Yes, it's a been a tough, tough year. I'm feeling it. We're all feeling it. But… all that bad news is not the totality of life. With this being the holiday season, this rabble radio show is the "Light the Fire, Pour the Eggnog and Think Philosophically For a While" edition.

We thought it would be a good time to play some of the hidden gems that have shown up on the rpn this year. So go get that eggnog, light the fire and just enjoy being here with us for the next half hour.

Season's Greetings.

We've had some really great new podcasts this summer and fall on the RPN. One of them is MsRepresent: Behind the Face, a Fierce Woman by Charlene Sayo of Vancouver. Charlene spent some time in the Big Apple where she had the amazing opportunity to hang out with super fierce women in the arts and activism. One of the women she met up with was Safia Elhillo. Safia is Sudanese by way of Washington, D.C., currently living in New York City. Among her many literary credits, she is a founding member of Slam NYU, the 2012 and 2013 national collegiate championship team, and was a three-time member and former coach of the DC Youth Slam Poetry team.

We don't get enough documentaries on the rabble podcast network. And sound documentaries are such a wonderful art form. That's one of our goals for the new year. Our next piece is a treasure. The Swan Song is an eclectic podcast that covers a wide range of topics about the human condition. David Swanson, the show's producer, recently did a documentary called The Latvian Art Diaries, based on an exploration of heritage through sound. Here is an excerpt of this excellent sound work.

And finally, to wrap up. We like sound that is collected in adventurous places. This next excerpt was first played on Lynn Thompson's Living on Purpose, one of the longest running podcasts we have on the rabble podcast network. In this next piece, Lynn goes travelling deep underground with Jamie Thompson and his flute. Jamie is a Toronto musician who takes his flute to some unusual places: abandoned buildings, under bridges with traffic roaring above, ravines and haunted houses. In this excerpt, we go deep into the Diefenbunker, the cold war bomb shelter near Ottawa that was intended to be the residence of John Diefenbaker's Conservative government if the bomb fell…

But the bomb didn't fall. And we're here to see another New Year. Happy 2015!

Photo: sbluerock/flickr