I'm a lifestyle and culture writer based in New York.
On this blog, I share interesting tidbits on books, current events, media, and writing.
Ira Glass, host of NPR’s “This American Life”
(Source: reddit.com)
At first glance, a novel in which the main character eats herself to death may not seem like the most felicitous pick for Thanksgiving week; but The Middlesteins turns out to be a tough but affecting story about family members putting up with each other, even in their most unlovely, chewing-with-their-mouths-open life moments. If you have a Thanksgiving family reunion looming before you that doesn’t exactly promise to be a Norman Rockwell painting, The Middlesteins may just be the perfect literary corrective to overindulgence in high-calorie holiday expectations.
— Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel by Jami Attenberg, The Middlesteins
Ira Glass, host of NPR’s “This American Life”
(Source: transom.org)
Ira Glass answers the question “Could you give us a little insight behind the scenes of the show?”
In general, the story process is kind of messy. I suppose that’s inevitable. At any given point, we have three or four shows we’re actively preparing, and another two or three kind of burbling up slowly in the background. (There are nine of us on staff. It’s a lot of people. For years, it was just four.)
If we find a story that we love that doesn’t fit with any of those episodes, we invent a theme that could include it.
Then we go looking for other stories that could fill out the theme.
We do this by brainstorming what MIGHT work and then go looking for it. We do this by sending out emails to contributors and asking “have you got anything that goes with this?” We have a doc we send now and then to an email list of hundreds. Occasionally we crowdsource an idea on Facebook and our show’s blog. It’s messy.
(Source: reddit.com)
Read more
NPR outlines their submission guidelines:
What are the guidelines for submitting story ideas, press releases or commentary to NPR?
Story ideas and press releases should be submitted via our contact form. Select ‘Submit a story idea or press release’ from the ‘I Want To:’ field on the contact form. You will then receive the appropriate prompts for directing your submission via that form. Be sure to select a specific NPR program when submitting.Send your commentary (with the words “Commentary Submission” in the subject line) to Morning Edition: mecommentary@npr.org or All Things Considered:atccommentary@npr.org.
We look for commentary or essays that tell a tale, reveal a personal reflection, or add an informed perspective to events in the news. We want pieces that express an original idea with clear, creative writing. While many essays are from regularly scheduled commentators, we also want to hear from people who can comment on a once-only basis.
Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short.” God knows he doesn’t need the press: he’s the greatest living nonfiction writer; Brad Pitt stars in the movie adaptations of his books. But “The Big Short” made me want to give up journalism it’s so good. Scene after scene I felt like, how do you compete with this? He’s telling the story of the mortgage crisis, and his angle couldn’t be better: he follows the guys who knew it was coming and bet on it. This lets him explain how they knew and tell the story through these amazing contrarians and great funny scenes. It’s crazy how funny the book is. And as a story it’s got everything going against it. His characters are rich know-it-alls, but somehow Lewis makes you love them because he loves them. You know how it’s all going to end, but somehow he creates suspense. When the market doesn’t collapse as quickly as his characters think it should, some of them start to wonder: “Am I wrong? Is the whole world right and I’m wrong?” It all climaxes in this amazing, almost hallucinogenic set of scenes at this convention for the mortgage industry in Las Vegas, where our heroes have a series of encounters that make them all realize, no, no, no, they’re not wrong. Everything’s going to collapse. The economy will go to hell. And these people walking around are like zombies who just don’t know they’re doomed.
Illustration by Jillian Tamaki
(Source: The New York Times)
Welp, here is everything by Fresh Air, ever.
I ran some API queries on the NPR API site and then made some Google Docs archiving our roster by topic/reviewer. Here’s the result:
Every Author Interview on Fresh Air from 2010-2012
Every Movie Interview on Fresh Air from 2009-2012
Every Science Story on Fresh Air from 2010-2012
Every Music Interview on Fresh Air from 2010-2012
Every Television Interview on Fresh Air from 2009-2012
Every Animal Story on Fresh Air from 2009-2012
Every Theater Story on Fresh Air 2009-2012
Every Food Story on Fresh Air 2009-2012
Every Sports Story on Fresh Air 2009-2012
David Bianculli reviews 2009-2012
Maureen Corrigan reviews 2009-2012
Geoff Nunberg commentaries 2009-2012
David Edelstein reviews 2009-2012
Milo Miles reviews (world music) 2007-2012
Lloyd Schwartz reviews 2007-2012
Kevin Whitehead reviews 2007-2012
There’s also a master list for
If anyone can think of a better way to list these, by all means PLEASE let me know. I’m a one-woman web shop with limited programming abilities (AP C++ in 12th grade, mainly) and don’t have time to make these look the way they should. But if you’d like to, I’m happy to supply you with the API query I used and anything else you might need.
-Mel
