Hearing Voices

I heard two delightful radio items this week.
Both items exemplified for me the invitational nature of voice and the triggering of enquiry.
On 30 August Phillip Adams interviewed Ira Glass about This American Life (a weekly public radio show produced by Chicago Public Media and broadcast on more than 500 stations across America).
I liked the single comment on the Late Night Live page for the program “One of my favorite radio programs talking about another one of my favorite radio programs. This was great.”
From This American Life’s web page:

The radio show and TV show follow the same format. There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There’s lots more to the show, but it’s sort of hard to describe. Probably the best way to understand the show is to start at our favorites page, though we do have longer guides to our radio show and our TV show. If you want to dive into the hundreds of episodes we’ve done over the years, there’s an archive of all our old radio shows and listings for all our TV episodes, too.

Ira’s conversation with Phillip explores story telling and narrative in a way that makes following up on the radio program a compelling opportunity.
Whilst mulling over this interview I had the good fortune to listen to a story about the Lajamanu Champions and their teacher Patrick. The Bush Telegraph trail for this story:

The world of internet podcasts has some unlikely new rising stars. They’re a bunch of kids from Lajamanu School, one of the most remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. With their teacher Adrian Trost, the students have started their own audio podcast. The kids choose what goes in it and that means jokes, stories about hunting and the canteen report. But student Margaret Johnson says her favourite part of the podcast is the segment when they speak in Warlpiri.

I really enjoyed the vitality of the Champions’ approach to using voice. I thought it was a great example of what a teacher with imagination and energy can do.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here