As radio stunts go, it was a good one - even if it was shamelessly simplistic.
By Wednesday, there were 167 people on trolleys in Dublin's public hospitals and Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, Mon-Fri) came at the media story of the week from another angle by trying to find alternative accommodation for the insultingly named "bed blockers". These are mainly elderly people who no longer need acute hospital care but who are not well enough to go home.
And who knew the city was coming down with empty beds in nursing homes? Call after call from private nursing home owners revealed that there are hundreds of empty beds in homes. The owners had many theories as to why this is so, with several debunking the idea that it's more expensive to keep an elderly person in hospital than send them to a nursing home. A little old lady requiring minimal nursing is cheaper for the hospital than a steady turnover of high-maintenance post-operative patients went one theory. Who knows if there's truth in that, and nursing home entrepreneurs are hardly disinterested parties, but it was interesting to hear from a group of care providers who have been largely silent in the health debate so far.
Another series committed to giving voice to silent stories, the superb Worlds Apart, (RTÉ Radio 1, Thursday) returned this week with a programme on the trafficking of young women from Moldova to supply the sex industry all over Europe, including Ireland.
Teenage girls in this poverty-stricken country are lured from home with the promise of waitressing or nanny jobs only to find themselves as indentured slaves, sold on by human traffickers. According to reporter Rodney Rice, up to 100,000 Moldovans have been sold into sex slavery with prices ranging from €5,000 for teenagers to €800 for older women. His interview with 20-year-old Aurica, who was rescued from four years of prostitution in Italy and Moscow working for "her owner", was as powerful as it was tragic.
The country's poverty, Rice found, facilitates the growth of this modern-day slave trade - teenagers are easily lured by the lie of a better future; border guards in a country where bribery is rife turn a blind eye and the sex industry in Europe's capitals demand ever more teenage girls.
A spokesman from the Centre for the Prevention of Trafficking Women (mind-boggling that such an organisation even needs to exist) pointed out that deporting women found working as prostitutes or in lap-dancing clubs is the easy option; going up the slave chain to find the traffickers would be the better way to go.
This series gives a welcome look at events and issues from different parts of the world - a relief particularly now when so much air time is given over to the minutiae of the US election that you'd think we all had voting cards.
But when US election coverage broadens out to cover fundamental global issues, it can be thought-provoking. On The Last Word (Today FM, Tuesday) William Schultz, US director of Amnesty International, discussed the candidates' human rights records. George Bush, he said, gets a C minus, and it's not just for war-related activities, most notably the massive human rights violations at Guantanamo, but for activities within the US. The US is one of only two countries in the world where the death penalty for juveniles - that's children of 16 - is still in force. The other country is Iran. Bush's grade was helped, he said, by the US's "principled position in Sudan where he has tried to resolve the North-South conflict".
Incidentally, Bill Clinton, in Schultz's view, got a B minus and before listeners got the impression that Kerry was Schultz's choice, he criticised him because "he has not been vocal enough on human rights issues".
This column tries to hear as much local radio as possible and tuned into A Day in the Life of a Monastery (Tipp FM, Saturday) as a retreat from the avalanche of bad news filling the airwaves. It's one in a series of four hour-long programmes made by Mick Coffey during a stay at the Mount Saint Joseph Cistercian Abbey, Roscrea. It made for a restful hour of broadcasting and not just because of the Plain Chant. Among the people he met was a visiting female hermit from Moate who talked about the simplicity of her life and some very cheerful-sounding monks who described the peaceful routine of their prayerful days.
"The love that's in the community, the concern we have for each other is one of the most positive, humbling aspects," said the abbot, and having heard harrowing stories of elderly people spending their last days lying on trolleys in hospital corridors on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday), the abbot didn't have to explain that he was talking about life inside the monastery walls and not outside it.