Merge Records, the independent record label founded by Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk, turns 20 this year. All Things Considered focuses on how they stand out from other labels by turning profits in these trying economic times. They are throwing a four-day festival this month, XX Merge, in North Carolina where it all began. Stand-out acts for the festival include M. Ward, The Magnetic Fields, The Clientele, Superchunk, and the biggest act promoted by the label, Spoon.
posted by educatedslacker on Jul 5, 2009 - 42 comments

The Cavafy Archive has translations of all of C. P. Cavafy's poems (go here for the Greek) except for the 30 unfinished poems, which have just recently been translated into English for the first time by Daniel Mendelsohn. His translations are reviewed in a lengthy essay by Peter Green in the most recent New Republic. Mendelsohn was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered earlier this week. Late last year Mendelsohn wrote an essay about Cavafy in The New York Review of Books. The Cavafy Archive also has translations of a few prose pieces by Cavafy as well as manuscripts, pictures, translated letters & short texts and a catalog of Cavafy's library.
posted by Kattullus on Jun 9, 2009 - 9 comments

NPR Backstory is an automated Twitter feed providing helpful links to news items from the past 14 years that might be relevant to current events. For example, when masses of people started googling medical information after a news item about 200,000 patients' medical histories being accidentally exposed, NPRbackstory linked to an April 2008 analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of storing patient records online. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on May 14, 2009 - 7 comments

Joe Palca, a science correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition, was meditating on the best way to convey the magnitude of the world's largest known prime number, 2^43112609-1. He contacted H&FJ at Typography.com to discuss the implications of typesetting a number with more than twelve million digits. Crunching of numbers and fonts ensued.
posted by netbros on Apr 22, 2009 - 21 comments

What's your NPR name? [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Apr 15, 2009 - 279 comments

NPR article and slide show of the works of Julius Shulman. If you've seen anything by Shulman, you've seen this one. Gas station buffs probably favor this. And, if this one wasn't in Playboy, it should have been! And, bunches more though a google image search. And, at 98, he's still capturing images!
posted by HuronBob on Mar 26, 2009 - 5 comments

Family Words (scroll down, p.9). Do you know what the "Ahh-hee's" are? It describes the feeling you get when you put on a bathing suit that is still damp. What about a "winterpepper?" That would be a backwards flip (opposite of somersault). "Eeksler?" The lever on an ice cube tray, so-called because of the sound it makes. Daw daw, doot-do, to-do to-do, taw taw, der der, drit-drit and hoo-hoo? All refer to the tube of cardboard inside a roll of toilet paper. Featured on NPR's A Way With Words (full episode).
posted by vronsky on Mar 4, 2009 - 76 comments

Confused about the banking crisis? Confused by banks in general? This American Life's latest show Bad Bank (streaming, mp3) is a highly informative (and entertaining) overview of how banks work, and what problems they--and we all--face in this current crisis. Produced by another great NPR show, Planet Money.
posted by zardoz on Mar 2, 2009 - 23 comments

The Crisis of Credit by graduate design student Jonathan Jarvis is a thorough and visually appealing animation which explains the current credit crisis in clear terms. From the ever helpful NPR Planet Money.
posted by phyrewerx on Feb 19, 2009 - 28 comments

Madeleine Brand and Alex Cohen, co-hosts of NPR’s Day to Day discuss being laid off (VIDEO) as part of $23 million in budget cuts at NPR
posted by The Gooch on Feb 17, 2009 - 75 comments

Simon Johnson on Bill Moyers [1] (and, prolifically, making the public media rounds on npr [2]) tackling the bailout of the American Oligarchs, a.k.a. banksters... [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Feb 14, 2009 - 16 comments

On December 4, 2008, at NYC's Symphony Space, NPR's Intelligence Squared program conducted an Oxford-style debate. As their future debate schedules in Australia, England, and America show, the propositions of such debates are routinely phrased strongly to provoke debate, and this was no exception. The motion that was put forward was: "Resolved, that Bush 43 is the worst President of the last 50 years." [mp3, 23 MB, 50 min.] What lifts this above the reams of media and multimedia already spent on this issue is that, moderated by ABC's John Donvan, this premise was debated — under formal debate guidelines — by Jacob Weisberg, Sir Simon Jenkins, Bill Kristol, and ... Karl Rove. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Jan 6, 2009 - 28 comments

A (mostly) complete concert by the Elephant 6 Orchestra is available to stream or download. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Dec 12, 2008 - 26 comments

Public Radio Podcasts : NPR is a treasure trove of great audio content but most of it is not accessible via a podcast feed. This site uses the NPR API to construct proper podcast feeds for their shows that don't current have feeds (e.g. Morning Edition, All Things Considered) as well as per reporter and topic based feeds. Enjoy! [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Dec 11, 2008 - 31 comments

A See Monkey calls for detente on Aquaman jokes. I could include a bunch of links here, but Glen at NPR has already done all the work for me.
posted by ericbop on Dec 3, 2008 - 34 comments

In 1972, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were convicted of murdering a prison guard in Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison, Angola. The warden sentenced them to solitary confinement, where they remained for the next 36 years. Until March 2008, the men had spent at least 23 hours per day in cells that measured only 6 x 9 feet. Woodfox's conviction was recently overturned, evidently through a federal habeus proceeding, and he is awaiting a new trial. NPR did an outstanding job of tracking down people involved and telling a riveting story: Part I, Part II, Part III. No doubt that much of the attention brought to the case is due to the efforts of Jackie Sumell and her Herman's House project. [more inside]
posted by ajr on Nov 9, 2008 - 8 comments

The Princess of Nebraska premiered on YouTube this weekend (unrated by MPAA, but 18A+ rating, but on YouTube, so maybe mild NSFW). Often focusing on Chinese immigrants in America and culture gaps (NPR interview; text and audio) between both their new country and across generations, director Wayne Wang has returned to his roots after several more traditional Hollywood movies (Wayne Wang Is Missing). (Known for "Chan Is Missing" and "The Joy Luck Club", he has made movies such as "Maid in Manhattan" recently.) "Princess" is intended as a double feature with traditionally released "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," "Princess" might "be the first feature feature film by a major director to premiere" only on the internet. Both are based on short stories by Yiyun Li.
posted by skynxnex on Oct 20, 2008 - 3 comments

This American Life gives you Another Frightening Show About the Economy.. The guys who brought us The Giant Pool of Money (previously) explain the credit crunch and why it's so scary. And not in the Halloween fun-to-be-scared sense.
posted by justkevin on Oct 5, 2008 - 169 comments

Alison Bechdel, creator of the very long-running "Dykes to Watch Out For" as well as the autobiographical graphic novel "Fun Home", may end up best known for her creation/popularization of "The Bechdel Test" (also mentioned on wikipedia). [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 on Sep 3, 2008 - 257 comments

Journalist Leroy Sievers has lost his fight with cancer. He passed away Friday night. He was 53. His blog, My Cancer, and his commentaries on NPR, documented the progression of his disease while creating a community of those touched by cancer themselves.
posted by Toekneesan on Aug 18, 2008 - 19 comments

Glitter And Doom: Tom Waits In Concert [more inside]
posted by acro on Jul 29, 2008 - 22 comments

"The Bryant Park Project”, NPR’s attempt to reach a younger demographic and "capture listeners who had moved online" has been cancelled
posted by The Gooch on Jul 14, 2008 - 123 comments

Fasting may be the remedy for jet lag. By overiding your clock (audio interview 12 min) that prepares your body to eat, it is likely that you can reset your body's clock. Might this be the missing step in training yourself to be an early riser? via
posted by bigmusic on May 23, 2008 - 22 comments

The Giant Pool of Money. This American Life teams up with NPR News to explain the Housing Crisis. [more inside]
posted by empath on May 11, 2008 - 53 comments

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

This story's making the rounds today, for a very, very good reason: A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
posted by chinese_fashion on Mar 28, 2008 - 203 comments

MindHabits : The game that helps you love yourself? Via.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Mar 26, 2008 - 26 comments

Long Duk Dong: Last of the Hollywood Stereotypes? Related: Whatever Happened to John Hughes? which has an accompanying photo gallery: Where are Hughes' teen stars now? [A previous post about John Hughes here.]
posted by amyms on Mar 24, 2008 - 69 comments

Bobby Dunbar was a four year-old boy that vanished in 1912, while on a fishing trip with his family in a Louisiana swamp. For weeks, searchers combed the area looking for him. The lake where he went missing was dynamited. Alligators were captured and had their bellies slit open to see if the body was inside. Nothing was found except a set of child's footprints leading to an old railroad trestle. Eight months later, the police found Bobby in the company of a drifter with a horse-drawn cart. He protested his innocence but was arrested and charged with kidnapping. Another woman came forward and claimed Bobby was, in fact, her son. But she was an unmarried fieldworker, and her claims were dismissed. The crime became a nationwide media event and the boy was returned to his parents, and their hometown held a parade in his honor. Bobby returned to his life. Ninety-one years later, Bobby Dunbar's granddaughter uncovered the truth.
posted by smoothvirus on Mar 19, 2008 - 78 comments

Live right now NPR is broadcasting REM from SXSW along with sets from Summerbirds in the Cellar, Johnathan Rice, Papercranes and Dead Confederate.
posted by plexi on Mar 12, 2008 - 53 comments

In 1962, in a mission-run girls' boarding school in Kashasha, Tanzania, a student started laughing uncontrollably. Her laughter spread throughout the school, and the girls grew violent when teachers tried to calm them. Administration closed the school, sent some girls home, and the "epidemic of laughing and crying" spread to villages up and down the Bukoba district. [more inside]
posted by lauranesson on Feb 22, 2008 - 30 comments

Om nom nom nom! NPR's In Character interviews Cookie Monster. In addition to the video interview, there is are articles (written and audio) about The Big C.
posted by CrunchyFrog on Feb 15, 2008 - 40 comments

NPR and twelve public radio partners have launched NPR Music, a free, multi-genre Web site showcasing the best of public radio music.
posted by jaimev on Nov 7, 2007 - 18 comments

Proposed Candidate Ringtones. Taking a cue from the Obama campaign, Billion Dollar President (a new public radio show) whips up some possible ringtones for the other candidates. Be sure to check out Kucinich and Huckabee. There's also a contest to design your own.
posted by jtajta on Nov 6, 2007 - 7 comments

Sigur Rós have been doing publicity for a documentary about the band called Heima (trailer). They went on NPR's The Bryant Park Project and did an interview which went achingly wrong. On the show's website, interviewer Luke Burbank describes it as "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media." [more inside]
posted by Kattullus on Oct 11, 2007 - 184 comments

An unscientific, blind taste-test of US$55/btl bottled vs tap water
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 10, 2007 - 62 comments

President Bush touched down in New Orleans at 7:11 p.m. this evening The 84-year-old Chase sat close to the president and accepted his praise for the meal of jambalaya, stewed okra and gumbo z'herb, an all-greens gumbo that's a tradition at Chase's Holy Thursday dinners.
posted by nola on Aug 28, 2007 - 51 comments

"I've said all along, we are in this together." John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange - the royalty collecting arm of the RIAA - extends an olive branch through 2008 that will cap the advance payments internet broadcasters will have to cough up at $2500 per year. This comes in the wake of the Day of Silence, (it was June 26, did anyone notice?) spearheaded by Los Angeles-based terrestrial/online radio station KCRW (home of the brilliant Morning Becomes Eclectic) and SaveNetRadio, during which some of the biggest names in online radio - include Live365, NPR and Pandora - went dark for 24 hours, airing a one-hour broadcast twice during that day on the history of flat fees in public broadcasting. [direct .mp3, 38mb] Under the much-maligned changes made by our government's Copyright Royalty Board, the top six internet radio stations would have had to pay 47 percent of their total revenue (anticipated to be around $37.5 mil.) to the RIAA, starting this July. The Internet Radio Equality Act [summary, in its entire pdf glory] has been introduced to the House of Representatives, seeking to permanently reverse this decision.
posted by phaedon on Jul 3, 2007 - 69 comments

This week, WNYC's On The Media reran a report from November 14, 2003 entitled "Pulling Back the Curtain." Here's the transcript of the report or you can listen here. Reporter John Solomon relates what it was like to join NPR and suddenly realize how much the "behind-the-scenes manufacturing process" gives NPR its polished product. Whether you are surprised by any of this or not, it is refreshing to hear a news outlet (which I could not live without) examine itself.
posted by loosemouth on May 26, 2007 - 24 comments

“I wanted to try to capture the intelligence of the design, not just the outcome of the design.” “In 1977, [Donald] Knuth halted research on his books for what he expected to be a one-year hiatus. Instead, it took 10. Accompanied by [his wife] Jill, Knuth took design classes from Stanford art professor Matthew Kahn. Knuth, trying to train his programmer’s brain to think like an artist’s, wanted to create a program [TeX] that would understand why each stroke in a typeface would be pleasing to the eye.”—from a profile of Knuth in the Stanford Magazine (May '06). Salon calls him “computing’s philosopher king” (Sep '99). NPR’s Morning Edition interviews Knuth as “the founding artist of computer science” (Mar '05). Perhaps a MeFite somewhere has one of these? (Previously)
posted by Ethereal Bligh on Apr 23, 2007 - 40 comments

IPR: Irrational Public Radio "We love NPR, PRI, & MPR. We are fans of All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Car Talk, This American Life, Fresh Air, and Prarie Home Companion. We like the commentaries, the features, the independent member station programs. We love them all dearly. But we also think they're begging to be made fun of. So here we are."
posted by jdroth on Mar 29, 2007 - 31 comments

Ira Glass sits at a soundboard and schools us on the art of storytelling.
posted by bigmusic on Mar 20, 2007 - 75 comments

Robert Krulwich tells the tale of Dr. Alan Rabinowitz and his friend... "Dawi told Alan the terrible secret that explained why there were so few Taron (left in the world). And then Alan told Dawi a secret of his own..." (includes audio link)
posted by ZachsMind on Feb 3, 2007 - 12 comments

Barbaro is dead. He was a horse. A horse with fans. Enjoy some fan videos. [mostly via]
posted by Sticherbeast on Jan 29, 2007 - 50 comments

Wayward country son Jimmy Dale Gilmore's essay via NPR A little post-feast reflection. Real/WMP audio and text.
posted by crowman on Dec 25, 2006 - 10 comments

NPR rebroadcasts David Sedaris reading from his book Santaland Diaries.
posted by Nathanial Hörnblowér on Dec 22, 2006 - 7 comments

From performing in a concert for Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, to serving as background music for the shock-and-awe bombing of Baghdad, Lionel Richie is much beloved throught the Arab world. A Nightline piece, and an upcoming GQ magazine article (via NPR) examine the Lionel of Arabia phenomenon.
posted by jaimev on Dec 4, 2006 - 17 comments

This short NPR interview with two guys that do negative campaign ad voiceovers is not to be missed. They cover buzzwords, types of delivery, and then riff on nursery rhymes. [via notmartha]
posted by mathowie on Nov 7, 2006 - 28 comments

Radio Lab! Already listened to everything This American Life offers or maybe looking for something a bit smarter and full of science? Maybe you'll like Radio Lab. Maybe you'll like the mind-blowing and historically expanding episode on music. Maybe older history is your cup of tea -- how about biblical times and how they sit in shoeboxes in Oxford. A stack of shows available via podcast, MP3 download (and some .RAM, sorry).
posted by Ogre Lawless on Oct 13, 2006 - 11 comments

This American Life is now offering free podcasts. A while ago, someone noticed MP3s of This American Life episodes were sitting in a publicly accessible directory. People soon starting making podcasts. This American Life asked them to stop. Most of them did. Fans of the show were disappointed. Now the podcast is available directly from TAL for free.
posted by scottreynen on Oct 12, 2006 - 53 comments

The Room: The Movie. Triple-threat (actor/writer/director) Tommy Wiseau made his cinematic debut in 2003 with the The Room (see trailer and various scenes), "a blend between a softcore porn flick and a Tennessee Williams stageplay." Wiseau ("who's not just one of the most unusual looking and sounding-with an unidentifiable Eastern European accent-leading men ever to grace the screen, but a narcissist nonpareil whose movie makes Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" seem the apotheosis of cinematic self-restraint...may be something of a first: A movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back-before even 30 minutes have passed." - Variety), allegedly raised $6 million outside Hollywood to cover production and marketing costs of the self-described "black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies" (see various rough dress rehersals). Audience members, including comedian David Cross, have been "marveling at the bizarre editing, bad bluescreen, uncomfortably explicit sex scenes and, of course, the enigma of Wiseau himself" as the film played monthly for years in Los Angeles. Available on DVD, diehard "roomies" swear by the theatrical experience, shout out their own commentary, hurl spoons at the screen and singalong to the soundtrack. Some call it "The Rocky Horror of the New Millenium" and stage "Room" parties. If you look at the marketing campaign or survived a screening you might see The Room as "a seminar on how NOT to make a movie." [Inspired by Boing Boing]
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 1, 2006 - 28 comments