Sorry, but the Talking Heads reference is too easy.

Last weekend, there was a wonderful piece on This American Life about provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Iraq. The amazing bits, aside from Ira Glass’ ultra-staggered cadence, are the lessons that development initiatives simply cannot function as a bandaid for misplaced bellicosity, and that even interventions with the best of intentions do not, in and of themselves, smoothe over the jagged edges of international relations.

Here’s the episode page; click “full episode” to listen in. The relevant part starts at 15:36, but really, the whole episode is worth a listen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 12:24 am and is filed under News, Arts, Multidisciplinary Issues.