December 2009
23 posts
4 tags
“I saw it as a sign from God that this was the right thing to do.”
– —Urban Meyer, head coach of the University of Florida football team, on his 18-year-old daughter’s jubilant reaction (“I get my daddy back!”) when he told their family on Christmas day that he is stepping down from his position.
7 tags
How I Am Preparing to Get Alzheimer’s Disease
by Alanna Shaikh, guest contributor
My father has Alzheimer’s disease. I am losing him in inches and pieces. It hurts. He is my hero and my mentor, and now I help him remember how to put on his clothes every morning.
My father has Alzheimer’s disease. There is a powerful genetic component to the disease, and I share a lot of my father’s risk factors, including bad triglycerides, a viral...
1 tag
6 tags
8 tags
Fact-checking Sitting Bull
by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
We’re nearing the finish line of a new show: “Reimagining Sitting Bull, Tatanka Iyotake” (that’s Sitting Bull’s name in Lakota). This program has been a year-and-a-half in the making, and we’re eager to put it out in the world. Kate, our managing producer, has said she’s always known a show about Sitting Bull would create...
6 tags
WatchOffice Chair Exploration Andy Dayton, associate web producer
One part that stood out to me from Krista’s conversation with Bill McKibben was his statement that “we’re going to have to learn to do a lot more travel via Google than American Airlines.” I was a bit skeptical of the idea that virtual globe-trotting could ever replace experiencing a different landscape and...
9 tags
4 tags
4 tags
“I feel more of these questions have been answered by being able to listen to...”
– —Abigail Mente, who submitted this reflection after listening to the Muslim voices featured in our programs “Revealing Ramadan” and “Living Islam.”
6 tags
Thich Nhat Hanh Followers Harrassed →
Kate Moos, managing producer
For a few weeks I’ve been tracking scanty headlines out of Viet Nam about the harassment of followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk whom we interviewed in 2003. He was forced out of his native country decades ago because of his opposition to the Vietnamese War and lived in exile, primarily in France. A few years ago, he was allowed to return on a visit...
5 tags
Hanukkah in the Heartland
Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Last night was the first night of Hanukkah — the Jewish festival of lights. I’ve been so busy burning the midnight oil (that’s a Hanukkah joke, by the way) for next week’s show on Sitting Bull, I haven’t made any formal plans to celebrate. Last December, a friend organized a Hanukkah throw-down replete with piles of steaming latkes and...
9 tags
Watch“A Minor American Miracle”: Orrin Hatch’s Rockin’ Hanukkah Song Trent Gilliss, online editor
A quick scan of this morning’s edition of the Tablet Daily Digest e-mail prompted me to read the lead article, “Hanukkah: A Guide for the Perplexed,” which was fun and quite helpful. And then I moved on.
It wasn’t until I was checking my inbox this...
5 tags
Fact-checking Climate Change
Colleen Scheck, Producer
The image to the right (larger version) is a scan of one of the pages from our script that I marked up during our last editorial listen for “The Moral Math of Climate Change.” It may not seem like it, but one of the very interesting aspects of working as a producer is fact-checking scripts and interviews to ensure that what we present to our audience is...
11 tags
Climate Change Explained in Four Minutes »...
7 tags
4 tags
Approaching Improv
by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Anoushka Shankar performs at the Wychwood Music Festival in 2007. (photo: Damian Rafferty/Fly)
While listening to a classic SOF program, “Approaching Prayer” last week, I was struck by musician Anoushka Shankar’s wise words about improvisation:
“…when you’re improvising, it completely forces you to be in the moment, and...
5 tags
“I started praying when I came to Treasury. At Goldman, I didn’t pray. Not...”
– —Neel Kashkari, as quoted in “The $700 Billion Man.” Known as the “bailout czar,” Kashkari was appointed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in October 2008 to head the Office for Financial Stability, which oversaw the $700 billion program that bought distressed assets...
3 tags
Scheduling Changes in Boston
Trent Gilliss, online editor
There’s a lot of activity in Boston these days. We recently learned that WGBH will now be carrying Speaking of Faith on Sundays at 7 a.m. Yeah!
Also, later this week WBUR made significant changes to their weekend schedule, including moving SOF from noon on Sunday to the 6 a.m. time slot that same day. If you have opinions on this decision to move SOF from...
8 tags
