Progressive Media’s Fragile Democracy: The original idea was to nurture an open exchange of ideas that could help people come to know each other as human beings, dialogue that demonstrated the possibility of peace. But over 50 years Pacifica Radio evolved into something else: a national progressive radio network, a source of “alternative” news and viewpoints, and a platform for many underserved constituencies. In this episode, Lew Hill and how KPFA began, WBAI’s legendary “free form” past, and early shots in the community’s civil war. Plus, Dustin Hoffman reading part of War and Peace in 1970, sounds from the 1979 March for Gay Rights, and comedy from Mushroom Cloud Theater.