A Refreshingly Human-Sounding Public Radio Interview: Yours Truly on Morality, Revenge, Forgiveness and Evolution

I have a friend who won't listen to public radio in the U.S. It's not that he objects to public radio programming or pubic radio values: It's just that he doesn't like the sonic quality of public radio programs. In the United States, at least, public radio is very heavily produced. I generally cannot be on a radio show that is syndicated to NPR (National Public Radio) stations unless I'm willing to schlep myself over to an ISDN studio because NPR requires "that noiseless ISDN sound." Turn your radio right now to an NPR station and you'll get a decent sampling of what I'm describing.  Sometimes, I like that sound, but I must agree with my friend. It does sound rather sterile.

Ever since my friend mentioned this to me, I have been struck by how slick I sound (relative to real life) in general when I am on public radio shows in the United States. It's not always a kind of slick that I like. Some of it has to do with the ISDN sound, but some of it also has to do with the editing after the interview is finished. Everyone involved ends up, I think, sounding smarter and more eloquent than they did during the interview itself. That's not always a bad thing--nobody wants to sound like an idiot if he or she can help it--but as a listener, all of that sweet perfection can make you wonder if you're at risk of getting a cavity.

I therefore found my recent interview with Charlotte Graham from a Radio New Zealand, for her show Summer Nights, quite refreshing--particularly (though not only) from an aural point of view. It's really just an uninterrupted and unedited phone call between me in Miami (at 9:00 PM my time) and Charlotte in New Zealand (where it was 3:00 in the afternoon of the following day). The phone line wasn't, to say the least, ISDN quality, and both of us (though I to a rather greater extent than Charlotte) exhibited a healthy dose of the errors and disfluencies that characterize most people's real conversations. Even so, we managed to cover some decent conceptual territory on evolution, culture, morality, revenge, and forgiveness.

Here's a link to the interview. Hope you enjoy it.