Radio Pick: The Soundtrack to War and Peace

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The CBC's streak was broken this week, as Wisconsin Public Radio earned my radio pick of the week. While it has certainly taken on political connotations in the last century, I had no idea about the contemporary politics that shaped Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Harvey Sachs provided insightful background on that toward the end of a 53-minute show that once again showed that the team at Wisconsin Public Radio may be the best interviewers in the world.

Listen to MP3 of To The Best of Our Knowledge "The Soundtrack to War and Peace"

Radio: On Charlie Chan

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week offered a lot of candidates for the weekly radio pick, but in the end I have to give the nod to On Point. Very rarely does a talk show bring up a cultural topic on which I am somewhat ignorant, discuss it at length, bring up another cultural topic on which I am totally ignorant, and have callers offering great insights into the interplay between the two. On Point from WBUR and NPR this week managed to do that in a 46-minute show on the character of Charlie Chan which at the insistence of a rather obnoxious guest branched out to Guan Gong. This was public radio talk at its best.

Listen to MP3 of On Point "Sleuthing Out 'Charlie Chan'"

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There was a long list of runner-ups this week. Perhaps I'll divide them by category, with On Point earning the honor in the "talk show" category. In the "entertainment" category, the clear winner was the CBC's ReVision Quest episode "What's So Funny About Being Native?" which offered insight into the interplay of humor with the native condition as well as a lot of straight comedy material.

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In the category of "interviews," the clear winner was Wisconsin Public Radio's To The Best of Our Knowledge and its episode Losing Religion. I don't often hear multiple authors with perspectives I haven't heard before on the same show, and the team from Madison pulled that off this week.

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In the category of "commentary," Ira Basen of the CBC blew me away with a scathing analysis of the Harper administration's political strategy, comparing it to Stephen Colbert on this week's episode of The House.

Radio Pick: The Wonders of Physics

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick technically breaks the rules, as this program first aired in 2009. For some reason I passed it over at the time, and it was the best program I heard in the past week on its re-run. In exploring physics, Wisconsin Public Radio's premier interview show To The Best of Our Knowledge brought out insights from Richard Muller's reasoning on why a president should understand physics to the idea that all chemists are gangsters. There is just enough scientific "inside baseball" to hold my attention in the 53-minute program while being presented in an accessible way for a general audience--a feat not easy to attain.

Listen to streaming RealMedia of To The Best of Our Knowledge "The Wonders of Physics"

Radio Pick: Covering the War

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I've often expressed the opinion that To The Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio is the premier interview show in English-language radio, and their ongoing series "Boots on the Ground" on the war in Iraq is reinforcing this opinion. This week's show, focusing on press coverage, serves as my weekly radio pick. It features interviews with embedded reporter Brian Palmer, film-maker Deborah Scranton, and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez by three different journalists. The editing of each of these interviews in the 53-program is simply exquisite--pay attention to how they use various clips to make the conversation flow.

Listen to streaming MP3 of To The Best of Our Knowledge "Covering the War"

Radio Pick: Making New Words

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The staff of Wisconsin Public Radio's To The Best of Our Knowlege created a hard choice for me this week, as both of their weekly hours was worthy of selection as my weekly radio pick. In honor of the recent death of William Safire, the show on language received the nod. Everyone will probably learn something from this 53-minute program, from how US and British English diverged from Patricia O'Connor, why Klingon seems to be attractive as a language from Arika Okrent, or how a parrot pushes the definition of language from Irene Pepperberg.

Listen to streaming RealMedia of To The Best of Our Knowledge "Making Words"