progressnerd: I hadn’t heard about this idea. It’s interesting and I’ll pitch it, but we might be more likely to do it — as well as a show on the electoral college — closer to the 2008 elections. Are you familiar with our electoral reform series? Rob Richie was on one of the shows — on redistricting.

Bob Peel: I’ll check out the Atlantic article. Will this be the angle we’ve been looking for to cover the Palestinian story? Sam’s also thinking about how lessons from the Northern Ireland conflict can be applied to other bifurcations.

hurley: Build a show around this how?

statusquobuster: Can you send me a link to the article? It sounds potentially interesting. You can post it here or email it to me at greta radioopensource org [turn that into an email address].

Responses to pitches from June 12th: lizbitchwitch: What an intriguing idea. Do you think any guest would, in good conscience, stand in for their candidate? It’d be pretty ballsy. They’d have to be impossibly well versed in the candidates life and rhetorical style and voting history. And what would such a debate prove? It is fun to think about, I’ll admit. I’ll pitch it in the meeting and see if anyone thinks its feasible.

erin: the Genarlow Wilson story is an important one, but I think the way you’re broadening it out isn’t quite right. If you listen to our Race, Class, and Prisons show and our The Day After Prison show, maybe you can pitch us an angle that we missed?

bellatrix13: I gave this one a pre-pitch to Katherine, who sits next to me in the office, and she said she’d be interested in looking into it. I’ll give it a full pitch in the meeting.

Emmett O’Connell, our Sports Desk: Well researched, and definitely worth a pitch.

Potter: I like it. I actually ordered the Mafouz trilogy from the publisher way back when you first pitched it, but the package never came. I’ll try again.

hurley: I just ordered Seidel’s recent book — and was warned by a press flack at FSG that that Seidel rarely does interviews. But we’ll see!

TEP492: We may touch on some of these issues in Katherine’s upcoming Global Warming: Is Capitalism the Rub or the Fix. Admittedly it’s primarily about global warming, not the Bhagavad Gita, but we’ll definitely talk about the ethos of consumption — and other ideas of the greater good.

Masculist: I’d like to do this show but I probably just won’t have time: I’m volunteering at the High Church of Feminism so much these days that between the ritual sacrifices and bake sales I’m just too tired.

Jac:

This reminds me a bit of a great pitch we got not too long ago from Moonkey1. Sam is working on it.

Almanch: After some of our recent shows, I’m pretty tapped out when it comes to conversations about cosmology and belief. However, when we do return to it, we’ll definitely give a big swath of time to “non-supernatural believers.”

Bobby: I found the idea of “third culture kids” interesting, and it was indeed new to me, but I’m still not sure it’s a full hour of radio. Instead of focusing on individuals with nomadic backgrounds and stateless identities, I think it might be more interesting to talk about the implications for societies — or perhaps to think about issues of identity and immigration, for example, through a “third culture kids” lens. We’ve been talking recently about doing a series of shows about various immigrant groups’ experiences. I’ll be sure to bring this up if that develops further.

nyscof: Is there a way to talk about the fluoridation debate without having people swith to the nearest baseball game?

enhabit: We have noticed that about corn syrup. And we had the great Michael Pollan on to talk about it in our Children of the Corn Subsidies show.

hurley: I’ve only vaguely followed Finklestein’s story, but I’ll read more and get back to you. This could be a good show, especially in its widest context (i.e., with Finklestein and Summers on together!).

zeke: You’re right. We should have done something about Gaza. You may think this can be filed under “too little, too late,” but look for a show very soon focusing on what lessons the recent events in Northern Ireland hold for the Israeli/Palestinian deadlock.

stlouis: Thanks so much for posting, and welcome to the community! This seems like a very important story — and one that deserves attention — but I don’t think it’s quite right for a conversation-based radio show. It seems perfect for a newspaper article or a straight news radio piece. But I’m not sure that it would work as conversation. Am I wrong? Is there a dramatic core to this topic that I might be missing?

Thank you for taking the time clarify that for me. How can you guys raise more money? Do you have grant writers on staff? The NPR Foundation is very wealthy, and dispenses its money SOMEhow, maybe they would help to fund your operations? However, that would possibly present some sort of a conflict of interest, at least for any sort of story about that outfit …

Thanks again for your time.

P. Lawton

Monteey, CA

By “obvious reasons” I meant that we are a very small, independent organization that — at the moment — doesn’t have the staff or resources to take on a Woodward and Bernstein quality investigation who had the advantage of being backed by The Washington Post.

We aren’t afraid to critique NPR, we did have Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR’s former Ombudsman, on our Turth, Balance, and the News show. He was fairly critical of the institution.

You raise some interesting questions about underwriting and sponsors. Perhaps we can at least do a web feature that breaks down how these things work.