We listen to All Things Considered whenever it’s on while we’re in the car. I also enjoy Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! and used to listen to Prairie Home Companion when it was on.
Whenever we’re in the car at the top of the hour, Mom has me switch to NPR to get the news. Then we put it back on music unless ATC or something interesting is coming on.
NPR became my preferred source for news once I realized how sensationalist all the commercial television news outlets are in comparison. For news coverage, being “dry” is a good thing in my book.
This recently aired on one of the Boston stations:
If it’s what I recall, it was a segment on This American Life. I love their work. I do find it interesting to hear little slices about how people all over the place live, what they care about, etc., often especially if it’s something that isn’t important to me at all. And public radio shows do it in an in-depth, intelligent, and empathetic way, not in a exploitative or sensationalized way. Yeah, here’s a weird thing that a certain segment of the population really cares about, and here might be some reasons why it has become so important.
Exactly so. For this reason, I also enjoy listening to the BBC World Service, as well as Canada’s CBC (both are carried as part of my SiriusXM subscription). I fully recognize that my knowledge and understanding of the world, particularly anything outside of the U.S., is limited, and I’ve found that I’ve learned a lot by listening to that sort of radio programming.
NPR is by far the best thing on commercial radio so it was all that I listened to. Also, NPR is mostly annoying and boring so I stopped listening to it completely when I got SeriusXM installed. I did donate in the years that I listened.
And making things even more confusing, for many shows NPR is merely the distributor of the content, not the creator. Car Talk was produced by WBUR. NPR’s only role was sending the show out to other stations. Fresh Air is produced by WHYY. Again, NPR just distributes it to other stations.
RIght I think that the main thing that NPR actually produces are the morning and late afternoon news programs, and maybe some of the weekend stuff. A lot of the other content is created by individual stations and NPR is just the distributer. No idea how big of a cut they take. 
Public radio, as an idea, is a good thing. NPR, especially as the producer, is not. I was having my issues with them most of a decade ago, but I swear that 2015/2016 and then Trump winning absolutely broke them. (I say the same about MSNBC). Every time I flipped it on, it was nothing but American politics and all-Trump-all-the-time leavened with some “everything everywhere is racist and sexist” and I just gave up. (Again, same with MSNBC). I’ve moved onto listening to the BBC World Service if I want either news or some sort of commentary, with the benefit that the programming isn’t all US politics all the time.
Yes, I think you’re right to a great degree.
One thing I don’t like about NPR-style human-interest radio pieces, is that they are never just a small story about some person or small group of people, they always seem to have a larger world-view point, usually along the lines of
Nearly always the point is something negative and depressing.
I do like those little conversations that they air, usually between two people who are either closely related or close friends who have shared many life experiences. I have forgotten what they call it, but I think they come from an archive of recorded conversations done by the Library of Congress or some org. like that. – I looked it up, it’s StoryCorps.
I, on the other hand, can’t stand those cloying conversations. Blech. But that’s the good thing about public radio. It offers a wider spectrum of style and content than commercial radio, which is exactly the same thing over and over again.
Overall, I like public radio a lot.
One reporter I don’t like: Mary Louise Kelly. Reason: it’s like she crowds the mic and when she inhales, the microphone gets every bit of it.
But I will say that it’s like anything else. If you like protein, super: but you still need some carbs. Love carbs? You still need some fat. Got fat? What about fiber? Etc. I can listen to NPR and then I need some music. But if all I listened to was music, I’d need some NPR.
And I miss Garrison Keillor.
Not a fan. I used to enjoy Prairie Home Companion and occasionally listened to the news. Nowadays I hardly listen to the radio at all, and when I do it isn’t NPR.
My mother is a big fan of Wait Wait Don;t Tell Me (I think that’s the name of the show), which she finds screamingly funny and I…don’t. It feels like people trying too hard to entertain.
My son is (was?) a big fan of This American Life. He especially recommended to me a story about something that had happened at Columbia University, I think, involving something about phone messages and the Little Mermaid. “Comedy gold,” the narrator kept calling it, but it wasn’t even remotely amusing in my memory and the backstory wasn’t even remotely interesting. Very self-indulgent, I thought. I listened to several other pieces at my son’s urging, most of which were mundane and pointless at best and dull and boring at worst. Maybe I’m just not the right audience for the show.
And I agree that the news items I’ve heard since Trump’s election have often been over the top.
So–not my bag.
This isn’t a political thread so I’ll say no more than I can’t understand this criticism at all because it’s not remotely possible for NPR to be over the top about this particular political movement. We are on the edge of being taken over by a violent anti-democratic retrograde fascist authoritarian movement. If anything, NPR has been weirdly calm about all of it. For that, I’ve cut back on listening to NPR’s news programs because they seem to pretend that everything is normal. That’ll be my last comment on that particular thread of this conversation.
I don’t. His show was my least favorite NPR culture program. The same half dozen jokes every week punctuated by his terrible singing. I much preferred Michael Feldman.
There are a few public radio shows that have gone off the air that I sorely miss—Studio360, Whaddya Know with Michael Feldman, Car Talk, that one show that was just a guy reading a book.
My current favorites include Fresh Air, This American Life, Imaginary Worlds, Freakanomics, Planet Money, Radiolab, 99 Percent Invisible.
Well, I completely agree with your characterization of the situation we’re in. But I don’t think NPR is pretending that “everything is normal.” On the contrary, the little I’ve heard seems to be, as others have said above, “everything everywhere is racist or sexist.” I’ll be honest, I can’t remember whether it was NPR or whether it was Rachel Maddow on MSNBC who said it (MSNBC is doing it too), but I clearly recall somebody fulminating on the air about an incident in which a PERSON IN A WHEELCHAIR was among those arrested at a protest. I don’t find that a particularly helpful response to a situation. (If the arrest was justified, then a person in a wheelchair shouldn’t get special dispensation. If the arrest was unjustified, then complain about everybody.) It seems like every time I hear NPR news, usually at my mom’s house, there’s something like this. Obviously, your mileage varies.
I see a fallacy here, which would be a topic for a different thread, but aside from that, Maddow’s profession is to fulminate. I can’t say I have ever heard a public radio reporter or commentator fulminating. I’d have to hear it to believe it.
I’ll say this, that public radio’s model had been overtaken by podcasting. Now, anyone can put out an interesting audio show. They no longer need a broadcast radio distributor. The biggest weakness of public radio is that there are only so many hours a day available for programming. Podcasting allows you to put everything out that can find support from an audience, and it isn’t limited by the schedule.
There are several This American life segments that are unforgettable to me, among them:
No. 1 Party School - 396: #1 Party School - This American Life
NUMMI - 403: NUMMI - This American Life
Petty Tyrant - 419: Petty Tyrant - This American Life
Break Up - 339: Break-Up - This American Life
The Problem We All Live With - 562: The Problem We All Live With - Part One - This American Life
Heretics - 304: Heretics - This American Life
Godless America - 290: Godless America - This American Life
There is a story that Tig Notaro to told on a live episode about Taylor Dane that had me in stitches.
I mostly adore our NPR affiliates, HPR1 (talk) and HPR2 (classical music) and am a sustaining member. I rarely listen to HPR2 actually, but that’s because I’m too busy listening to HPR1.
I like their goofy stuff like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I also like Science Friday, their “left-right-center” political analysis (can’t remember if that’s the name), Marketplace, Fresh Air, and The Splendid Table. The Moth Radio Hour is fantastic. They also do an excellent job of providing local news and analysis.
This is not to say it’s all great. I don’t know whether this is typical of all NPR affiliates or not, but a lot of the Sunday programming is so bad I won’t listen. The segments devoted to Hawaiian music are good and have actually improved lately - they got a new host for Kanikapila Sunday and she is better at providing background information than her predecessor.
The other Sunday stuff is horrible - a lot of woo, “get your spirit in touch with the soul of the universe through healing your mindset” crap.
My other complaint is a local program called “The Conversation.” It’s a wonderful idea but poorly executed. They’ll choose some very important but probably dry topic like the Red Hill water contamination problem, locate some bureaucrat with expertise on the subject, and grill him or her with what feels like an infinite series of nerdy questions. Once in a while they will get a lively interviewee and a topic that lends itself to the format, but mostly I wince when I’m in the car and it comes on.
HPR is looking for people to join their community advisory board and I’ve been contemplating throwing my hat into the ring, not because I personally have special perspective but because I represent a local arts and culture organization and could speak on behalf of a lot of us. (Plus I’m from a neighbor island and they like having representation from outside the Honolulu bubble.) But, I probably won’t, because I’m just another typical aging haole outsider who moved to islands 4 years ago. They appear to have little in the way of Native Hawaiian representation. It is hard to be sure from reading the names of the current council, since so many people who grew up here have mixed heritage - someone named Jenny Shipman or Eric Tanaguchi could have a substantial amount of Hawaiian heritage. But offhand it looks like people like me are already overrepresented on their board.