I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me.

Clear Channel's brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.

Public radio is growing by leaps and bounds because it is hospitable to scholars of all stripes and to travelers who have returned from the vast, unimaginable world with stories to tell. Out here in the heartland, we live for visitors like those.

In the article, Keillor suggests a few recent stories; here's another one for you. From the June 3 episode of This American Life:

Act Two, God Said, Huh?, Julia Sweeney, a Catholic, tells the story of how her faith began to crack after reading a most alarming book ... called the Bible. Her story is excerpted from her play, "Letting Go of God," which ran in Los Angeles. (29 minutes)

Confessions of a Listener, by Garrison Keillor