The Journey to Away, the Best of Outfront podcast, CBC radio, week of October 1st 2008. 

This is an exemplary use of music and sound – no, the Asian gong is not a patronising or flat tool. Hear how it punctuates the speech, and how it ramps up the significance of words – what could be "just words".

I suspect in parts of Canada, this story may seem old, common, ordinary. There is something out of the ordinary and uncommon at the end, but how to bring in those listeners who may discount the story as "just another one of those"? With evocative sounds, sound that remind listeners why they have heard a story like this before, how the difference between Vietnamese food here and there is something they know, a part of their social definitions.

The gong, like the school children and waves, sounds like field audio. The sounds of war are also so real, that they do a lot of explaining.

On the second listen, I'm more struck with the return journey to away. The sign of a great piece, I think, if it can absorb you yet still leave more to discover on the second listen. That might break one of the traditional rules of radio, but that's always been a news-based rule, and this is, after all, the age of podcasting.

Outfront is one of those amazing shows that made me want to go to Canada and work in the CBC. That's not to say there isn't still a chance of course…