Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Radio Lab
This week's This American Life podcast featured an excerpt from Radio Lab a cool show out of WNYC. Radio Lab has some very unique production methods such as narration that talks over interviews. The production tends to make the show engaging, but the content is the thing, of course, that makes at least the current episode stellar. The current episode is on morality, and how a moral sense is most likely ingrained in our our brain structures as well as in the brains of some other animals. As a research scientist Dr. Joshua Greene states of a genetic disposition to morality: "We think of basic human morality as being handed down from on high, and it is probably better to say that it was handed up from below--that our most basic, core, moral values are not the things that we humans have invented, but the things that we've actually inherited from other people. The stuff that we humans have invented are the things that seem more peripheral and variable" (Radio Lab, "Morality," 12:28-12:48).Fascinating stuff.
Labels: biology, morality, philosophy, podcast, psychology, radio, religion, science
¶ 8:33 AM 9 comments
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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
"Paw Paw for Jesus!"
If you didn't hear This American Life this past weekend, then I urge you to listen to it (Episode 102: Road Trip!) online via mp3 or with their player doohickey that I can't link to here because it is javascript-crippled. The first three acts are ok, but act four--"Paw Paw for Jesus!"-- is classic. The fun commences around 50 minutes. "Paw Paw for Jesus!" is a short story by Chicago writer Cheryl Trykv who I or the Internet's tubes know precious-little about. I do know she's done other This American Life stuff, but that's about all. Anyone heard or read other stuff by her?Labels: comedy, funny, radio, short-story, writing
¶ 5:10 PM 9 comments
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