Word of Mouth

Simple, universal, playable, the ball is among the most recognizable artifacts of human culture. It’s also the driver of an estimated five-hundred-billion- dollar- a-year sports industry. Harvard anthropologist John Fox set off on a global adventure and dug into the ancient past to uncover the origins and evolution of our favorite ball games. His book is called The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game. We discussed the book with John last year when the book was released.

In February of 2011, Jon Lynch visited the newly opened Pinball Wizard Arcade in Pelham, New Hampshire, where more than 200 impeccably restored pinball and vintage 80's video games are still luring gamers looking for big-time nostalgia.

Yitang Zhang has been lecturing in the Department of Mathematics at UNH for the past decade. And for the past three years, in between lesson plans and lectures, he’s been trying to solve one of the math world’s most vexing mysteries: the twin prime conjecture. Two weeks ago, his hard work paid off. Here to discuss the proof and what it might mean for us is Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. He wrote about professor Zhang’s meteoric rise to math celebrity for slate.com.

In a product launch last Tuesday, gamers around the world waited with bated breath to see what innovations the Xbox One, Microsoft’s third console entry, would offer the gaming world.

The exhibition was sleek, innovative, trendy...and made almost no reference to gaming. Maybe not surprising, given that online entertainment usage outstripped online gaming for the first time last year. Here to discuss what Microsoft’s new console means for the future of home entertainment technology is Jamin Warren, co-founder of Killscreen and former culture reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Here's a link to his article about the Xbox One.

Our favorite content, all in one spit-polished piece of ear candy. 

This week, a program pairs juvenile delinquents with Russian literature, a musician asking NYC commuters what inspires them, a play about traumatic brain injury, Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth, and the healing power of a special horse named Chester.

The novelist and former television producer Kate Wenner is the writer behind “Make Sure It’s Me,” a play about five Iraq War veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury and the doctor devoted to helping them. The play is premiering in New Hampshire on June 1st at Portsmouth’s West End Studio Theatre. Leslie Pasternack is the show’s director – she’s also associate director of “Act One”. 

At the time of his capture in 2011, James “Whitey” Bulger  was wanted for 19 murders, extortion and loan sharking committed during his reign over Boston’s Irish mob between the 1970s and 1995. During 16 years on the lam, Whitey became the subject of myth; characterized alternately as a “good bad guy”, and, in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed, a venal sociopath.

Shelley Murphy and Kevin Cullen, a pair of Boston Globe journalists have drawn on 25 years of reporting to create a more complete and nuanced portrait of the restless boy from the Boston projects who became the most wanted fugitive of his generation. Tonight, Murphy and Cullen will be at the Red River Theatre for a screening of The Departed and at a pre-screening reception and talk.

Tristan Omand, a Manchester based singer-songwriter tells stories of America’s rough edges, his songs tend towards characters who’ve been kicked around by life, their surfaces hardened by  booze, women, and lives spent on the road. Last week Tristan came in to play a few songs in Studio D and talk about the characters and stories in his songs.

We dug up this interview from 2008 with Jason Crigler, the composer of the musical score for Make Sure it’s Me.

In August of 2004, Jason Crigler, a highly-regarded guitarist, suffered a brain hemorrhage during a gig in New York City. His pregnant wife rushed him to the hospital and got the bad news: doctors told Jason’s family that he might not live through the night, and if he did, little of the Jason they knew would be left.

Vinx has performed, recorded and toured as a singer and percussionist with Sting, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and many others.  As far as we know,  he's the only R&B crooners of his caliber currently working and residing in the state of the New Hampshire.  This memorial day weekend he’ll be leading Soul Kitchen Volume 29 – that’s three days of collaborative jams and songwriting workshops hosted at Dreamsicle Arts and Entertainment Studios in Suncook Village.  But first, we invited Vinx to our Concord studio to tell us a little bit about the event, and maybe even give us a lesson or two.

Earlier this week, Yahoo!'s board of directors approved the tech company’s one point one billion dollar purchase of the micro-blogging site Tumblr, the latest move in CEO Marissa Mayer’s bid to revive the flagging tech company. The purchase has some Tumblr users up in arms, and others simply shrugging their shoulders at what just seems like the latest acquisition in the wake of so many to come before it.

Joining us to explain a bit more what the purchase of Tumblr means for Yahoo! and fans of the site is Lance Ulanoff, Editor in Chief at Mashable.

What's hiding in your IRA? If you’re part a mutual fund that includes weapons manufacturer Smith and Wesson, you’ve seen a handsome return on your investment over the last several months. But what if you’re a proponent of stricter gun control, or a straight out pacifist? Whether by blissful ignorance or stubborn prioritizing, an uneasy dissonance between morals and money is growing in America’s investment portfolios.

Back in 2010, I interviewed Ray Manzarek, founding member of The Doors. I was sad to hear of his death earlier this week, and went back to listen to that interview...here it is in case you want to hear it, too.

While everyone else is going somewhere, musician Cathy Grier is staying still. She's the New York City Subway Girl.

“Books Behind Bars” is program which pairs undergraduates from the University of Virginia with inmates at the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center to read classic Russian literature. Prison staff notice a marked change in behavior among inmates who take the class, and researchers have documented similar improvements in decision-making, social skill, and civic engagement among prisoners and undergrads who participate in the class.