NPR is ever more desperate for funds, and now has a new, somewhat shady sponsor:
(Check the date.) Sponsor message ran at end of this story: NPR- Have Cell Phone Rings Gone Too Far . BTW, that version of “NY, NY” in that NPR story is Wendy Mae Chambers on her Car Horn Organ:
A new HV story by Queena Kim airs this weekend on NPR Latino USA— Every Saturday, hundreds of Latino immigrants pilgrimage to Our Lady The Queen of the Angels, Los Angeles’ oldest mission Church, to get their baby’s baptized. The Church baptizes fifty babies an hour — more than three hundred every Saturday. Unlike other churches, Our Lady doesn’t require parents or godparents to take classes beforehand. All you do is sign-up. Abel Salas walks us through “the McDonald’s of Baptism.” (5:20 mp3):
A couple weekends ago NPR bestowed the title of The Most Captivating Voice in the World to Iris Lettieri, the announcer at Rio de Janeiro’s international airport. Her “voice is so seductive that travelers have been known to miss their flights just to listen to her.” Here’s a clip from (lang: Portuguese) Iris’ website:
The 1st in our series Project Healing Waters is the NPR Story of the Day podcast.
A new series daily this week for NPR Day to Day: Retired Navy Captain Ed Nicholson is an avid fly-fishermen. He realized fishing would be good therapy for disabled veterans. So he hooked up with Trout Unlimited and the Federation of Fly Fishers, and with private donations and volunteer guides, they began teaching wounded vets, including many amputees, how to fly-fish. Project Healing Waters, now regularly takes vets on these therapeutic fishing outings. Captain Eivind Forseth spent a day catching trout at Rose River Farm in Virginia.
Great StoryCorps® this morn on NPR-ME. Judge Joe Pigott of Jackson, MS talks about his favorite criminal.
Using our NPR story “Listening to Northern Lights” (NPR Lost and Found Sound), Joel Halvorson of NASA Earth-Sun Museum Alliance made a video for the Minnesota Planetarium (for use in dome, thus the circular frame of the images):
From the latest issue of the Washingtonian: Has Success Spoiled NPR?
"It would be an immense source of pride for me if NPR could find in its heart new beats and new sounds -- not radically different ones, just different enough that they would belong to the people who are now 17 but who are going to be listening 40 and 50 years from now." --Robert Krulwich
"[NPR is] the retirement community of the air. What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news.†--Alex Beam, Boston Globe
"NPR is run by newspaper people. Sometimes I think they don’t even like radio." --Bob Edwards
Images and sound from Jack Chance‘s trip to Easter Island (radio broadcast: Nov 14 2004 on NPR Day to Day):
Caught a bit on NPR the other morning on “Embrace the Suck – A Pocket Guide to Milspeak.” My favorite term was “fobbit,” which basically replaces REMF as the term of choice in a place where there is no rear but plenty of fortified bases.
Here’s one Fobbit def, and another — the latter being more informative but perhaps a bit less kind. And here’s the Bob on the FOB Comic Archive.
Skye Rohde’s sound and images from her day at the annual cultural show in Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. This is the social event of the year, a swirl of colors and costumes, traditional songs and dances. (Broadcast: Mar 12 2007 on NPR Day to Day):
Airing today on NPR Day to Day: An audio postcard from the Goroka Cultural Show in Papua New Guinea, by producer Skye Rohde.
Jake Warga made a slideshow of his radio story “The Person I Admire the Most” (NPR All Things Considered). It’s been viewed 18K 19K 23K 29K times on YouTube; who’s gonna make it 18,001 19,001 23,001 31,001: