NPR Junkie

I listen to NPR when I drive. I love it. And since I've had the chance to do barely anything these last weeks but drive, I have listened to quite a few interesting shows. From The Diane Rehm Show, Here and Now, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered... there have been some great stories. The bummer is that when I get to where I'm going, the show is just getting to the good part and I have to turn it off. ARGH!

Yesterday I was listening to the Diane Rehm Show (which isn't really part of NPR, but airs on the channel) on the way to swimming lessons and she was interviewing the authors of a new book called Tears in the Darkness, which is about the Bataan Death March in the Philippines following its invasion of the Japanese. I am really into learning about this stuff, and it especially hits home having a great-grandfather who was captured by the Japanese on another island in the South Pacific and sent to a prison camp. I have already read his accounts of life as a POW and I am interested in reading this book now, which has some of the Japanese guards' perspectives as well. The authors actually interviewed former Japanese prison guards for their book and marched the 66 miles of the death march themselves when they visited the peninsula of Bataan. Very interesting stuff.

Today she was talking to authors who wrote a book about a county in Mississippi that opposed the secession from the union but was betrayed by its representative who voted yes to the succession. Also very interesting.

It's nice that even though I rarely have a conversation with anyone about history, literature, or politics, there's still a way to engage my brain and get it out of the rut it gets in.