In the Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne broadcast an opera over the prison loudspeaker system and was punished with 30 days in the hole, a veritable tomb of solitude. When the month was up, his fellow inmates asked how he had made it through. It was the memory of the works of his favorite composers, he replied, which kept him sane.
I like music almost as much as Tim Robbins' character, but unfortunately do not possess his cognitive prowess.
And so, when the tape deck in my car went comatose a couple of years ago, driving became almost as unbearable as Dufresne's trip to the hole.
For awhile I tried to make due with the radio, but I could only take those Total Request Live-saturated airwaves for about as long as Jon Stewart could stand an appearance on Crossfire.
At first I remedied this by refusing to drive anywhere, but after having nothing to do but watch six straight editions of Sportscenter and every Road Rules/Real World challenge ever produced, I decided to tough it out with the radio. Perhaps out of boredom or frustration, I resolved to find an alternative to my usual alternative station. What I discovered was National Public Radio, and I haven't turned the dial since.
Now you may think, as I did in the past, that NPR is just a tool used by parents to punish unruly children (to be used following the "don't make me pull over" threat). In fact, when I recently told a friend that I listened to NPR, he snidely remarked, "that's what my grandpa listens to."
Well, his grandpa can sit at my lunch table any time he wants.
NPR is one of the best media sources we have, and as you are paying for part of it (a small portion of NPR is federally funded), you might as well make use of it. Want to know what is going on in the world on both the national and international stage?
Tune into All Things Considered, which keeps you informed through a mix of news, interviews, commentaries, reviews and features. Interested in hearing engaging conversations with a sundry collection of entertainment and news figures? Take a listen to Fresh Air, with Terry Gross.
To highlight the diversity of the program, note that Bill O'Reilly was on last year, followed not too long after by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog who contributed a trenchant impression of the Fox News host. Now that's what I call good programming.
Hopefully, this last example dissuaded you from the impression that NPR is a cold, political reporting machine, but if not check out this list: Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, Dave Chapelle, Bernie Mac, Tina Fay, Stephen Colbert, Al Franken, Larry David, and my favorite, Triumph, have all lent their comedic perspectives to the programming. Mo Rocca, formerly of Daily Show and now of I Love the 80s/90s fame, can regularly be heard on Wait, wait ... don't tell me, a weekly quiz show that satirizes the past week's news.
Sure, you might be able to watch these people on TV, but there is something about the medium of radio that is very personal, something that I think has been lost on our generation.
But its not all talk, music is an integral component to the station's programming. Besides classical, jazz, rock and pop interludes between stories, artists often appear in more tangible ways. I've heard interviews and songs from John Mayer, Marc Broussard, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, Cake, Mos Def and Ice Cube. I've discovered a Norah Jones concert, and for the indie crowd, a show from Bright Eyes (broadcast last week).
I've also heard fascinating feature stories, like Strom Thurmand's African-American daughter discussing her relationship with her father, a long-time opponent to integration. Or Noam Chomsky considering how close we actually came to nuclear war, and Christopher Reeve examining how he had become a more intuitive person after his accident. I've heard debates on the greatest outstanding problems in science, including long-standing debates with religion. The list goes on.
And as all of this content is freely available for streaming from the NPR Web site, you can listen to it anytime, or even record it for your own personal use. I usually put the really interesting stories on my Ipod, so that my hour-and-a-half trip back to Hershey isn't just an hour and a half of my life lost in transit. And that's the facet of NPR that I really like: the feeling that I've actually learned something afterward. It's not a forced learning, like an unwanted general education class.
Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR ombudsman, stated in a recent article that the purpose of public radio is to "surprise and delight," something which it often does for me.
So much so that when I buy my next car, I'll think I'll forgo the latest stereo system and instead ask them to excise and install the dilapidated tape deck from my old car.
