Lecture: Robert Siegel, UC Berkeley J School

The best part of going to hear readers and writers speak (even at 8pm on a Saturday night, when you may vaguely wish you were off enjoying a pomegranate margarita) is their delectable turns of phrase. Robert Siegel was no exception. Between the "drawer full of extra adjectives" that his editorial self pulled out of one reporter's collected works, and the "well informed inactivist" status he decided to pursue in radio, were many insightful, wittily worded anecdotes.

While his musings on the future of broadcasting, complete w/ predictions about the passing fancy for podcasting and the eternity of the internet, wandered a touch in the middle, for the most part he was funny and delightful. I'm sure the background information about the history of All Things Considered, and the transition in the radio world from AM to FM bandwidth, could be had w/ a quick internet engine search. But hearing him describe the chronology of the events in his warm, chocolate milk voice was better than words on a web page could ever be. Thus the beauty of audio -- and the reason why radio, in some form, will never die.