Smart People Win in the End

Tony Seton, Quality News Network--
There are a number of reasons to listen to MoneyDots, but the most important is that the smart people win in the end. And people who tune in to MoneyDots live or download programs from the archives know more and learn more. This isn’t learning as in school, which was mostly boring and painful. This is smart grown-up learning...call it discovery. Listening to MoneyDots you understand the world better, what are the issues we’ll face, and from some of the very players who will be moving us forward.

The success of MoneyDots is due entirely to host Barbra Alexander. Barbra has lived an incredibly wonderfully checkered life. From working in the world of upscale advertising to target shooting with the local police. Her current day job is putting deals together, mostly in real estate, in various sites across North America, but she also keeps her hand in a wide variety of interests from writing books and staging fashion shows. Her real passions have to do with engines, though especially fast cars and small planes.

It is the incredible scope of her experience, her broad range of interests that have produced Barbra’s deep and continuing interest in the details of how life works. Which explains why MoneyDots is in part about connecting the financial dots of our daily lives, but also about the much larger reality of science and literature, energy and style, politics and humor.

Over her first ten years with MoneyDots on the radio, Barbra has touched many lives, providing useful information through scintillating interviews, sharing ideas and purposes that have kept people tuned to MoneyDots week after week.

Listen in for yourself, and you’ll understand why tens of thousands of Americans have made the well-informed but ever curious Barbra Alexander the person to connect their MoneyDots every week.
From Tony Seton, Quality News Network www.qnn.com

Tuesday, Jul 04, 2006
Business Posted on Tue, Jul. 04, 2006

Radio show's different take on money

Marie Vasari Taking Stock

Hosting a talk radio show isn't as easy as it sounds.

There's the issue of perfectly literate guests who just can't quite find a vocal focal point, and the time a celebrated artist chose a live broadcast to vent his own personal grudges.

Then there's the morning an on-air visitor, overcome by nerves, fainted before the introductions were through.

It's not easy to interview an unconscious guest.

It's a good thing Barbra Alexander, who hosts "MoneyDots" on KSCO, doesn't take things too seriously. Which doesn't mean she's not serious about her work.

" MoneyDots" has been on the air for close to a decade, even though its subject -- money -- is probably one of the most boring subjects imaginable, even to its host. That's partly why her initial concept for a radio show -- a trial run on real estate and mortgage advice for another local radio station-- was eventually tossed in favor of a different approach to the subject.

Alexander, a mortgage broker for Gold Coast Financial in Monterey, talks about money on her weekly Saturday morning show, but not in the traditional, academic sense. Rather, she says, her shows deal with the way money intersects with real life, viewing it as a tool in context rather than a sole pursuit.

"It's real people, talking about real things," said Alexander, who describes the economy as a real-life, everyday issue rather than a mysterious, otherworldly concept. "It's what's in your wallet, on your bank statement, it's your debts. It's not that tough."

Richard Ebeling, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, has been on "MoneyDots;" as have Dan Gainor, a former Washington Times editor and director of the Business and Media Institute, and Steve Forbes, president and CEO of Forbes magazine and a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

But she's also had such guests as Holly Davis and Ken McDougal, computer and network consultants, who talked about whether technology and the "paper reduction act" have really simplified our lives.

Recent guests have included Fox media commentator and author Ann Coulter, whose latest book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," struck more than a few raw nerves, and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, a laid-back leader who refuses to buy a car despite the classified Web site's runaway success.

Alexander said she makes it a point to let her guests be the experts on air. After all, "it's their moment in the sun," and she's more interested in floating ideas than arguments.

Not that she doesn't have plenty of her own opinions, and even more questions -- like why the environmental groups haven't jumped on ethanol "like white on rice," making alternative energies a central focus?

She's not making a fortune hosting a local radio show, and booking guests and preparing for shows takes time. But at the end of the day, said Alexander, what better way to accomplish something than to bring issues to light, to make people think a little? Or a lot?

"Money gets everyone's attention. I want to know the cost of life, and money is a part of it."

Taking Stock appears Tuesdays.