Radio Yeah Yeah

I know from correspondence with online friends that many of the gifted and afflicted amongst us have a passion for music. Me too. Music is, for me though, a subset of a bigger passion: sound. While Jerzy Kosinski’s Chauncey Gardiner liked to watch, I like to listen. I like to listen to people especially, but broadly, to practically everything although I do take exception to those endless security warnings at airports. As I write this post I am listening to a custom Pandora (the web site, not the planet) radio station built around the music of the late, great and underappreciated Warren Zevon.

On the radio, I am a National Public Radio junky which I suppose makes me a pinko and a pinky. My favorite hour of programming each week is Ira Glass's entirely unpredictable and beautifully produced This American Life. Brave, funny, intimate and pitch-perfect week in, week out. Sundays @ 6:00 PM on many local affiliates, but archived for your loving convenience online here.

Last nights program, entitled “Somewhere Out There” features three vignettes on the broad theme of the miracle that any two people on the planet can meet and find meaning. Act 2 of this 3 part suite features the story of Lilly and Thomasina. Heartbreaking and heartening all at once.

This story will hit home for two groups of readers here. You might belong to both of them:

- people curious about gender and what it reveals about us, and
- people with a pulse and even a small dusting of firing neurons.

There is a wave of youngsters growing up in our wake whose view of the world will be so much different than those of us of a certain age. The world makes slow accommodations to these changes. With all of these societal tectonic forces clashing, there is a lot of heat and steam, hurt and hope at the margins. All of that is so beautifully expressed in this small story that I want to share it with you.

Go make your television jealous this evening and have a listen. I would not lie to you, dear friend. If you do, or if you heard the show last night, drop me a line here with your thoughts.

Thanks - Petra