Idea Smackdown

By Jen Nathan on Friday, November 6, 2009.

Word of Mouth has more ideas than it knows what to do with, so let us know what you'd like to hear next week.

Here's a list of things we're considering. Add a comment with the idea(s) you think should win this grueling match. Let the best ideas win.

  • Female mobsters
  • Health care in China
  • Online-only churches
  • The subprime student loan crisis
  • Why boldness is bad for science
  • Paul Bunyan chic
  • Census conspiracy theorists
  • Early steps toward a real mind reading device
  • Brown bears disappearing from Japan
  • Dreamy folk from Shelly Short
  • Hospice in prison
  • The neuroscience of navigation
  • Mixtapes from ex's
  • Obsolete objects and rituals
  • Senior citizens who greet troops as they return from Iraq
  • British playwright Tim Crouch
  • The truth about sloths
  • Sesame Street 40th Anniversary!
  • Tech Crafting
  • Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

  • Art as a reflection of a changing Berlin
  • East German/West German couples reunited

Dang that's a lot. Let us know which ones you like best and we'll do our best to get 'em on the air.

(Photo by JTony via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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What's Becoming Obsolete?

By Jen Nathan on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Pity the poor maligned typewriter. It was once the axis of a writer’s life. Hemingway packed up his portable Royal in its well-worn leather case and dragged it to Cuba because he couldn’t live without it. In the 1960s, school children practiced speed typing on sturdy Underwoods and adults pushed down shiny black keys every time they paid a bill or wrote a letter.

Today typewriters collect dust on thrift shop shelves alongside rotary phones, cassette tapes and Rolodexes. These once ubiquitous objects join the ranks of dozens of outdated items and rituals, from the boom box to airport goodbyes, that journalist and social commentator Anna Jane Grossman has amassed.

Grossman’s new book is Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. She’ll be joining us on Monday’s Word of Mouth to talk about her compendium of once essential, now archaic staples of American life.

We want to know what objects and traditions you see vanishing before your very eyes. We’ve already gotten some great responses from listeners like Grace who wrote in to tell us about her home’s lack of landline, ironing board, and catalogues.

So what things are disappearing from your life? Share a comment below or leave a message at 603-223-2448.

(Photo by Ricardo Mendonça Ferreira via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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The Berlin Wall Comes to L.A.

By Jen Nathan on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

The Berlin Wall is making its Los Angeles debut this month. The Wende Museum installed several segments of the original Berlin Wall on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. They asked artists to paint over a few of the panels with American icons who helped tear down the wall that divided Germany. Artist Kent Twitchell planned to paint two portraits, one of JFK and the other of Ronald Reagan.

In the end, there was only room for Kennedy, causing a deep division in the L.A. artist community. Unlike the Cold War, the rift will be short-lived. Organizers are symbolically tearing down the wall on Sunday night.

On Monday’s episode of Word of Mouth, our German correspondent from the Bloomberg News arts desk will guide us through changes in German life and culture since the fall of the wall, through the prism of its art.

We’ll have room for your memories of a divided Europe, so add them here or leave a message at 603-223-2424.

The Associated Press: Berlin Wall drives wedge through LA art community

(Photo by Albert Domasin via Flickr/Creative Commons)

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The Indie Blog Curse

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Twenty-three-year old Nathan Williams has had a stressful year. The singer and guitarist records under the name Wavves. And in the past eleven months or so, he’s seen the kind of rise and fall that provided the arc of the “behind the music” series for years: gritty-beginnings, rocketing rise, drug-induced crash and burn ending in rehab, Holiday Inn lounge circuit, or reality show.

At first, music blogs and established rock magazines alike embraced Wavves’ lo-fi, punk aesthetic, and hundreds of people showed up at his very first show. Nathan was on top of the world. But at Spain's Primavera music festival in May, things took a drastic tumble. He was disjointed, he couldn’t play worth a lick, and angry fans hurled bottles and shoes at him. The blogs documented his self-destructive episode, and reader responses turned rancid.

Washington Post pop music critic Chris Richards has seen the same backlash happen to bands like Vampire Weekend and Black Kids, and hip-hop performers like Charles Hamilton. Richards believes that as music blogs take up a bigger role in promoting and distributing the newest bands, more aspiring young stars will be thrust into the spotlight well before they’re ready. Chris Richards joins us from the studios at the Washington Post.

The Washington Post: Indie-Rock Success So Sudden, It Actually Hurts

(Photo by The Accent via Flickr/Creative Commons)



Retailers Shift Gears

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

A slew of retailers released their October sales numbers this morning. Abercrombie and Fitch is down 5 percent Neiman Marcus is down 6 percent, but Target is inching up to 3 percent growth.

As stores ship off Halloween costumes and drag out the Christmas displays, they’re trying some new, creative tactics to lure in consumers and drive up sales. Some surprising big box stores are putting an end to sales and permanently lowering prices. Other mid-level retailers are rolling out luxury goods in the hope of snatching high-end shoppers trolling for deals. Department stores are ordering less and keeping more in the warehouse to drive up demand, so don’t assume that holiday-themed sweater will be waiting for you in the sales bin this January.

Jena McGregor has been watching these trends from her perch at BusinessWeek, where she’s editor of the management department.

McGregor wrote about how retailers are responding to changing consumer demands for a recent issue of the magazine and joins us as part of NHPR’s Working It Out series.

BusinessWeek: The Hard Sell

(Photo by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary via Flickr/Creative Commons)



Echo Locations: Karda Estra

By John Diliberto on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Karda Estra is the recording persona of English composer Richard Wileman. Wileman started out as a rocker but veered into composing classical works for chamber ensembles and electric guitar. His imagery tends toward the gothic and his music to the dramatic.

John Diliberto talked to him about his sound as part of the "Echolocation" series.

You can listen to this piece at The Public Radio Exchange.

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So What if my Kid Doesn't Love to Read?

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Writer and columnist Rebecca Lavoie is suffering from what she calls an Oprah-induced injury. Try as she might to engage her eight year-old son in bedtime reading, he’s just not that interested.

Oprah and all the experts say that a love of reading is a predictor of success, happiness, an attractive mate, the meaning of life…ok, we exaggerate.

Rebecca’s son loves math and is great at it, so she wonders, isn’t that enough?

(Photo by ehousley via Flickr/Creative Commons)



Climate Change Refugees

By Virginia Prescott on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

From the coast of Australia to the shores of the Maldives public officials are looking out at the ocean with increasing alarm.

A report presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change predicts that sea level could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100. If these predictions come to pass, entire cities and even countries would be wiped out, turning citizens into refugees. Some researchers predict that 75 million Pacific Islanders will be forced to relocate by 2050.

Last week, an Australian parliamentary committee recommended a ban on coastal development. One official there said bans would be necessary if the government wanted to prevent, “a major loss of life” if erratic weather patterns and rising seas continue.

Joining us with more is geophysicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Pollack. Pollack is the author of A World Without Ice which delves into what the rapid disappearance of ice would mean for millions on the planet.

(Drawing by Oxfam International via Flickr/Creative Commons)



Stimulus Money in Action

By Jen Nathan on Wednesday, November 4, 2009.

If you’ve ever driven down a narrow rural road marred by pot holes, or walked through a crowded street begging for a larger sidewalk, you might have wondered where all that economic stimulus money is going. Now there’s an app for that.

Just hold up your smart phone to the project in question and find out how much of the $787 billion dollars are being used to fix that road or build that bridge. It’s one of a slew of new augmented reality apps that overlay data from websites like recovery.gov on to real-time maps.

You can hold up your phone to a monument to learn about its history, or use facial-recognition technology to read a friend’s online profile and double check any social faux pas before you start a conversation. Next thing you know, they’ll release a smart phone that transforms into a hoverboard.

The Huffington Post: Layar App Maps Stimulus Money Onto The World Around You

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Musicians Bike East

By Jasmyn Belcher on Wednesday, November 4, 2009.

A folk-punk musician is trying out the ultimate in green concert touring: embarking on a two-month long bicycle tour down the east coast. Aaron Scott of the band Attica! Attica! currently lives in Portland, Oregon, but he recently came eastward to begin what he calls the Ditch The Van Tour.

A few days before taking to the road via bicycle, Scott played a show at his old stomping grounds in Ithaca, New York. WRVO's Jasmyn Belcher met up with him and produced this audio postcard.

You can listen to this piece at The Public Radio Exchange.

(Photo by Nate Morris)

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Word of Mouth is all about what's new. Online and on-air, the show looks at our fascinating and ever-changing world, and puts the latest ideas under a microscope. Word of Mouth investigates everything from science and technology, to health and the environment, to new trends in popular culture. The show airs Monday through Thursday at noon and is hosted by Virginia Prescott.

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