J & J’s Gibberish: Get to the Heart of Issues on The Pulse on Accessible Media Inc.

One mother's weekly journey in raising her special needs children. 

Are you an avid CBC Morning listener? If so, then between 2011 and 2014, as you made your way to work, it was his voice that guided you through the streets and highways during the traffic report. His name is Dave Brown and you will recognize his dynamic voice immediately when you hear him.

He has a new full-time gig on AMI Radio (Accessible Media Inc.) and his show, The Pulse, is a daily in-depth look at a broad range of issues. AMI is a platform for various members of the disabled community to showcase their voice. Originally existing for people who are blind or visually challenged, it has grown to be much more and so I am hesitant to point out that angle because quality radio programming doesn’t need qualifiers or parameters.  But then again, I think is fantastic that AMI  gives people with challenges a voice and opportunity to fully contribute, enrich and promote understanding of the world around us.   

Dave’s show is a case in point. “We are looking to create the space to talk about the bigger picture. We want to tell stories to help people think. We are not about inspiration stories. There is always space for us to discuss disability issues, but AMI has given us a canvas for the show to do what we want. That is very exciting.”

Given it is not a news show per se, there is the chance to really delve into topics. “In a three-minute news story, you can’t get into the meat of a story but with 30 minutes, we can.” In fact, The Pulse is more of a current affairs show with a mandate to look at the big picture. Stories will touch on issues related to the disabled community at times but in a more global kind of way. For example, yesterday was World Teachers’ Day (I would love to have celebrated it except my kid was kicked out of school), and Dave had a show about inclusive education at the international level. There was a fascinating story this week about genetic manipulations, looking at the ethics of “normalizing” fetuses. There will be a regular feature looking at journalism, which will be particularly interesting in this new age of what constitutes news and how it is reported. There was a story on the language around terrorism. How is it that the largest mass murder in US history is not described as terrorism? Does it have to be international terrorist groups behind something like that to be considered terrorism? Those are just the topics in the first week.

I look forward to more of Dave and The Pulse.

The Pulse runs daily at 1 p.m. daily on AMI (but the podcast is available on iTunes and Google Play too.)