Battling Cancer With T-Shirts And Laughter : NPR
This is such an inspiring story. This evening, it was one of those driveway moments. I had reached home but, had to stay in the car and listen till the story ended.
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Went to see live broadcast of “A Prairie Home companion” last night. Garrison Keillor and the gang was in Waterbury, CT and Arlo Guthrie was the guest performer on the show. Here is a link to the show. After listening to the radio show for years, it was amazing to watch them perform all the segments that I like so much.
Tim Russell, Sue Scott and Fred Newman are just great in providing supporting voices and sound effects in all the skits. I wasn’t familiar with Arlo Guthrie’s music but, the folk songs he performed with his band were good. He is Woodie Guthrie’s son and is following his Dad’s legendary footsteps as a great folk musician.
“News from Lake Wobegon” is my favorite segment. Everything else in the show is scripted but, for this part, GK just makes up a story right there live on Radio in front of the audience. I had heard about it before and it was great to watch it unfold.
Hoping to get a few more opportunities to see this show live again.
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A few years ago, I made a post about one of the NPR reporters, Mandalit del Barco, whose name I liked and loved to hear it when she signed off at the end of a news report. There are many other names of NPR reporters and contributors that I have heard over the years and like very much. The latest one in Chana Joffe-Walt. She is a reporter for “Planet Money“, which is a regular podcast but not a regular show on the radio. She is part of a team that report economy news in programs like “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered“. You have to listen to her say her name; it is great!
I also like these names: Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Tom Gjelten, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Dina Temple-Raston and Kai Ryssdal. There are others that I can’t think of right now. Here is a list of all the on-air staff at NPR.
Do you want one of these exotic sounding NPR names? Here is a trick for getting one as explained on lianablog.
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One of my most favorite shows on NPR is “Radio lab“. Their new season began late last year and now they have 5 new shows on their website. The episode called “Sperm” is really really interesting.
The latest one is “Yellow fluff and other curious encounters“. Very fascinating stories. Here is a video related to the first story in the show.
The second story is about the periodic table of elements. In 9th grade, I was very fascinated by the periodic table. I don’t think it was in our textbooks but, we had learned about different elements in school and I found the table in my father’s “organic chemistry” textbook from college. It was good to hear a story that I could relate to. It would be wonderful to get a periodic table with real elements as described by the man in the story. It is quite expensive to acquire one. If you want to buy me one, I would like this coffee table version. Here is a link to a beautiful pictoral periodic table.
The quality of background sounds and music on this show is always very well produced . Jad Abumrad is an expert with digital sound editing. He explains how they tweak the sounds on the show in this podcast from 2007. It is fascinating how these sounds affect the whole listening experience.
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During the last couple of years of graduate school (1995-96), I discovered National Public Radio and have been listening to it ever since. Among the multitude of NPR shows that I like, A prairie home companion is one of the best. I really like how Garrison Keillor and his cast do a wonderful job of providing simple and clean entertainment each Saturday evening. I always wanted to watch them perform the show live but, never had a chance. They came to Kalamazoo, MI and Ann Arbor, MI right after I moved away from those towns.
Finally, I’ll get to watch the show live on April 25th, 2009 at the Palace theater in Waterbury, CT. It’ll be time to cross off one thing from my “100 things to do before I die” list.
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In the last couple of days, I read or heard many stories remembering Paul Newman. One that stuck in my mind was this one by Frank Deford that I heard on NPR program, Morning Edition. Instead of reading, listen to it. That is much better.
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I already don’t like NBC’s coverage of the Olympics even before it began. The opening ceremony is ongoing but, NBC can’t break from ‘The Today Show’ and other inane programming. They will show a recording of the opening ceremony at 8pm tonight. Why not give people a choice of watching it live and then a rerun in prime time? I am pretty sure that rest of the Olympics coverage will be tightly controlled and severely edited to show only American athletes competing. On top of that, they’ll stuff all those fucking human interest stories down our throats. Last time we were in Michigan and we took the advantage of having a choice to watch the Canadian TV. This time, we are stuck with NBC. Damn!!!
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Lately, the mortgage and credit crisis that brought down several financial companies to their knees has been in the news. The negative impact of this crisis on the stock market and economy in general was enormous. With all the talk of mortgage-backed securities, CDOs and some other acronyms that were flying around, the whole issue was quite nebulous to me. Guess who came to rescue me from all this confusion… My favorite radio show: This American Life. The recent episode that was broadcast last week, “The Giant Pool of Money“, explains the whole situation very clearly. It is a must listen if you were confused like me and want to know more. They basically took an individual on every rung of the chain from the mortgage borrower to banker to broker to wall street guys and used their personal stories to illustrate how things worked and how they went down. It is almost funny to hear how the requirements for mortgage approvals became more and more relaxed. It is very nicely done.
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Here is the longer two and half minute version with the NBA and WNBA stars. If you have never seen this before or don’t remember, it is definitely worth watching. I bet you’ll watch it at least 3 times before you can stop.
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A documentary about cotton farmers in Vidharbha airs next Tuesday (Aug. 28) on the PBS show, Wide Angle. I was aware of farmers committing suicide because of failed crops, low cotton prices and burden of debt, but didn’t know how big the problem has become. The numbers are just astonishing with a farmer suicide every 8 hours. I hope someone is thinking about improving the situation.
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