Up this way, every dairy farm in Franklin County has a silo or two. Silos are deep, narrow and dangerous. Psychologically as well as physically.

Farmers tell of the literal danger of a silo. If you’re working inside one while someone else is blowing grain into it and you fall, the person running the blower can’t hear you yell. So the feedstuffs will keep blowing in and you suffocate in amber waves of silage.

The silo is a metaphor for our narrowed range of interests and contacts. A professor who now lives in Blue Hill put it this way 53 years ago at UMKC: “We know more and more about less and less.” Even back then, professors couldn’t talk with one another because their interests had so narrowed that they knew little about one another’s work, he said.

It’s not just professors. You can easily figure out whom else I have in mind. “Yeah, those Trumpers live in a silo. They know nothing but what Trump and Fox “News” tell them.”

True that. But the Trumpers aren’t alone. Sometimes people you might expect to be more open-minded keep house inside silos, too.

For 16 years, I listened to “Only a Game” on Maine Public radio every Saturday as I drove to the Crystal Spring Farmers Market in Brunswick. “Only a Game” was a sports program, from WBUR in Boston, started in 1993 by Bill Littlefield and carried on by Karen Given. Until this fall, when WBUR pulled the plug on Given and her small staff.

Given explained why “Only a Game” went to the chopping block: “It’s hard to sell sports to public radio management,” she said. Still, 264 NPR affiliates had signed on, more than a quarter of all public radio outlets.

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 set, among others, two mandates for broadcasters, to offer services that are “an expression of diversity and excellence” and that are “a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens.”

Public radio hunkers down in its silo when it cancels a show such as “Only a Game.” A bit of diversity and alternative programming died when it stopped playing the game.

Look at almost any public radio schedule and you’ll see a pile-up of standard-format news. Can you find any significant difference between “The World,” for example, and “Here and Now?” Or “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered?” I can’t either.

Public-radio execs may not grasp the underlying appeal of sports, which is its basic narrative. Sports stories at base are about overcoming adversity. Injuries, better opponents, limited athleticism. Almost anyone can relate to a story about, say, a ghetto kid who plays golf or about a one-legged wrestler. Anyone not living in a silo, that is.

WBUR (and Maine Public radio) bosses may have to deal with listeners who used to tune in for that narrative every Saturday but may choose to take both their ears and their pocketbooks away because a strong radio alternative is gone.

Years ago, I had a food concession at several fairs, including The Maine Festival, run by Maine Arts Inc. The festival had a hard time staying put. It began at Bowdoin College, moved to Portland, then Cumberland, then back to Brunswick at Thomas Point Beach.

As a concessionaire, I talked often with Maine Arts officials who stopped by my booth. Once, when Maine Arts was looking for a new site, I proposed to one of those officials that they consider the Fryeburg Fairgrounds.

“No,” the guy from Maine Arts replied. “That’s not our crowd.”

I protested, “But, you don’t go to a spot for its crowd, you go to a spot where you can take your crowd with you. Fryeburg is near your crowd, and everyone knows the way.”

He repeated, “No. It’s not our crowd.”

After a couple more attempts, I gave up. Maine Arts guy couldn’t see from his silo that thousands of people go to Fryeburg every year. And that they aren’t all the same.

A few years later, another show promoter started the Northern New England Home and Garden show in 2001. At the Fryeburg Fairgrounds. That show, which has featured $7,000 gas ranges among other home-and-garden delights, plans its 21st season in 2021. It brought its own crowd to Fryeburg, just as I had thought the Maine Festival might do.

Is it coincidence that Maine Arts went out of business? That it didn’t get its own crowd into its silo? Seems that people in silos risk a lot when they stay in those cozy settings.

As a retired farmer, Bob Neal tries hard to stay out of silos. Reading a lot and talking with people (in pre-COVID days) help a lot. He can be reached at turkeyfarm@myfairpoint.net.