Most mornings as I drive my daughter Tori to school there is a sarcastic yet friendly battle over the radio station. Do you know how hard it is to try to drive, drink coffee and guard the radio all at the same time? It's even worse when I'm trying to eat a bowl of Raisin Bran too.
Tori wants to listen to KSBJ. I don’t mind it so much except that the morning DJs are kinda corny and sappy.
I, on the other hand, like to listen to KUHF. KUHF is the local NPR affiliate. I really enjoy the way “All Things Considered” reports news in such a way as to show the humanity in every story even though it sometimes has political leanings.
Even more than All Things Considered I dig listening to The Engines of Our Ingenuity from John Lienhard at U of H. The tag line at the beginning of the show is "[this is] a series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.” The ending of the show is always “I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work”.
The content between those two lines is almost always interesting. Today the program was about geometry and fonts. A couple of days ago it was about how our willingness to cooperate with others releases a chemical in the brain called dopamine which creates a feeling of pleasure. In other words cooperation is pleasurable.
Great stuff!
Tori doesn’t agree. I can tell by the way she sticks her finger in her wide open mouth every time she hears the theme music.
For Stunz blog I'm Tommy and I’m interested in the way inventive minds work.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I used to listen to NPR before I got an iPod. Goodbye radio, and good riddance. I'll refrain from comment on the whole KSBJ thing, except to give you my nickname for that station: K-wuss-B-J.
On a side note: John Lienhard's son Andrew is an incredible jazz pianist.
Post a Comment