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WCBE, and the Best Radio on Radio

The steps that the people from WCBE have taken to serve its literate audience make it one of the best things about Columbus. If you're a writer but not a listener to WCBE, here's a bit of what you're missing:

Fresh Air with Terry Gross
(Weekdays, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m.)

Terry Gross is widely regarded as the best interviewer at work today. The quality of her guest list is an indication of her talents. Whether they're writers, politicians, entertainers, athletes or other news-makers, the quality of her guest list is an indication of her talent.

In the past few months on "Fresh Air," Gross has delved into the minds and works of novelists David Leavitt (Martin Bauman; or a Sure Thing), Armistead Maupin (The Night Listener), and Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides), among others. She's discussed the art of the memoir with Martin Amis (Experience: A Memoir), Mary Karr (Cherry, a chronicle of adolescence and sex), Andre Aciman (Out of Egypt, about his Jewish family's long residence in Alexandria) and Jim Knipfel (Quitting the Nairobi Trio, concerning his experiences as a patient in a psychiatric ward).

During the summer she interviewed Joyce Johnson (Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters) concerning her affair with Jack Kerouac. She spoke with Russell Ferguson about poet Frank O'Hara and, during the same program, with David Lehman about the New York School of Poets. In one of her most interesting segments, she interviewed Spiderman creator Stan Lee about the creative process and the subtleties of characterization and plot involved in writing for comic books.

This American Life
(Saturdays, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m., and Wednesdays, 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.)

"This American Life" enjoys the kind of cult following that makes it necessary to broadcast twice during the week. The premise is intriguing. Host Ira Glass chooses a general theme for the week, such as "Something for Nothing" or "Urban Nature," and invites writers to contribute creative pieces about it. Most of the stories are non-fiction, though an occasional short story turns up in the mix.

The results are by turn hilarious, thought-provoking, gripping, or touching. In one show with the theme of "Poultry," for example, writer and food critic Jonathan Gold of Gourmet magazine told about how he unintentionally adopted a chicken and was forced to re-examine cuisine from a new perspective because of it. In "Where Words Fail," reporter Mark Arax told about investigating the unsolved murder of his father in his hometown. The experience made him realize that the stories we fashion to explain our lives are always inadequate.

Every broadcast of "This American Life" features four or five different stories, each unique, and each told in the voice and style of its writer. For writers, every one of them constitutes a lesson in narrative and language.

Selected Shorts
(Sundays, 7:00 - 8:00 a.m.)

Imagine Jane Alexander reading a story by Dorothy Parker, Jerry Orbach reading Josip Novakovich, William Hurt reading Richard Ford, Estelle Parsons reading Flannery O'Connor, or even Barbara Feldon reading a tale by Langston Hughes.
If you're willing to get up early enough on Sunday, you can hear great voices reading great short stories in taped performances from Symphony Space in New York.

"Selected Shorts" offers performances of the stories, rather than radio dramatizations of them. The experience is closer to the printed page than you'll find on any other of WCBE's programs. For the most part, the performers have chosen the stories themselves from authors they like, and reading to the response of a live audience in the New York theater adds a spontaneous life to their performances.

This is both radio and writing at their best -- a classic concept that works well at any time of day. With a cup of fresh coffee, it makes an especially good beginning to a writer's Sunday work.

Next: Radio, Theater of the Mind
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