This series, along with StoryCorps and This I Believe is an example of Public Radio's version of reality TV....only we were doing reality long before TV discovered it!

This is a half hour promo for a series that originally aired on WGBH, Boston. I'm sure these stories worked well as drop-in segments during Morning Edition and I don't doubt that the podcasts have been popular yet I have a hard time imaging this half-hour program on the air of a radio station other than WGBH. From what I could tell, there is no real theme linking the stories.

While some of the stories are quite charming, perhaps engaging, I found listening to a half hour of them to be quite tedious. I think they must work best in their original context. A good example of the bromide, "Less is more." This presentation would work very well as a demo to be played for prospective underwriters or as an awards competition entry.

Another issue for me is the fact that, despite the mention that this program has grown to a point where "our neighborhood is the world" all this material sounds like Boston or the East Coast to me. Even in the original form of individual short stories, these would sound out of place in Peoria, Omaha or Santa Fe.

Host Tony Kahn has a charming Kasey Kasem style and the narration accomplishes its mission well. The stories are artfully linked with music. The technical aspects of this piece are executed very well.

I recommend that programmers listen to as many of these stories as you can handle and use them as food for thought about how we could do something similar in our local communities.