And now, I'm just waiting on Ira Glass...

Production has...begun?

Perhaps I'm too bold. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe "begun" is not the right word, or I should have said "pre-production." But I don't really care for timidity, and I trust my choice of words most of the time, so why not here? The point is this: today marks my first real step in beginning my radio show, Don't Blame the Sidewalk (still the working title - I haven't decided on anything just yet). And I'm just all too excited about this. 

Ten minutes before the local post office closed, I picked up my new favorite toy, the previously-mentioned USB microphone, the eminent arrival of which has had me fidgety for the last week or so. But I took it back to my room, opened the box, assembled the desktop stand and plugged the microphone into my computer. I installed the included recording software. And I set all the levels. Eager to try out the microphone and the software, but unsure as to what I should say, I searched for the one reliable source I could think of, Googling "this american life transcript." A few episode transcripts popped up - the award-winners about the economy - and I picked one (Episode #375: Bad Bank) that I remembered as being promising. I donned my padded, producer-style headphones, leaned in close - but not too close - to the microphone, clicked record, and read:

"The news has gotten kind of confusing. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that as a person who talks here, on the public radio. It's confusing, to me. Especially all the stuff about the trouble the banks are in. You know, you turn on The Today Show at random, you can find yourself watching something like this: ..."

Of course, I didn't have the sound clip that the "like this: " promised, so I paused for a moment, and read on:

"Forget it. Here's what I understand, what I think most of us understand. Stock market is way down. It seems to be dropping. Banks aren't lending. Even though the government has given them hundreds of millions of dollars of our money to help them start lending again. And my life, your life, the entire economic fate of our country, and the world for the next decade depends on whether or not the United States can fix its banking system. And maybe you're on the verge of just giving up, of figuring that this is just going to be one of those news stories that you're just going to kind of sit out, you know? I sat out Kosovo. I'm not proud about that fact, but I did. Well, if that's your situation, I have good news for you. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. Today's show is another collaboration between us and NPR News. the collapse of the U.S. banking system explained in just 59 minutes. Stay with us."

I won't claim to have nailed it the first time, but after several readings, I knew what it was about. I figured out the stresses, the cadences. I got rid of the stiffness in my voice and thought about how to make it more conversational. And then I thought about music. I picked a song by Penguin Cafe Orchestra that I had heard used on This American Life before, and went to work with the recording software. Equalizing. Fading here, amplifying there. Finally, I came up with one minute, forty-two seconds of polished audio. I listened to it. It sounded like radio. So I replayed it again. And again. Maybe once more, before I leave for a bit?

I've listened to the clip more than a dozen times, and that's just on my iTunes...that doesn't account for the listening and re-listening that I gave it while editing. Perhaps that seems narcissistic, but I'm just so damned excited for the possibilities! I spent most of the evening coming up with topics for shows, thinking about who might be interested in contributing, and where. I've nearly named the microphone, but I haven't quite gotten a feel for its personality...yet. Look, I got so worked up about the whole thing that I even e-mailed Ira Glass, host of This American Life, to see if he would grace me with a phone interview and some advice for my first (conceptual) episode, "Advice." We'll see if he - rather, his assistant, as that is whom I had to e-mail - gets back to me about that. I have my fingers crossed, and you should, too.

But with or without Ira Glass, I can tell you with some certainty: it won't be long...