We’ve updated and link-checked our list of tools, talks, guides and other online radio how-to’s: HV Learn Radio- Links.

“Mexico’s Red Days” by Charles Bowden in GQ on the escalating Juárez, Mexico murders:

The killings have the cold feeling of butchery in a slaughterhouse, and they are everywhere: done in broad daylight, on streets, in markets, at homes, and even in Wal-Mart parking lots. Women, children, guilty, innocent—no one is safe.

These are red, endless days.

You don’t want to think about prostate problems. What man over 50 would? Jeff Metcalf certainly didn’t; until the diagnoses in 2004: prostate cancer. That’s when Metcalf, an English professor at the University of Utah, began keeping a journal. His diaries open as a play this summer.

Here’s the HV radio version, written by Jeff Metcalf, performed by Paul Kiernan, recorded by Scott Carrier, produced by Larry Massett, music by Parazitii, “A Slight Discomfort: My Prostate Diaries” (53:00 mp3):

Jeff has assembled info & links on our Prostate Diaries page.

[This is a shortened version of our Winter Soldiers page.]

[Mr. Massett explains why the media explanations of the mortgage crisis explain nothing.]

When the US credit markets began to blow up last year, every newspaper in the country served up two explanations for the mess: “sub-prime mortgage” and “collaterized debt obligation,” or “CDO.”

A sub-prime mortgage sounds bad on the face of it, so no problem there. But CDO has no obvious meaning. Only a few days ago I watched an NPR journalist try to figure it out from the words themselves (”let’s see, ‘collateralized’ refers to ‘collateral,’ so there must be a thing like a house or a car someplace, and ‘debt’ means, well, debt, and an ‘obligation’ means, um, you have to do something, right?”) The usual fudge is to drape the riddle with adjectives like “opaque,” “complex,” and “hard to understand,” as if these were explanatory principles. The phrase “complex and opaque financial instruments known as CDO’s” doesn’t tell you anything, really, but at least it sounds bad. Dern near as bad as a sub-prime mortgage. Moving right along, in other news…

The trouble is CDO’s were never meant for the average investor, or the average journalist. They are Wall Street inventions designed for the big players, investment banks like Citi or Merill or Bear Sterns. To understand them you have to think like an investment bank. This is no harder than thinking like a Martian.

NPR has changed. As evidence I offer this early 80s promo produced by Jesse Boogs for NPR. This imagistic radio dramatic audio artistic style said NPR then. Now, not so much; “Morning Edition promo” (1:00 mp3):

Author Charles Bowden on the border, © 2008 Julián Cardona:

C’mon, bait your line. Let’s go smelt fishin’ on the ice. Ten shacks on a frozen river are filled with ice fishermen for ten weeks each year. Owner Steve Leighton provides the bait; his patrons bring the beer; and the fish take care of the rest. Produced by Grant Fuller of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, premiered on Weekend America, “What Are You Gonna Do with 400 Fish?” (5:13 mp3):

While you’re listening, check the photos of Sarah Breul, also of SALT, who tagged along to Leighton’s Smelt Camp on the Abagadasset River in Bowdinham, Maine, and took these Image of Ice Fishing…
© Sarah Breul

---

Above effect is the Anura photo gallery (beta 2) script by Eric Puidokas. Tell us if it’s working for ya…