Many of our shows won awards at the 2008 Zeitfunk Awards from PRX. Each spring PRX release the results of the “mostiest” stations, producers, and listeners for the previous calendar year. It’s like a zeitgeist — only funkier!

The Vinyl Cafe walked away with two 1st Place Awards; Most Licensed Group & Most Licensed Series!

One of Canada’s most popular radio programs, with over 750,000 North American listeners. Host and story-teller Stuart McLean is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist and humorist. The show features the music of up and coming Canadians — both live and recorded — and the misadventures of Dave — owner of the “Vinyl Cafe”, the world’s smallest record store (motto: “We may not be big, but we’re small”). Dave’s fictional milieu includes wife, Morley, their two children, Sam and Stephanie, and assorted friends, neighbors, and customers. Since 1998, Stuart has taken the show on the road to large and small towns across Canada from Newfoundland to the Yukon.

Liner Notes won for Most Licensed Debut Group.

Unlike any travel show on public radio, LINER NOTES is a journey in itself. A not-to-be-missed celebration of wit, wisdom and wanderlust.
Recorded over lunch at the Captain’s table aboard the legendary Queen Mary 2®, destinations as they are and as they exist in literature, painting, film, music and myth are discovered in monthly, hour-long “Algonquin Roundtable” gatherings of notable and award-winning authors, artists, journalists and musicians. Each conversation will raise themes relating to travel, such as “Falling in Love with a Place”, “The Benefits of Wandering,” “Lost in Translation,” or “Ex-Patriot Dreams.”

FIVE of our shows were in the TOP TEN for Most Licensed Piece from PRX.

• 3rd Most Licensed Piece – Picking Up the Pieces from Prime Time Radio

• 4th Most Licensed Piece – War and Place from Liner Notes

• 5th Most Licensed Piece – Peace Talks Radio: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Path To Nonviolence

• 8th Most Licensed Piece – Saving The Sierra

• 10th Most Licensed Piece – Sand, Still in My Shoes from Liner Notes

Chasing the Crescent Moon: The Story of Dr. Frempong and Sickle Cell Disease from Aaron Schwartz won Most Licensed Youth-Produced Piece.

Congratulations to all of our winners!

The Story of Lata – A 54 minute radio special that examines a culture reviving ancient traditions as possible solutions to sustain its communities. The forgotten arts of sailing and navigation may be the answer to rising fuel costs for Solomon Islanders in a remote corner of the South Pacific.

Liner Notes: Sand Still in My Shoes - For Labor Day, the 4th installment of the Liner Notes series of specials.

Saving the Sierra - A richly produced one-hour special about how unlikely allies are coming together to preserve rural culture from rapid residential growth, sustain local economies as recreation developments boom, and protect clean water and open space for future generations.

What’s the Word? : Hispanic Heritage Month – For Hispanic Heritage Month (15 Sept. – 15 Oct.), the smart, engaging, and highly produced literary series from the Modern Language Association, presents two half-hour programs celebrating Puerto Rican and Latin American literature.

LINER NOTES redefines Memorial Day programming with an extraordinary hour entitled War and Place -

* Tom Brokaw, shares memories of his moving visits to Normandy and Pearl Harbor – how they changed his life, and enabled him to understand the great sacrifices of ordinary people, from hometowns like his.
* Writer Maxine Hong Kingston helps Veterans put their memories on paper with “healing and writing workshops.”
* Distinguished novelist Robert Stone, (“Dog Soliders”) discusses the cultural legacy of Vietnam.
* Former Marine Wayne Karlin author of “War Movies: Journeys to Vietnam”, shares stories about soldier/authors on both sides of that conflict and discusses how the picture of war in the movies has evolved over the years.
* Writer Dana Sachs, (“A House on Dream Street”) portrays the new Vietnam – a tourist mecca with fine food and beaches. She counsels us on where to travel and explains why Americans are surprisingly welcome.
* Photographer Steve McCurry tells of his famous photo “Afghan Girl,” and what he finds when he travels to war zones.
* Psychoanalyst Emmanuel Kalftal takes a tape recorder with him as he travels to the place his parents met, Dachau, where he finds a living memorial, not a museum.
* Michael Arad, architect of the prize-wining design for the 9/11 memorial at the former World Trade Center, helps us think about the power of place in mourning.
* Phillip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review, who wrote “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Familes”, reflects on those who suffered through the ethnic conflicts in Africa.
* Reporter Deborah George takes us to post war Sierra Leone to meet a young woman who will become her daughter.
* Finally, we travel to a small town in Cornwall, England where a young evacuee from the London blitz, now 80, found a peaceful home for life.