While the troubled economy takes its toll on community radio across the country, at least one radio program continues to thrive. Shelley Bluejay Pierce reports for Native American Times that Native American Radio Live (NARL) hosted by Albert Raymond Cata is going strong. NARL broadcasts out of Santa Fe Public Radio, KSFR, and has served its diverse community for 17 years.

Sixty-four year-old Cata, a master storyteller from Ohkay Owingeh (formerly San Juan Pueblo), New Mexico, started his radio career in 1986 after retiring from the U.S. Air Force.

“All I know about broadcasting I learned as I went,” he says. “I was interested in people and like the music and wanted to share with others about who the Native American person is within the fabric of general society.”

His advice to other radio programmers in this economy?

“You have to keep on top of your community needs. You need programs that address what interests the listeners and that include everything from music, politics, sports, school events, community fund drives and even gardening...The trouble I see for many community radio shows is that they don’t have a true ‘format’ and are not focused on the needs of their communities.”

Check out how Cata meets those needs on NARL’s website, which features interviews with prominent Native American politicians, artists and storytellers, including actor Adam Beach, known for his stirring performances in Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie, and Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers.

Or, listen to Native American Radio Live streaming every Saturday from 3:00-5:00 Mountain Daylight Time.

Source: Native American Times

Gary Brecher is the War Nerd—a pseudonymous columnist for the English-language Moscow-based publication, the eXile. (The print-edition eXile was shutdown this spring, but the feisty periodical has found a new home online.) Soft Skull recently published a compilation of Brecher’s columns, which we reviewed in our July-August 2008 issue.

Brecher’s eponymous War Nerd is a curious, in-your-face book, as Utne associate editor Hannah Lobel points out in her review, calling the tome a “raucous, offensive, and sometimes amusing CliffsNotes compilation of wars both well-known and ignored.” Lately, the man who produced such a volume has attracted some curiosity himself.

War Nerd netted a review in Mother Jones that expresses skepticism regarding Brecher’s authority, given that he makes “continual narrative detours,” many about how he “is overweight, underpaid, and has a hard time getting a date.” Brecher offered explanation for those digressions on the public radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge. The nerd moniker was a “defensive move,” Brecher says. “Look, I understand that you can do all kinds of psychoanalysis about why I like war, so let me say up front, ‘Yeah, I’m a fat loser and I flunked puberty.’ And you can link that up with me liking war all you want, but I’m the statistical norm, and there are a lot of me out there.”

Far from shooting himself in the foot—a little war metaphor for you there—Brecher demonstrates his knack for the “surprising analysis” of which Lobel wrote.

You can listen to the seven-minute segment here:

(Thanks, Richard Eoin Nash.)