I recently received an email from a staff member of the public radio show To The Point, which I’m linking on my sidebar, correcting a niggling detail (I was saying it’s NPR when in fact it’s PRI so… oh, never mind.) Anyway, I’m taking this opportunity to recommend that you listen. The format is typical – in fact, on its face, it’s the most annoying kind of journalism – the lazy he-said she-said style adopted in recent years by mainstream news. “Let’s hear from this so-called expert, okay, now let’s hear from this person who completely denies everything they just said, that was interesting, well, that’s the news, bye!”
But To The Point has an ace in the hole: Warren Olney. Warren is extremely well-informed, and he scrapes away all the surface clutter to find the common sense view point. He never lets his guests fall back on talking points, even when it seriously annoys them to have to deviate from their well-scripted drivel. That said, he tends to choose guests with relevant views instead of regurgitated spin, and he’s completely unbiased – so much so, the only other person I know who’s as big a fan of Warren as I am is a staunch Republican. (If you knew me personally, you’d say, “Wow.”) Most important, though, are the topics he chooses. I’ve learned about big issues weeks before the rest of the news world gets a whiff of them, by listening to Warren.
Yesterday’s show was about water, and how hard it may get to quench the thirsty world economy’s need for it. Give it a listen.