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Playlist: News Station Picks for August '10

Compiled By: PRX Curators

Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39046851@N08/4581150872/">Mutasim Billah</a>
Image by: Mutasim Billah 
Curated Playlist

Here are August picks for news stations from PRX News Format Curator Naomi Starobin.

What Naomi listens for in news programming.

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Maybe these slow news days of August have you thinking about something fresh, new and lively. Well, you can’t give each of your listeners a yappy puppy, but how about a new series? Great stuff out there. I had a look around on PRX and it was hard to pick just a few. This list displays a range from series with short interstitial pieces that you can plug in to a news magazine or show, to longer ones that would make great choices for weekend hours that right now just aren’t quite dazzling your audience. Have a listen!

Volunteers and Design

From Smart City Radio | 59:00

This is one in the series from Smart City Radio. All of the pieces are about cities...sometimes specific cities and how people are dealing with particular problems (Detroit, Syracuse), and other segments, like this one, are issue-oriented. These are heady and intellectual, and well-suited for an audience that is concerned or curious about urban life and its future.

It's hosted by Carol Coletta.

Playing
Volunteers and Design
From
Smart City Radio

Default-piece-image-0 Ten years ago, two undergrads from Yale noticed the fundamental gap between their university and the community surrounds it.  To bridge this divide they formed the volunteer training organization that's now known as LIFT.  We'll speak with Ben Reuler, the executive director of LIFT, about harnessing the energy of students to engage them in the community and help combat poverty.

And...

Good design can do many things, but can it change the world?  My guest Warren Berger has written a book on how design is doing just that.  The book, titled Glimmer,  shows how design in action addressing business, social, and personal challenges, and improving the way we think, work, and live.

Volunteers and Design | 59:00

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Unconventional Archaeology -- Groks Science Show 2010-07-28

From Charles Lee | Part of the Groks Science Radio Show series | 29:42

For that half-hour time slot, go science! Lots of lively interviews in these segments, along with commentaries and a question-of-the-week. This series is produced in Chicago and Tokyo by Dr. Charles Lee and Dr. Frank Ling, who also host the show. They are natural and curious, and lean toward short questions and long answers.

There are pieces on cancer-sniffing dogs, outsmarting your genes, number theory, ant adventures, and lots more, displaying great breadth.

It's geared to listeners who are interested in science...no college level inorganic chem required.

Playing
Unconventional Archaeology -- Groks Science Show ...
From
Charles Lee

Grokscience_small Archaeology is often portrayed as a romantic adventure to the remote corners of the globe. But, what is the life of an archaeologist really like? On this program, Dr. Donald Ryan discussed unconventional archaeology.  For more information, visit the website: www.groks.net.

Unconventional Archaeology -- Groks Science Show ... | 29:42

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Are Freckles Just Cute or Something More?

From Dueling Docs | Part of the Dueling Docs series | 02:02

Dueling Docs is a great idea, well executed. Each two-minute piece answers a simple medical or health question. The host, Dr. Janice Horowitz, lays out a question (Should you get cosmetic surgery? Is dying your hair bad for you? Can stretching make you more prone to injury?), presents opposing views, and concludes with advice.

This would fit in nicely during a weekend or weekday news show. A good two minutes.

Playing
Are Freckles Just Cute or Something More?
From
Dueling Docs

Duelingdocs_prx_logo_medium_small While the rest of the media doesn't bother to challenge the latest news flash, Dueling Docs always presents the other side of a medical issue, the side that most everyone ignores.  Janice gets doctors to talk frankly about controversial health matters - then she sorts things out, leaving the listener with a no-nonsense take-home message

Are Freckles Just Cute or Something More? | 02:02

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Reading Russian Fortunes

From Rachel Louise Snyder | Part of the Global Guru Radio series | 03:03

This series, Global Guru, claims to "ask one simple question -- just one -- about somewhere in the world." Those questions have included: "How do the Hopi bring rain to the desert?" "How and why do Thai people categorize their food?" "Why are there so many barbershops in Tanzania?" This is a great series of three-minute pieces you can squeeze into just about any hour. Rachel Louise Snyder out of Washington, DC is the producer. She says "each week, our mandate is to surprise listeners." Your listeners would say she succeeds.

Playing
Reading Russian Fortunes
From
Rachel Louise Snyder

Guru_logo1_small

The Global Guru is a weekly public radio show that seeks to celebrate global culture, particularly in countries where Americans have either single narrative story lines, like Afghanistan (war), Thailand (sex tourism), Rwanda, (genocide), or perhaps no story lines at all, like East Timor, Moldova, Malta, Lesotho, etc. Engaging and rich in sound, the 3:00 interstitial seeks to enrich our collective understanding of the vastness of human experience. Presenting station is WAMU in Washington, DC and sponsored by American University in DC. Some of our favorite past shows include: How do Cambodians predict the harvest each year? How did Tanzania become the capitol of barbershops? How and why does Thailand categorize food? What is Iceland’s most feared culinary delight? How do you track a Tasmanian devil? What are the hidden messages in Zulu beadwork?

Reading Russian Fortunes | 03:03

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A Way with Words (Series)

Produced by A Way with Words

Public radio listeners, as you know, are curious and intelligent. And they are, as you know, sticklers for language. Satisfy their curiosity with this hour-long series. It's hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, who talk about word usage and origin, and take questions from callers. Often those questions center around a word or expression that the caller recalls from childhood and is curious about. The mood is informal and the hosts joust a bit in a friendly way with their answers.

Most recent piece in this series:

Hog on Ice (#1544)

From A Way with Words | Part of the A Way with Words series | 54:00

Playing
Hog on Ice (#1544)
From
A Way with Words

Awww_logo_color_square

Rasoul from Mashad, Iran, writes to ask why in English the phrase fat chance actually means "little or no chance" -- a slim chance, in other words. Fat chance is an ironic usage, much like the phrase big deal which is often used to mean just the opposite of itself. 
Kathy from Huntsville, Alabama, remembers that her father would entice guests to stay awhile longer with the puzzling phrase We're fixing to open up a keg of nails. Actually, the keg of nails in this case is a jocular euphemism referencing a different kind of keg -- that is, one full of beer -- the idea being that if the guests linger, he'll crack open some more alcoholic beverages for them to enjoy.
Nancy in Dallas, Texas, shares a funny story about a preschooler's misunderstanding of the expression in the meantime, meaning "in the interim." The mean in meantime derives from a Latin medius, "in the middle," the source also of such words as English meanwhile and the French word for "middle," moyen.
Responding to our conversation about the curses medieval scribes wrote in books to prevent their theft, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst emails a modern-day book curse from the instructional manual Beginning Glassblowing by Edward T. Schmid. Glassblowers, by the way, call themselves gaffers.
While fishing from a jetty, Maria in San Antonio, Texas, wondered about this name for a structure extending from the shore out into the water. The word jetty comes to us via the French word jeter, meaning "to throw" (the dance step called a tour jete being a "thrown turn"), and is related to several other words involving the idea of throwing, including project, eject, interject, jettison, jetsam. The word jetty may also apply to a part of a building that projects out from the main structure. Similarly, an adjective is word "thrown against," or added to, a noun.
An inkle is a colorful strip of linen woven on a miniature, portable loom. No one knows the term's origin, but an old idiomatic expression, thick as inkle-weavers meant "extremely close or intimate." The idea was that inkle looms are so small and narrow that the weavers who used them could sit much closer together than weavers using much larger looms.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski's latest brain teaser is about archaic words. For example, what does the following sentence mean? Three times in the last decade the Duchess of Cambridge has experienced accouchement.
David in Livingston, Montana, heard a 1954 radio show in which Frank Sinatra used the phrase sweet and groovy, like a nine-cent movie. Was the word groovy really around in those days? Yes, by 1937, the term had filtered into the mainstream from the language of jazz, where groovy was a compliment applied to musicians with excellent chops. Surprisingly enough, long before that groovy meant "boring," and applied to someone stuck in a rut. This negative sense of the word goes back to at least the 1880s. A 1920 newspaper article used groovy as a noun, referring to someone who doesn't like anything that requires them to change their habits.
Claire from San Antonio, Texas, has a story about misunderstanding a word when she was young. When she saw a book with Thesaurus on the cover, she grabbed it and started reading, thinking she was about to learn about a new type of dinosaur.
If an operator operates, why doesn't a surgeon surge? The word surgeon comes from ancient Greek cheir, which means "hand," and ergon, "work," surgery being a kind of medical treatment done by hand, rather than the work of drugs. These Greek roots are more obvious in the archaic English word for "surgeon," chirurgeon. The word operate comes from the Latin word for "work," the same root of opera, literally "a work," and modus operandi, literally "mode of working."
Sauna is by far the most common everyday word adopted in English from Finnish. A distant second is sisu, a term for "grit" or "determination," which is particularly associated with the hardiness and fortitude of Finns themselves.
Martha shares her childhood misunderstanding of the term State of the Union. Who knew it wasn't an annual contest to determine the best one of all 50 states? 
Bonnie Hearn Hill's essay "What I Wish I'd Known" offers aspiring authors lots of great tips gleaned from Hill's long career of writing books. The essay won a contest sponsored by The Writer magazine.
Robbie in San Antonio, Texas, wonders about an expression he heard from his mother, who spent many years in Germany. If two people have the opportunity to do something, but neither of them does it, she'd say It fell between chairs. In English, we get across the same idea by saying someone sat between two stools or fell between two stools. In fact, versions of the phrases sitting on two chairs or sitting on two stools or falling between two chairs or falling between two stools occur throughout European languages, going all the way back to the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca.
Lisa says her whole canasta group in San Diego, California, wonders if there's a term breasting to denote one's playing cards close to the chest so that others can't see them. New card players often lack proprioception, that is, a perception or awareness of the position of their own bodies and where their limbs are in relation to other players, which means they often fail to breast their cards and accidentally reveal them to competitors. The name of the card game canasta, by the way, comes from Uruguayan Spanish, where canasta means "basket."  
Vince in Norristown, Pennsylvania, is pondering whether the terms couch, sofa, and davenport are all regional terms for the same piece of heavy furniture. The short answer is that throughout the United States, the term couch is the most common, followed by sofa. The term chesterfield is more often heard in Canada, when it is heard at all. For an in-depth look at the wide variety of words we use for the rooms in a house and the objects in them check out Language and Material Culture by Allison Burkette. 
Pam from Denton, Texas, says her mother-in-law always used the expression independent as a hog on ice. A hog that stubbornly gets itself stranded on a sheet of ice is in an extremely awkward position. A passage in the book Jack Shelby: A Story of the Indiana Backwoods describes such an animal as "the helplesstest thing you ever did see in all your born days." 
This episode is hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.

Hog on Ice (#1544) | 54:00

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