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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-1 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:

Electric Soup (#1635)

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

Playing
Electric Soup (#1635)
From
A Way with Words

Awww_logo_color_square

After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle, which described "clear weather," as in a dingle day, and electric soup, meaning "fortified wine."
Is the booty as in shake your booty related to a pirate's booty? The booty that means "derriere" is an alteration of botty, which is itself an alteration of bottom. The booty that means "loot" or "plunder" derives from an Old Germanic word. It was likely influenced by Old English bót, meaning "advantage" or "a little more" and the source also of the expression to boot, meaning "additionally" or "to the good."
Ian in Jacksonville, Florida, wonders about why musicians use the word clam to mean "a mistake" or "an egregious musical error," as in There are a lot of clams in there or We need to practice where the clams are regarding a musical passage that needs work. Occasionally, it's used as a verb, as in You clammed. In the 1950s, the term clambake meant a jam with bad vibes. In the 1930s, a clambake was actually a good jam session, but the term went from a positive sense to a negative one, a process that linguists refer to pejoration. It's possible that the term became skunked, which describes a term so widely used by the general public that the cool people came to disdain it. Robert S. Gold's A Jazz Lexicon (Bookshop|Amazon) is a helpful resource for the language of jazz.
Journalist Bianca Bosker infiltrated the world of contemporary art and wrote about it in her book Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See (Bookshop|Amazon), often with hilarious results. She describes the lexicon of art curators, whose language is peppered with such words as indexicality, iconicity, and durational, and observes,"Art devotees spoke like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out."
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a quiz involving a polysyllabic word followed by another word that repeats the last of those syllables twice. For example, suppose the clue is: "When playing a simple game with a toddler, it's a real faux pas to forget to reveal your face again." What's a five-syllable term for that kind of mistake?
Mary Lou is a former newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee. One of her editors used to say he was off to the salt mines, meaning he was headed to do some challenging work. That expression is a reference to the grim practice of sending prisoners off to work in literal salt mines in Siberia. Through the linguistic process known as amelioration, that expression lost its original, extremely negative sense over time. Mary Lou is also curious about the old practice of adding #30# at the bottom of a story to indicate its end. There are many proposed explanations for this, going back to the 19th century. The most likely explanation connects this notation to a code outlined in 1864 in Orrin Wood's Plan of Telegraphic Instruction, where the number 30 was the telegraphic code meaning finis, meaning "end" or "conclusion."
Smoko is slang for "a cigarette break." It's used in Australia and also at a British research station in Antarctica.
What's the difference between a daffodil and a jonquil? Strictly speaking, daffodil is a general term, and jonquils are a specific type of daffodil, called Narcissus jonquilla.  Both belong to the botanical genus Narcissus, and most people use the two terms interchangeably. Jonquil is more common in the American South, and occasionally they're called Johnny-quills.
Why is an insulated sleeve for a beverage called a koozie? Any relation to a tea cozy used to keep a teapot warm? In Australia, a coozie is often called a stubby holder, a stubby or stubbie being "a short bottle of beer." The coozie was originally patented with the trade name Koozie.
Stravenue is a portmanteau of street and avenue, and is used in Tucson, Arizona, to refer to a diagonal road between east-west streets and north-south avenues. Similarly, a stroad is a combination of street and road.
What's the difference between ethics and morality? Between a proverb and an adage? Eli Burnstein's Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties and Subtle Shades of Meaning ​​(Bookshop|Amazon) helps readers distinguish between such things. Linguist Anne Curzan's Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words (Bookshop|Amazon) is a helpful, highly readable summary for anyone who wants to understand how linguists think about language. 
Mike in Glasgow, Kentucky, wonders about a catchphrase used in British comedies: I go to the foot of the stairs. The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases (Bookshop|Amazon) compiled by Anna Farkas and several books by catchphrase collector Nigel Rees both point to a comedy radio series that ran from 1939-1949 called "It's That Man Again." The phrase suggests that the speaker has been taken by surprise and must retire from polite company for one purpose or another.
The liked to in statements such as It started raining yesterday and liked to never stop is directly related to the word likely. The terms liked to and likedta used in this way reflect a British dialectal term that found its way into the speech of many people in the American South.
The expression You look like death eating on a Nab means "You look terrible." It's a humorous elaboration of the idea of death, which refers to death consuming a dry, salty, peanut-butter-filled snack made by the Nabisco company. The more common phrase is You look like death eating a cracker. Variations include like death on toast and the simile Ralph Ellison used in Invisible Man (Bookshop|Amazon), like death eating a sandwich.
This episode is hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.

Electric Soup (#1635) | 54:00

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