My favorite electronic device is a decade old and only half-functional. The boxy, gray radio on my bedside table was a gift from my grandmother on my eighth birthday. The much-loved CD player on top failed several years ago, close to when my grandmother died, but its radio warbles on, its last feature besides an ear-splitting alarm. I’ve grown fonder of my radio over the last decade. My preteen self dismissed my parents’ love of radio, especially National Public Radio, as dorky. Reluctantly, I started to listen as the uncool babble became words and then stories.

My family’s rural location only allows a few local television channels, is too isolated for newspaper delivery, and has slow and intermittent Internet access. Out of necessity, radio, especially NPR, became the main source of news and entertainment. As a result, many family memories and conversations are connected to the humble FM dial. My Midwestern father reminisces and laughs heartily with “A Prairie Home Companion”. “Morning Edition- Weekend” signals a bright Saturday morning making waffles with my mom. Quite often, I call, or am called, to “turn on the radio, quick!” Surprisingly entertaining Economics lessons come in the form of “Marketplace”, inspiring questions like, “So, Dad, what exactly is a Credit Default Swap?” The beauty of a radio broadcast is the smooth transition from topic to topic. Stories that I would never seek out myself come right up and catch me unexpectedly, and, by the end of the story, I am fascinated. I want to learn more. Even if the subject is not the most riveting for me, I develop an appreciation, if not an outright interest, for the subject. Radio lends itself to family discussions, often being turned off in the process, to better focus on the topic at hand. My friends always look at me strangely when the news, not Taio Cruz, not Lady GaGa, is playing in the car. I am not a 24-hour news person by any means, but I do believe in paying attention. Living in the moment includes being aware of what is happening around the world at that moment.

National Public Radio connects me with people across the country and across the globe. From my isolated California home, I can travel to small-town Michigan, the skyscrapers of Dubai, and impoverished Somalia. During the BP oil spill, I heard the voices of fishermen on NPR; in July I was actually in New Orleans working with the children of Louisiana fishermen. I am constantly reminded of my own false assumptions that everyone has lived a life more or less like my own. NPR is not without bias but it makes an effort to represent multiple sides of a story and conduct balanced debates, even as many media outlets become increasingly and intentionally opinionated and polarized. It encourages me to think, debate, and find out more from other news sources, instead of mindlessly subscribing to a particular view. Through news, I have seen that people have capabilities for both great good and horrific evil and that hardly any issue has a simple answer.

People from unfamiliar cultures, even from so-called enemy states, are humanized through increased knowledge about them. I remember hearing the author of the Axis of Evil Cookbook interviewed on air a few years ago. It’s hard to hate a group of people when you know their favorite yogurt soup recipe. This applies to all forms of violent extremism; home-cooked meals just don’t mix well with guns and bombs. The abstract (North Korea, air raids in Afghanistan, quantitative easing) becomes a tangible thing with investigations and interviews.

The curiosity that National Public Radio encourages in me will be useful in college. Listening to NPR will always remind me of my parents, lazy Saturday mornings listening to “Wait…Wait…Don’t Tell Me”, and asking far too many questions. I hope to continue learning, and listening.

For half of both my freshman and sophomore years, I lived in fear of my alarm clock. Its sound resembled a foghorn blown repeatedly into my ear. I would subconsciously wake myself up two minutes before its ear-splitting shriek. I would then drag myself out to the kitchen, eat a banana with peanut butter, and sleepily get into the car with my mom or dad. I was always greeted by the warm heat of the car and the opening notes of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition as we drove off to 5:30 am swim practice. I no longer swim, playing lacrosse at thankfully afternoon practices, but I believe in paying attention. I watch the change in the seasons, the shifting stores in the mall, the passage of time marked by political drama, horrific disasters, and simple, everyday ups and downs. The local Press Democrat newspaper is my method of choice on Sunday mornings after church. My mom and I go to a coffee shop and luxuriously flip the ever-thinning pages (while enjoying) (with) mugs of coffee and hot chocolate.

Most days, though, National Public Radio is my connection to the world beyond my county. For me, the radio is many things, a comforting reminder of home and family, an entertaining and thought-provoking teacher, and a connection to the world beyond my own beliefs and perspective.