All Things Considered Episode 1 (1971)

Rating-- 8/10

This was an extremely interesting listen-- partly for the historically significant content that recently brought it into the National Recording Registry, but also because it seems eerily relevant nowadays. Today I listened to the first episode of "All Things Considered", the first news program on NPR (National Public Radio), broadcast on May 3, 1971. The content of this thirty-minute first episode brings the listener to a Washington, D.C "May Day" protest of the Vietnam War, in which the police is cracking heads open with clubs, demonstrators attempt to block traffic, one man takes his canoe from the Potomac River to the reflecting pool, workers muse about whether they support the cause-- all the while, forty-seven-year-old planes fly through the sky, and policemen with thick accents seek out long-haired youth, tell them they're "chicken" for not joining the army, and then mace them, pepper-spray them, beat them over the head, and send them to jail.

It reminds me very much of "Alice's Restaurant", which I listened to last time. The main difference seems to be that at least Arlo and his friends had some kind of ridiculous reason to get arrested, and the whole situation was treated jokingly and light-heartedly, with the policemen in the song being simply stupid. In this "recording", with the modern voices and the fact that this radio program still very much exists-- and I listened to it in the archives on the website, so it played the current broadcast of All Things Considered right afterwards-- I could barely distinguish between 1970s news and 2010s news. It's certainly just as bleak and violent.