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Playlist: News Station picks for May '10

Compiled By: PRX Curators

 Credit: <a href=http://www.flickr.com/people/tooley/">Oliver Frank</a>
Image by: Oliver Frank 
Curated Playlist

Here are May picks for news stations from PRX News Format Curator Naomi Starobin.

What Naomi listens for in news programming.

[everyone sing!] Take me out to the.....mixed marial arts match...geocaching....rock climbing wall....retired race horse farm....

This month, features on sports. But none of them are just a day at the ball park. Each looks at the role of sports in individuals' lives. There's a science teacher using sports to teach physics, a woman who is passionate about comforting retired race horses, another woman who says rock climbing saved her life, and a man who says we were made to run barefoot. Take a listen!

Barefoot Running and the Boston Marathon

From Emily Corwin | 05:57

Right in time for running season, jostle your listeners to think about running without sneakers. A scientist/runner explains why nature likes it that way. Others say it's asking for trouble. Let your listeners decide.

This piece was created after the 2010 Boston Marathon in April, so will hold a bit.

It's by Emily Corwin, who produces and hosts The Neighborhood, a radio program at MIT's WMBR. She also works at PRX and moonlights as a private cello teacher. It would work in an ME D segment or an ATC E segment.

Dscf0088_small Check out Emily's interview with groundbreaking evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman!  Free for stations to use and exerpt, and well worth a listen for the simply curious. 

Hide and Seek

From Salt Institute for Documentary Studies | 06:06

A fascinating sport that's not exactly universal...geocaching. The reporter tags along with these geocachers, and we learn why people are fascinated with searching for small items hidden by others, using their GPS units. A charming look at a little world....

This piece was done at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, in Portland Maine, by Amanda Thieroff.

Geo_caching__068_small In the state of Maine, there are almost 5,000 hidden treasures to be discovered. Mike Marino is a geocacher who takes the sport pretty seriously. He finds it hard to make it through a day without stopping here and there to hunt for a cache. He even holds a nationwide record for hiding the greatest number of caches in one day: 125. Follow Mike through the streets of Portland as he hunts for hidden treasure, and find out what makes a geocacher do what they do.

This I Believe - Kij Johnson

From This I Believe | Part of the This I Believe series | 03:49

A thoughtful essay on the role of one sport -- climbing -- in this woman's life. She is Kij Johnson, and she used rock climbing to make her way out of depression...a poignant metaphor. Like other This I Believe essays, it rings true and personal. It would pair nicely with straight-up sports story.

This I Believe is independently produced by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick for This I Believe, Inc. and Atlantic Public Media.

Tiblogosmall_small HOST: Our This I Believe essay today was sent in by Kij Johnson of Seattle, Washington. She works at a software company by day and writes science fiction novels by night, but her belief is not about her work. It's about something deeper and darker, and about the way she rose above it. Here is Kij Johnson with her essay for This I Believe. JOHNSON: I believe I am a climber. Three years ago, a series of medical and personal crises took what was a clinical depression and made it something much darker. I thought of it as falling-as jumping-off a bridge on a rainy winter day: three seconds in the air before I hit the water and plunged deep into the icy cold, my heavy coat pulling me deeper. And the surface far overhead-too far away. This is the question that kept me from making the image a real one. What if I changed my mind? Jumping into the water, the air in my lungs would fail me before I could swim back to the living world. I would know for those last seconds that I did want to live after all, but it would be too late. I'm not sure why I started climbing. I walked through the door of the local climbing gym one day on a whim. It was an alien world: strong beautiful men and women, towering walls under sodium vapor lights, white dust filling the air. Light instead of dark. Up instead of down. It was in every way the opposite of what was inside me. The second time I climbed, I got to a move where I was sure I would fall. I was 25 feet up on a rope, but I didn't know yet that I could trust it. I heard my voice say out loud, "I have a choice here: fear or joy." What I meant was, climb or don't climb, live or die. In the more than two years since then, I have climbed hundreds of days-inside and out, sometimes tied to a rope, often not. I do pay a price here. My body can be so bruised from hitting walls that people ask me about my home situation. Nine months ago, I broke my leg and ankle. I healed fast, but the risk remains. Next time I might not. Climbing requires a cold-blooded decision to live. If I am inattentive or careless, I will fall. Every time I climb at the gym, or rope up for a route outside, or go bouldering-which is climbing without a rope, and often more dangerous-I am taking a risk. And I committing to staying alive. Now, I believe in climbing, in not jumping. Jumping would have been easy: Just step over the bridge railing and let go. Climbing is harder, but worth it. I believe that deciding to live was the right decision. There's no way to describe the terrible darkness of depression in a way that non-depressed people can understand. Now, I'm less focused on the darkness. Instead, I think about the joy I feel in conquering it and the tool I used. I am a climber, and I am alive.