July 2012
What do you get when you cross one Barium and Two sodium?.... Banana!
Ba - Na - Na - S. (I added Sulfur.)
Want to hear a joke about sodium bromide? NaBrO
Wikipedia, what is 80,000?
80,000 (eighty thousand) is the natural number that comes after 79,999 and before 80,001.
Thanks, Wikipedia.
It’s also the number of Tumblr (and Twitter) followers we now have. Thank you all. Let’s celebrate with 22.2166666 days of non-stop partying.
“I don’t get that a lot. I’m very short, under five feet, and I often think of myself as smaller than life. Until I was on radio, I went through life being, as far as I was concerned, invisible, which of course I am on radio. But it’s one thing to be invisible on radio; it’s another thing to be invisible in real life.”
—Terry Gross, reacting to the suggestion that listeners have “erotic associations” with her voice. (via mattwilstein)
Early Best Thing All Week?
I’m going to Cambridge, Mass. tomorrow morning for a conference, so I thought we’d do an early version this week of Best Thing All Week. What was the best thing that happened to you this week? (I apologize if it was set to happen tomorrow.)
I’ll start: I saw a thought-provoking documentary about ACT-UP and then had a very nice, reflective dinner with a good friend about grief and grandmothers, among other topics.
“I took the opportunity to try to speak to the president about women’s reproductive rights. And that conversation was curtailed very quickly by people who removed me from him and lifted me, as I recall — forcibly but gently — away from the receiving line. And I just thought, ‘That’s too bad.’ Because he’s our president. He’s my president. I may not have voted for him. I may have wanted to move to Canada when he was elected, but still, we have a right to have a dialogue about this. So on the one hand, I was very moved by being at the White House and meeting the president and first lady and seeing the welcome they had put out. But at the same time, it was kind of a farce, I thought.”
—Sigourney Weaver, on her 1984 trip to the White House.
Stay Puft!
were you saying that you are the key master? or saying that sigourney is the key master? because she was the gatekeeper
Oh I’m a doofus. Time to revisit the Staypuff Marshmallow Man…. Here’s the interview, btw.
High on my bucket list is being interviewed by Terry. Even higher is accomplishing something worthy of being booked on Fresh Air. Too anxious and slothful for the ladder to be likely at this point in my life, I want to propose that as an experiment Terry interview regular people from time to time about their less-than-extraordinary lives. She's such a skilled interviewer that the results may at times be gripping. A big plus for Terry: no pre-interview research will be needed. Thoughts?
We get this request a lot. Is there a show out there that does this? (There might be — I don’t know.)
It doesn’t seem like it would work with our show, specifically because I think our show works so well *because* of the research. (John, John, Heidi and Yowei dig up a ton of stuff.) Terry prepares 50-60 questions in advance — and watches, reads, immerses herself in our guests. I’m just not sure how that would happen with random folk.
Your thoughts?
I really hope to work for NPR someday. I applied to be an intern as a freshman (just this past spring) and was turned down. I'm deathly afraid of reapplying; what should I do?
Well, there are two things you can do:
1. Never reapply. Wonder what if? Become the world’s first underwater meteorologist. Wonder what if? Have children, acquire a partner, work for a good 30 or 40 years, retire, sell your home, move into a camper, explore Western Canada, regret never having reapplied in your youth.
2. Or you can reapply. You’re a freshman? That’s nothing. You’ve got years ahead of you. Start writing — for your school paper, for a blog, in a journal. Tweet. Acquire multimedia skills (they come in handy no matter what it is you want to do.) Acquire your voice. Figure out what you like and don’t like. Write some more. Apply again. If you don’t get it? So what? You’ll do something else. And maybe get back to public radio at some point.
Oh, don't forget Dave...or Working Girl...or Galaxy Quest...or The Ice Storm. God, is there anything she's not awesome in?
Sigourney Weaver Appreciation Day continues…
