NPR - stuffy or sexy?

Jo3l Rose is ruling today

i was on this huge bpp kick lately, but it's starting to get a little to much like "the view."

listening to NPR like two minutes ago and there's this kind of inane cell-phone technology puff piece on, and they get a caller. daniel, a contractor of some kind, is telling the anchor dude (neil?) in a weird broken-dieter accent that this new technology saves him from hours of driving a day, since he gets in touch with all of his sites via those walky-talky jobbies.
--- So, sir, you're in construction?
--- Ja, and the improved vibration settings are amaaazing, so you can always tell, you just drive around and it just fits so perfectly in your scheißer hole and (thanks for the feedback! cut to 'commercial')

someone tell me that i am not the only person who heard this

anyone??

o_O

http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2009/05/may_28th_show.html#commentBlock

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L~O~L

they publish transcripts, right?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=EGLC%2CEGLC%3A2007-20%2CEGLC%3Aen&q=daniel+vibration+schei%C3%9Fer+&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

http://www.npr.org/transcripts/

Is this neil conan (sp?) talk of the nation?
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5

Ja, and the improved vibration settings are amaaazing, so you can always tell, you just drive around and it just fits so perfectly in your scheißer hole and

if this quote is real, and was on npr, i guess keeping the thread title in mind, the answer would be. . . stuffy??

Mobile Phones Do Much More Than Make Calls

with sexy results, etc etc

guys i swear to god this is what happened

is NPR covering the NYT story about excessive hugs giving kids lung cancer?

This Saturday, Daniel Schorr will tell Scott Simon about the time he was going to Good Vibrations, got confused, and wound up in an Apple Store instead.

like this idea of npr going for human interest and accidentally covering hardcore sexual fetishism

what's accidental about that?

scheißer hole

If this guy had an iPhone, what MP3s would be on it I wonder?

Samwell - "What What (In The Butt)"

"--- So, sir, you're in construction?
--- Ja, and the improved vibration settings are amaaazing, so you can always tell, you just drive around and it just fits so perfectly in your scheißer hole and (thanks for the feedback! cut to 'commercial')"

If you did not imagine this, they have rather seamlessly removed any hint of scheisser business from the online audio (and yet retained the bulk of the german guy's conversation as if he were a legit caller)

so... STUFFY! and... LIARS!

omg u r jokin right??????

i heard this!!!!

http://wcvarones.blogspot.com/2009/05/censorship-at-npr.html

“Ja! The vibrating strength on these new phones is sooo amazing! Ja, I mean, when you’re driving, you can stick one right in your scheisse-hole and stimulate the prostate very nicely.”

nice

if this happened on the BBC there would be a week-long furore followed by a government inquiry

vindicated!

Ok, this is WNYC, not NPR -- I know, I know, member station. But really these fucking Austria ads.

"WNYC is supported by Austria and her coffeehouses. Where you can plot a revolution, like Marx. Or discover the human psyche, like Freud." or whatever the fuck they say. Really.

Ebert gives it three cheers. Maybe more.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/11/everywhere_i_go_as_much.html

Everywhere I go, as much as I can, I listen to National Public Radio. It's an oasis of clear-headed intelligence. Carefully, patiently, it presents programming designed to make me feel just a little better equipped to reenter the world of uproar.

...We are interested in other peoples, other lifestyles, other choices. We do not demand that the media tell us over and over again the things we already believe. We are open to new ideas.

I vote sexy.

http://media.npr.org/about/people/bios/biophotos/jtarabay.jpg

Sexy. Cf: Ira Glass and his magical hands

I read this title as about NRO for 3 terrifying seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJFivQYjC-Q

Who can save us from the Diane Rehm zombie menace?

Currently running through about 2 Radiolabs per day.

A fantastic piece on the organization, especially on the Juan Williams brouhaha. Also bits like:

The editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, once confessed to former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin that he really didn’t believe NPR was liberal; he just said so “to keep you guys on the defensive.”

Hey look, it's Brooklyn Home Companion:
http://www.wnyc.org/press/kingscounty/

Just pulling this up 'cus of a thing on skot's FB. Interested in the new (maybe) slightly more central (maybe) place NPR has in pop culture; like how it's sort of an Apple-ish boutique brand of news. In my childhood, I remember it as a stuffy ol' bastion of the gentry – Lawrence Welk, Robert J Lurtsema, BBC World Service. Now, though, it seems to be a widely-acknowledged signifier of a social/politicical ideology incrementally left of center – but only in the way that doesn't raise ripples. The Starbucks-Intellegencia Tribune. Or ... maybe this is just my station, my perception, my baggage? Curious, though, about other perceptions of it.

read that as 'raise nipples' that is all

oh damn, that is some good radio

there's some pretty good content on npr. i rarely seek it out but this american life is generally interesting and thoughtfully constructed. i think it's just a signifier of college educated liberals, a huge demographic

I can't deal with a lot of their shows - Diane Rehm works too hard to give the shills she sometimes have on room to air their bullshit, and Terry Gross is still the worst, and A Prairie Home Companion is an abomination, etc. - but my local NPR station (KERA) has a really good afternoon interview program called Think that justifies my tiny donation to them every year. The local NPR music station is usually pretty bland but has its heart in the right place.

This American Life is usually p. bad, to my mind, kind of a logical outgrowth of liberal arts creative writing classes.* The more earnest, Studs Terkely bits are all right, and the few hour length pieces are often interesting.

The Moth is too often about adults behaving badly, and I find that there's a lot of 'aren't I a naughty?" mugging. Lots of wry, slightly acid retellings of Unpleasant Life Experienes, too. Maybe this is just my experience, but I'd like this more if there was a bit less posturing.

Best of all is Glynn Washington's 'Snap Judgement' which - despite a a few goofy segments here and there – feels more alive than the other two combined. The Halloween episodes (spooky stories) are the very, very best.

* In defense of TAL, there was an excellent segment by Ben Calhoun two weeks ago. It was about the politically-motivated occupancy of a school board by Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the semi-deliberate, semi-unintended (perhaps) defunding of school programs in a majority Black/Latino area. Excellent, complicated segment: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority

I like car talk and wait wait don't tell me and gene demby online. I like npr but it's like listening to my mother sometimes bc she listens to npr and then talks about what she heard on it to me.

OK, so I heard a rerun of Terry Gross being interviewed by Marc Maron yesterday, and I came away with a lot more respect for her. Mostly as an interview subject - Maron is capable of getting stuff from his subjects that she cannot - but still, I turned off the radio respecting the amount of thought and effort she must put into her work.

And then today comes around. I always seem to be in the car when Fresh Air is on, and today she had Kent Jones, who directed the new Hitchcock/Truffaut doc. After the intro, it more or less started like this.

TG: So, the shower scene from Psycho is probably Hitchcock's best known sequence. Even if you haven't seen it you probably know about it.
KJ: Right.
TG: The film starts with Janet Leigh, who is a real estate secretary. A client drops off $40,000 to buy a property, and her boss tells her to deposit in the bank immediately...

And I think to myself, hmm, what question could she possibly be leading up to?

TG: But instead of depositing it in the bank, she steals the money. She doesn't seem like a bad person, but you're wondering what she's going to do. Is she going to keep it? Is she going to return it? And she pulls into a motel and she meets the man working there, who is very shy and nervous. He's built up all this suspense. And then she goes to take a shower ...

At this point Kent Jones is sort of waiting to see where she's going with this, as am I. After a pause:

KJ: Um, well, as you said, everyone is pretty familiar with this scene.

You can tell he really doesn't want to spoil it, but she pressures him to go on.

KJ: And, um, she gets hacked to pieces.

OK, I think, never mind that TG saying people are familiar with Psycho and its shower scene basically negates the need to recount the first 30 minutes of the film, and never mind that she essentially leads with a giant spoiler for those handful of people unfamiliar with it. I'm kind of groaning at the lameness of it, but I think, OK, she's interviewing the director of a doc about Truffaut interviewing Hitchcock. Why did she lead with Psycho, and why did she decide her question needed this epic preamble? So there I am, primed for a doozy, and ...

TG: So Hitchcock reportedly shot the shower scene in slow-motion. Can you explain why he did that?

Jaw drops.

No, Terry Gross, no! Why did you do that?! Bad interviewer! Bad! What was the point!

And like that, all the good will from the day before basically evaporated.

marketplace is the offender for me. Kai Ryssdal...god I hate this guy's smug ass voice. Please just speak with normal inflections. You are not Jon Stewart.

I still will mostly defend Terry Gross -- I think she's good at getting people to open up and at stepping out of the way/not trying to show off how knowledgeable she is (though sometimes to a fault).

Marketplace does irritate me with its superficial, sunny, quick take on everything.