You may not know this, but this podcast has a kind of parent program.

A radio show here at NPR called All Things Considered.

See what we did there?

And 50 years ago, this week in May of 1971,

that show All Things Considered was born.

I hate that term. It was the worst term I ever had.

Linda Worthheimer was hired to direct the show, which sounded like this.

I'm Robert Conley with All Things Considered.

Yeah, I know.

It wasn't the music that made the job hard.

It was that NPR back then was a complete start-up.

We didn't have any chairs.

That was one of the things that was disconcerting.

We had no chairs.

We all had meetings sitting on the floor.

I mean, we were so clearly just starting from scratch.

That's the war now.

That's the war now.

As if that wasn't enough, on May 3, 1971, everything Linda and the other producers

had rehearsed and planned for to launch their little news show,

let it went out the window.

Because that day in Washington, D.C., there was a massive anti-war protest.

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