Everyone’s heard of This American Life, which is still, unquestionably the best 50-minutes of storytelling radio on the air.

But what people don’t know is that there are a number of narrative radio outlets around that also provide color and depth and soul to public radio.

Studio 360. Soundprint. Weekend America. Radiolab. And B-Side, which is a show out of Berkeley, Calif., by a new generation of public radio reporters and producers.

This week’s version is titled, The Extraordinary Lives of Otherwise Ordinary People.

And in it, there is a piece produced by yours truly: A Virtual Bruce Lee.

It’s taken me a while to post this, because I have been busy with tons of other stuff. But we (the Kiel-based Fulbrighters) took a trip to Lübeck, in northern Germany about two-and-a-half weeks ago.

And besides being one of the most scenic and picturesque cities (please look through all my photos on flickr –its incredible), it also is the birthplace of novelist Thomas Mann.

And most apropos to my current reading (and life), the city was also the site of a horrific Allied bombing during WWII, where (if I understand it correctly) American and British forces firebombed the city, as a test to see if their new firepower and military weaponry would be effective in the German naval city of Kiel.

Both Kiel and Lübeck were similarly designed and built, so a “successful” test in Lubeck would be a good indication of how the firebombing would “work” in Kiel, where Hitler’s submarines and warships were built, repaired, and docked.

And the bombing of Lubeck took place on Good Sunday 1942.

And so the significance of that date, and event, was featured prominently in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

And in it, Pynchon surmises that the unexpected and horrible Lubeck raid helped facilitate and energize the German development of the V-2 rocket.

(more…)

The Deutsche Oper is one of the most celebrated Opera companies in the world — and this week the opera company made world headlines for a reason besides the performance.

The Berlin opera company said Tuesday it had pulled “Idomeneo” from its fall schedule, because the show featured a severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, and the opera house had received anonymous threats from German muslims.

The news has caused a furor in Germany, and outside, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

“The cancellation of a work that has run intermittently since 2003 drew a rebuke from politicians and theater critics, who regarded it as a defeat for creative expression and a victory for militant Islamists over liberal European tradition.”

For my money, I bet the opera company talks to the government, which secures the opera house and provides the support the show needs to go forward. I can’t imagine that unsubstantiated threats will suspend a show at such a respected opera house — especially when the threats themselves are part of a continuing debate that has captured the German conciousness right now.

Okay, so I still haven’t “filed” a story from Berlin — in the sense that I haven’t done a story about Berlin or in Berlin.

But I have been somewhat productive, as evidenced by these two questions:

1) How do you feel about auto checkout lines?

2) Do you believe I am a geek?  (Kai does.)

Aaron McGruder, at one point seen as the successor to Calvin & Hobbes‘ Bill Watterson and The Far Side’s Gary Larson, as the best political satirist on the comics page of the nation’s newspapers.

But McGruder seems to have been seduced by the bright lights of Hollywood (or at least Comedy Central) and has, for now at least, hung up his comics easel. He was criticized the past few years, when he was still a young cartoonist, for passing a lot of the work onto subordinates and maybe switching into cruise control at too young an age. And so the decision is not necessarily a surprise, considering McGruder long harbored very public ideas about moving to TV and film.

Still, in its article, the Washington Post decided to draw a silly and stupid parallel based on race.

One that added nothing (absolutely nothing) to the discussion, and showed a disturbing lack of knowledge of the story and McGruder’s past:

“His apparent departure raises several questions, according to those in the industry. Is he pulling a Dave Chappelle here? The 33-year-old comedian stunned his fans when he bolted last year from his Comedy Central show, ditching a $50 million deal and returning to a stand-up tour onstage.”

…ran today.

Its my first non-tech feature in a while, on how politicians are using films to create public policy change.

The close-up in today’s story is health care reform, and Oregon’s former governor, John Kitzhaber.

I actually travelled to Portland to interview him — and I also talked to several other politicians and activists doing similar things. Including Robert Greenwald, the director and producer of those guerilla documentaries for progressives.

Where am I in this picture? If you said Colorado, you’d be right — but now with Flickr, you can see exactly where.

(Click on the photo to see a world map of all my photos)

I already sing the praises of Yahoo’s Flickr.com photo storage and sharing site; it truly is one of the best, most fun web tools out there.

And now, this month, Flickr added another layer of fun — Flickr maps. You can zoom into specific areas and see who, what and where things are being photographed.

Play around, I bet you’ll have some fun!

Living in a country, as a reporter, especially an independent reporter, puts one in the uncomfortable position of only getting news from the local and regional sources.

(Ok, yes, there is the Internet — but direct and specific news surrounds you and contacts you where you live.)

And so, in Germany, one is likely to read to much into trends and news…but still, it does seem as if the mood and attitude of the German citizenry is changing at this moment.

It’s not a sea change…but it is almost as if a critical mass has been reached, and now the country feels as if enough time has passed for a new patriotism.

We all heard about the surprise appearance, and pride, of the German flag during the World Cup.

And now, how about the news that three rabbis today were the first to be ordained in Germany since WWII?

Or, the outpouring of German Catholic support for the Pope as he visits the very-Catholic south of the country?

Or, in a similar vein, the country’s handwringing over the news of Gunther Grass’ time in the German army?

…And while all of those symbolic changes are big.

The really big news is that Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel, has committed 2,400 troops to the Middle East conflict between Lebanon and Israel.

1. Harvard ends its early admission program. This is likely very good. Wanna know why? Email: dlindsey@ucla.edu.

2. More clear evidence Lance is a doper. Want another opinion? Email: emechler@gmail.com.

3. Facebook apologizes to its users. Want to know what the heck is going on there? Email anyone under the age of 25, or…

Stay tuned.

More on Facebook here in coming days.

(one more story of note that may not be important for a few years: Germany cracked down on some anonymity-providing TOR servers.)