When I arrived on the Berkeley campus this fall, I assumed everyone listened to NPR. I was wrong. I was shocked to learn that even many members of Cal Dems don’t listen to NPR! Now, I completely understand that radio is antiquated even by the standards of my parents’ generation, but NPR is quite possibly one of the best, if not the best, way of disseminating information—especially for people like college students who are always on the go. Podcasts make NPR more accessible than ever. For instance, on my way to class and to meetings I listen the greatest show ever, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz. When other Cal students ask “What the hell is that?” I just about fall to my knees and pray to Carl Kassel, the famed and godlike moderator of Wait Wait.

After coming to my senses and realizing that few college students have the time let alone the geekiness to parade around with NPR blaring from their iPod, I began to accept that not everyone likes their tablespoon of political pedantry via radio. I can understand that. What I want to leave you with is not that all of Cal Dems should listen to NPR but to let everyone in our generation know about the medium that sustained generations before us and still, as I believe, has wind in its sails to go for another generation. In my estimation, NPR will fall out of style and into history and history alone. This saddens me because I, a child of the internet age, was entertained for many hours with the jabbering of political juggernauts and pedants who brought to life a world that seemed so distant and so foreign. NPR raised me in a sense. It raised me to love politics for its beauty and nuance.

I hope the readers of this blog may humor me in listening to Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me on Saturday mornings (or the podcast available on iTunes) on KQED (88.5 FM). The hilarious commentary on politics brightens my day; I hope it brightens yours too.