npr
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You are viewing stuff tagged with npr.
NPR’s Guy Raz interviewed William Fitzsimmons a week after I got married… William Fitzsimmons: A Songwriter With Vision:
RAZ: You were a counselor and you dealt with all kinds of grief, people who were dealing with it. I mean, you are writing about a divorce, and you’re essentially revisiting it over and over and over again, as you tour through the country.
Do you think as a counselor, you would give somebody this kind of advice, in a sense, to sort of revisit what they’ve been through?
Mr. FITZSIMMONS: No, I don’t think I would.
This American Life tackles the sub-prime housing market. I’ve read economists writing about this crisis… and it’s rather difficult to understand. I mean, all this talk of AAA overrated paper, etc. — I got a vague idea of the topic, but I wanted something more. Soo, I read a glowing recommendation of This American Life’s coverage of the topic. A quick summary:
I think Mykala found dooce.com via kottke.org a few years back, and I just realized something about why I like the site so much. You see, dooce (a.k.a. Heather Armstrong) has a hilarious writing style regardless of subject (dog, husband, daughter, et al.), great photography, and a devoted community… but that doesn’t really get at the essence. That essence is: Heather has unbelievably good taste.
M.I.A.: Back in Action with ‘Kala’ at NPR Music writes:
M.I.A. rhymes with the swaggering bravado of a street rapper, only she favors bandoliers over bling. Parse the songwriting though, and the sensibility awkwardly falls somewhere between party girl and guerrilla fighter. The message lacks cogency, but her hooks do pack potency, even when they sound nursery rhyme-inspired.
NPR is great because it has interviews where the interviewers actually research their guests and ask them good questions. So, it’s interesting to hear this: NPR Music: KT Tunstall: Greater Than the Sum of Her Sounds. Sure, we hear some great studio recordings of Tunstall songs, but you actually learn something interesting and useful things about the artist. I’ve had this up in my browser for over a month, so I’m glad to have finally gotten the chance to listen. That said, the NPR music site is a really high quality integration of articles, samples, and full interviews. Color me impressed.
Highly dissimilar viewpoints don’t bother me — in fact, I love a good intellectually interesting debate. What does bother me, however, is those who passionately latch on to worldviews with which they are only superficially familiar. In arguments, these people’s only defense consists of sputtering emotionally charged strings of words whose meaning they haven’t investigated and logical fallacies of begging the question, burden of proof, irrelevant conclusion, and verbosity.
I was listening to NPR’s program called Midday this past Monday, and the topic was the final Harry Potter book. One of the speakers on the show was from the Red Balloon Bookshop, and her name was Maureen Sackmaster-Carpenter. Sackmaster. What an awesome last name.
Whenever I tune into NPR, I inevitably hear the part of the program where they announce the “sponsored by” companies. I usually hear this:
… and brought to you by Medtronic. Medtronic, saluting graduates in the fields of science and health.
Great podcasts from NPR - Worth a look: This American Life, NOVA, The Writer’s Almanac, etc.
Mentos in Diet Coke Explodes - An NPR investigation with video and a scientific explanation for this strangeness. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an experiment to do now.
40 Minute Conan O’Brien Interview - Fresh Air plus Conan equals wonderful radio. On the occasion of Conan O’Brien’s 10th anniversary show.