Pulse of the Planet

Education as High Art 

For almost 20 years, Jim Metzner has been fascinating radio listeners with his daily two-minute mini-documentaries. Jim's talents include compelling story-telling skills, concise and clear writing skills, a great ear for interesting sounds, and the skill and judgement to put that all together. The show presents a dense sound portrait full of high-quality, naturally-recorded sounds, coupled with tightly edited interviews, clear and concise writing, and a bone-chillingly dramatic voice delivery to inform and educate the listener about natural phenomenon and history. The show is exactly two minutes, but it's typically more informative than other shows which might last as long as an hour. One really clever thing Jim does, is to break a story apart across as many as five separate shows. But each show tells a complete part of the story by itself so that it stands by itself, without any of the other segments. This is some of the highest art in short form news and information radio.

Reviewed on 9/30/2005