate, we want a little nutrition – or bile – but "Just Like Mom" provides only empty calories.

The voicings are perfect public radio in the cool, somewhat snarky BBC- imitative newsreader, presenter, host, anchor style. Which is great if you're doing Shearer satire, but it isn't right for this piece (unless it were remade from the angle of a faux-commercial v/o).

O'Conner deserves broader play -- his words begin to uncover some curious corners of culture (I like "cookie catamaran" for some new packaging). But, too much, they sit like toys on display; they don't get dirty digging down to the deeper level where word-play makes metaphor with real illumination.

Play "Just Like Mom" for dessert; just don't expect any stuff of life beneath the saccharine frosting.

Art of the Song is about music the way Car Talk is about internal combustion. Car Talk is all about the talk. And Art of the Song is art – something godlike that can transpire between mere mortals. Like Judy Carmichael's Jazz Inspired, Art of the Song is about creativity. It is turned-on variety and fusion that's the apex of what public radio can achieve.

Program 7 in the series shows off beautiful negative-space interviewing, where Robert Mirabal warms up and pours through the mic and makes the radio invisible, with a perfectly mixed flute score in and out of audibility like wind in the trees.

Mirabal's spoken word pieces over traditional song produce an especially accessible presentation of both new idea and traditional aesthetic. Diverse, wry, and challenging, Robert Mirabal is just plain hard to resist, as in "Blue Lake":

"Maybe I'll understand the man, Nixon, America, and the Holy Land when I get older. What was more important now was catching up to smelly Starchy Montoya and riding to the dump to look for old bicycle forks to make me a modified chopper with a white banana seat."

And Mirabel's broad sweep finds the perfect counterpoint with Eliza Gilkyson's emotional scalpel singing "The Beauty Way", and with Michael Shorr offering accessible explications of honest songwriting.

I was impressed with the honesty throughout these programs – the editing drives toward narrative, with enough pauses that the listener is compelled to be there with his own answers as well.

I'm not one easily hippotized by New Age revelations, which are too often revealed to be "aged news". I do like to be surprised by something's that bravely goes beyond the confines of genre. It takes a daring eclecticism and some unwashed western humanity to makes a common ground in radio land, and here it is.

Low-key hosts John Dillon & Vivian Nesbitt's Art of the Song is programming that makes a genius PD – there's not a national show outside the tentpoles you couldn't knock off your schedule and come out better with this series.

5-Stars, and a bit of the Heavens thrown in.

National Geographic magazine's National Geography Bee judge Geo B. adjudicates both Earth & Air...

Geo whiz!

Paul Slavens and Jim Kuenzer have come up with a couple of good parodies of The World's GeoQuiz segment, and they're fun!

These interstitials are perfect to deploy for fundraising pitch sessions – they're short and upbeat and could be used to encourage listener calls in a mock contest that leads to membership subscription.

The parodies are rich with that endangered Core Value species, Humor, outfitted with perfect "Attention to detail – music, sound elements, language." A bit crisper read would have enhanced the verisimilitude, but, hey, it's not the end of the world.

DDs, download GeoQuiz Parodies #1 and #2 for your next fun(d) drive to avoid those pitch break doldrums.

The Dictionary of Theories states, "At present no theory of everything exists [but it] is the theorist's dream..." It shouldn't be surprising then that some elements of the theory might fail. The "Failure" episode is an example of a stubbed TOE.

Segment I (Score = 0), which limns Peter Choyce's experiences in Hollywood, is a big whiff, like a homerun hitter fooled by a screwball. It's hard to quite imagine who would listen through this 6-1/2-minute leader replete with tinny phone and irony-laden sarcasm that seems an anachronistic holdover from a decade of decadence. The actual opening of the program brings the same relief GE Smith's theme music did after another lousy (Conan O'Brian -written?) SNL opening shtick.

Segment II (Score = 2) boasts some great archival television audio together with important stylistic explication. But the story line of Carl Perkin's v Elvis Presley isn't elevated to something of ringing interest, and the story ends with one of those bad Las Vegas -style hospital jokes that tells all about the "doctor" and none of the patient.

Segment III (Score = 3) is a great mono-rant against the Harvard Lampoon and Conan O'Brian by Herbert G, but it looses its full potential for impact (a possible 4), undercut (rather than underscored) by the self-conscious half- Joe Frank half- TAL music bed that's too happy to call attention to itself.

Benjamen Walker is a wonderful and creative audio producer and Theory of Everything is an exceptional series which is worthy of broad air. You can count on Walker's continued success. Just don't bet on his "Failure".

Gabriel Spitzer's "Moving the Village" is founded upon good writing – clear, explanatory journalism. The documentary benefits further from Spitzer's compelling narration, his voice conveying both authority and humanity. His on-the-ground (and -water) research and writing combine most crucially to explain the underlying science of climate change. In narrative and through well-selected interviews, Spitzer communicates scientific data clearly, without resorting either to oversimplification or jargon.

While maintaining a factually accurate portrayal, Spitzer does not lose hold of the requirements either of storytelling or of radio -- story illustrated with sound. "Moving the Village" follows a narrative arc that launches from the particular of Shishmaref's Inupiaq culture to more general human themes – Why are we where we are? Why is "sense of place" important – how does it resonate beyond the local to the universal? What sense of self does a place impart? In the words of one voice of Shishmaref, there's a change ahead, to being "mainlanders, not islanders".

The success of "Moving the Village" comes not from clinical journalism divorced from real people, but from the precise weave of research, writing, and audio. The ambience is never garish, but the sounds – of a caribou's internal organs being gutted, of huskies and four wheelers, of angry ocean – enhance the story like good punctuation or typography.

Without sacrificing objectivity, Spitzer helps humanize the story through his willingness to place himself in it, splashing through the storm surge.

This is 21st Century radio, where head and heart come together. Great documentary requires this marriage, and Spitzer celebrates it. He gives voice to villagers and also affords alternate views, including the theory that local activities such as building seawalls may provoke as many negative effects as global warming.

In "Moving the Village", producer Gabriel Spitzer deftly avoids the pitfalls and exploits the opportunities for a medium-form environmental documentary. This is great radio that speaks to every village in the public radio system. Get moving.

"Carthedral" is a professional and polished arts feature. It's got the right writing and good street stuff put together with a sharp digital razor, and many listeners will appreciate this six and a half minutes of auto art.

Rebecca Caldwell welded a bug on top a Cadillac hearse. It is not your usual car. But still, we don't get the real feel of crawling around death, as with Baudelaire, "Like the maggots to the corpse", or other edgier implications

Caldwell's "Carthedral" isn't pedestrian, it's Art, which by some definition must be more than the sum of its parts. Lightman's "Carthedral" - The Soundtrack, though, is somehow less than the sum of it's perfectly fine elements, all of which are good, though the near-uptalk on o/c makes for something like an over-the-cliff finish line.

Leyna Lightman had the eye to catch this opportunity, and I'll look forward to her next arts piece where she follows her ear farther. Sometimes whacky doesn't fit into normal, and sometimes form can corrupt content. Sometimes you have to smash the glass to see the paint underneath.

Next week do the regular thing on your station for 167 hours . Then make sure you find a place of honor for this one hour.

Because "The Voices Of Civil Rights Project" accomplishes what only radio can – a soul-to-soul connection. And "Voices" takes up the special charge of public radio, to do good, to give voice to the people. There is something wonderfully educative about learning the very inside of another human being without facing the made-up rouge and blush of a book's cover, judging only the words, in black and white.

The letters that provide the primary source content of this hour are as varied as America but they are consistently, disarmingly honest. The production and packaging of "Voices" dispenses with the funeral procession pace of old-style docs – Prime Time Radio host Mike Cuthbert, AARP's Rick Bowers, and Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights provide sharp, personal commentary that frames the vignettes simply and elegantly.

Really, this massive project represents a remarkable success for inclusiveness and broad-thinking on the part of AARP, LCCR, and the Library of Congress. "Voices" is not just a gift shared between races and cultures, it is a bequest to a coming generation.

Incidentally, the companion website also presents terrific content, including arresting images from former WESUN commentator and Newsweek photographer Lester Sloan.

"One of the most interesting things I learned during my 70-day photographic odyssey across America," Sloan says, "is that average people can be both heroic and regal just being themselves." Keep your ears on this prize and, an hour from now, you'll know just how insightful Lester Sloan is.

[Production note: "Voices" ends at 54:00; the balance of this hour is filled with a PrimeTime "Postscript" feature.]

Young people began public radio more than three decades ago, but for the ensuing generation they failed to properly recruit new listeners and producers. Today, public radio is constructed with a bifocal glass ceiling of 50-somethings. Blunt Youth is one of several important projects to stop squinting and see the problem clearly, putting young voices behind the mic and looking for young ears.

Ironically, "My Life as a Criminal" scores higher in revealing its older subject, the mother, than the juvenile criminal of the title, Mark. With Mark's mom, the piece achieves something that radio excels at and which is hard to fake, especially to media-savvy young listeners – genuineness. "You walk through the house and look in his room and everything's there. But him."

After a radio verite open though, Mark's portions of the feature are littered with the detritus of the old CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter's Theory of Moments, "moments of feeling, moments of visceral emotion – no matter how manipulative," Ron Rosenbaum points out, that "have become the signatures of broadcast news and a certain kind of TV-magazine show".

The TAL-soundtrack, the overamped ax (jail door slamming), the evident reading of a script by the subject ("I started doing intense work on my addiction, which brought up hopelessness, anger, and hurt from past traumas." -- who talks like that?) subtract from rather than reveal Mark's humanity.

I've worked in a jail (though not a prison) and I know there's far more to Mark than comes across in this "Moment", notwithstanding his arresting suicide recitation.

The problem may well be more the result of form, a standard 4-1/2 -minute feature, than the potential of the content. If public radio is to avoid the downward slope of reality TV, memoir must have more raison than, "But it's true". Story and resonance are still the prime directives, regardless of age.

Mark does provide revelatory passages where he opens up and gives up a piece of real boy. "You come in here, your world stops, ya know?" Yeah. That's the genuine place where Mark's story needs to start.

In "A Tribute to Spalding Gray", Jon Kalish invites listeners into the Gray Club with a triple decker of personal interviews (where Kalish is conversationally present) seminar presentations, and Gray's trademark monologs.

The radio is very, very good to Spalding Gray, whose live performance scenery depends upon only his plaid shirt, plain table and chair, and glass of water. Little is lost when his monologs are brought from the theatre or cinema to the ether, and spoken word is superior to the print versions of his work.

Spalding Gray has a high quotient of fans among public radio listeners, perhaps because his startling honesty is met in kind by the directness of the medium. That honesty has a harder edge in this later material, where Cambodian joints are replaced by Irish fractures.

Next thing I knew I was lying in the street completely covered in blood, Kathy writhing next to me crying, "I'm dying I'm dying." And I said, "But I can't straighten my leg." [And] there was cow medicine everywhere -- it was a local veterinarian [who crashed into us.]"

Selling his house for money reminds Gray of his father, and what subsequently happened to his mother. "That's what led to her madness. So it's not my story I hope."

But it is. This tribute captures not only the brilliance and spark but also the descending trajectory of Gray's shooting star.

Kalish ends with a personal goodbye, which fits the acolytic style of the piece, really a remembrance in Gray's own voice, just as his performances really comprised a series of his lives, remembered.

[Production note: 15:05 -15:18 = Station ID to KCRW, which must be stripped for rebroadcast, which we hope for, broadly. -gb]