No soap, radio.

(Ha-ha!)

I love radio.

Radio sucks.

Both statements are true.

Radio is a wonderful medium, but it used to be a lot better. There used to be drama, and live music, and all sorts of wonderful stuff on the radio.

There still is on the BBC.

There's some good radio in the United States: on college radio stations, and on NPR. I just gave $25 to WWUH this morning (while I was in my car driving to school, where I usually listen.) WWUH is staffed by volunteer, amateur DJs. My favorite shows are Wednesday and Thursday mornings. River City Slim starts out Thursday morning with old time gospel music -- like the Blind Boys of Alabama, or Sam Cooke and the Soul-Stirrers. I don't go to church much, but I love this music.

(You also might want to check out "Culture Dogs" on Sunday night -- hip and irreverent.

Now, onto NPR. You know who they are by now (I hope). They like to tout what they call "driveway moments". This is when you're lsitening to All Things Considered on the way home, and you pull up in your driveway, but you don't get out of the car because you've got to hear "the rest of the story". Here's one I heard the other night. It's about a modest, ordinary man who became a hero -- not for killing people, but for saving someone/

And then this piece, from a series called "This I Believe". It's story about forgiveness, and I find it profoundly moving. (Two words that can be very hard to say are "I'm sorry", and two words that are sometimes even harder are "That's okay.) It's the story of a woman who was raped, and a man who spent eleven years in prison after she positively identified him as her rapist -- until DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist.

"This I Believe" was originally a radio series back in the 1950's, the brainchild of radio saint Edward R. Murrow -- but we'll save that for another day.