Akins High School youth producers wanted to learn about New Orleans blues from their geography teacher and blues harmonica player Greg Izor. But when the conversation turned to Hurricane Katrina, something deeper happened. They got to witness something students rarely see in their teachers, vulnerability.

Tent Show Radio is a weekly one-hour variety series showcasing live performances from Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua, Bayfield Wisconsin.

Airing continuously since 1994, Tent Show Radio is hosted by farmer humorist, best-selling author, volunteer firefighter, emergency responder and all-around-great-guy, Michael Perry and features regional and national acts with regular contributions by the Big Top’s Blue Canvas Orchestra; a 9-piece vocal and instrumental ensemble consisting of band leader Ed Willett and Bruce Bowers, Jack Gunderson, Bruce Burnside, Phillip Anich, Tom Mitchell, Cheryl Leah, Jane Aleckson and Andy Dee.

Michael Perry is a humorist and author of the bestselling memoir Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, and the essay collection Off Main Street. Perry has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Backpacker, Orion and Salon.com, and is a contributing editor to Men’s Health. His essays have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered and he has performed and produced two live audience recordings (I Got It From the Cows and Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow). Perry lives in rural Wisconsin, where he remains active as a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical responder. He can be found online at www.sneezingcow.com.

In 2012, Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua will celebrate its 27th season under canvas on the south shore sands of Lake Superior near Bayfield, Wisconsin. Big Top Chautauqua is a non-profit performing arts organization. For more information visit www.bigtop.org

HOST:  Today on This I Believe, we have an essay from Amy Tan, the Chinese-American writer from San Francisco.  She is well known for her best-selling books including “The Joy Luck Club” and “The Bonesetter's Daughter.”  Here is Amy Tan with her essay for This I Believe.

TAN: I didn’t use to believe in ghosts, but I was trained to talk to them.  My mother reminded me many times that I had the gift. It all stemmed from a lie I told when I was four…..

[For expanded Director's Cut version, go to: http://www.prx.org/pieces/89978-99-invisible-61-a-series-of-tubes-director-s-c]

Pneumatic (adj.):  of, or pertaining to, air, gases, or wind.

In the world before telephone, radio, and email, the tasks of transmitting information and moving material objects were essentially the same challenge.  The way you sent someone a message was pretty much the same process as sending someone a package—you had to send a piece of physical media through the post, or on a ship.  

It was really the telegraph that divided telling someone something from far away and  giving someone something from far away. But every day people didn’t speak morse code (or have telegraph equipment).  The message had to be deciphered, written on a slip of paper, and then that was delivered to the recipient. For many cities, the pneumatic tube was essential in getting these slips of paper to the intended recipient quickly.

It’s no surprise that electronic communication eventually killed most of the need for pneumatic tubes. But you may not know that it was the telegraph itself that also put pneumatic tubes into widespread use.

Architectural historian and pneumatic tube aficionada Molly Wright Steenson leads us through the rise and fall (but not disappearance of) pneumatic tubes in Paris, and beyond.  

But the scale of the pneumatic tube systems in hospitals (or banks or big-box stores) pales in comparison to the one on Roosevelt Island in New York City.  They use underground tubes—and not trucks—to dispatch with their garbage.  Here’s a video detailing the wonders of their system, produced for the museum exhibit Fast Trash.

AVAC System :: Roosevelt Island, NYC from gregory whitmore on Vimeo.

The exhibit’s website even includes a 10-minute musical theatre piece about island’s garbage system, called AVAC Memories.

NOTE: In the audio version of this story, we stated that the Poste Pneumatique in Paris operated until 1964; it actually operated until 1984. Molly writes, “Duran Duran was a household name before pneumatic tubes stopped shuttling messages in Paris.” We regret the error!

Host Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices presents Five Symptoms of Heat Fatigue:

A sound-poem for "Dead of Summer" in the city by Marjorie Van Halteren and Lou Giansante, read by Russell Horton.

Tuscon residents reflect the desert "Heat," with author Charles Bowden, poet Ofelia Zepeda, and music by Steve Roach; produced by Jeff Rice.

The perfection of family, a crippled man on a blind man's back, and a collective scream of "I'm not dead," sweat it out in Joe Frank's "Summer Notes."

Cats pulling pianos are "The Little Heroes" in John Rieger's Dance on Warning series.

And host Scott Carrier takes a long hot cross-country drive down "Highway 50," the loneliest road in America. Music by The Lovin' Spoonful and Flying Lizards.

Host: Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices

A Tour of the River Towns:

Hannibal, Missouri, birthplace of Mark Twain; a day on a tugboat; St. Louis showboats; and changing the course of mighty rivers. We spend the whole hour on this 1984 downstream trip through the history and mystery of the Big Muddy, with Larry Massett and Scott Carrier.