lunes, septiembre 01, 2008

Podcast Recomendado: Radio Lab (Press the wake up button)





Mi afición por los podcasts crece. "This American Life" (www.thisamericanlife.org) sigue siendo uno de mis favoritos pero hace poco y gracias a Ira Glass oi Radio Lab (www.radiolab.org).
Radio Lab es un programa de radio de WNYC Normalmente, dura una hora y es presentado por Jad Abumrad y Robert Krulwich


Se pueden bajar en itunes (y están en inglés, claro está) pero también se pueden oir en la pagina de radio lab. Para cada episodio, añado el link.


Algunos de mis favoritos y recomendados son:


"Have you wondered if there is another you out there? Somewhere? Sitting in the same chair, reading the same blog post, wearing the same clothes and thinking the same thoughts? Well, Brian Greene says there must be one. Or two. Or lots and lots and lots and lots and… Why? You ask, well listen to Greene’s argument in this week’s podcast.
We are still furiously working on Season 5, so while you wait we bring you today’s podcast of a conversation between Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University. The interview is part of a series called “Giants of Science” hosted by venerable New York institution, the 92nd St Y.
Robert and Brian discuss what’s beyond the horizon of our universe, what you might wear in infinite universes with finite pairs of designer shoes, and why the Universe and swiss cheese have more in common than you think".


Morality:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/28
Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country's first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.
Memory and Forgetting:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
"According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory".


Laughter:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/02/22
"We all laugh. But why? If you look closely, you'll find that humor has very little to do with it. In this episode, we explore the power of laughter to calm us, bond us to one another, or to spread... like a virus. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby's first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter".

Mortality:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/15
"Is death a fact of life or a disease that can be cured (as some scientists claim)? We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death...the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society".

VALE EL TIEMPO...
(¡Bienvenidos podcasts recomendados!)

From A to Zyxt: Reading the Oxford English Dictionary




Pinta bien el libro del hombre que se leyó el Oxford English Dictionary en un año. La reseña del New York Times (que vale la pena leerla) dice:

"Shea’s book resurrects many lost, misshapen, beautifully unlucky words — words that spiraled out, like fast-decaying muons, after their tiny moment in the cloud chamber of English usage. There’s hypergelast (a person who won’t stop laughing), lant (to add urine to ale to give it more kick), obmutescence (willful speechlessness) and ploiter (to work to little purpose) — all good words to have on the tip of your tongue when, for example, you’re stopped for speeding.

Shea’s book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. This is the “Super Size Me” of lexicography".

Mas en
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Baker-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin





READING THE OED

One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.

By Ammon Shea.

223 pp. Perigee. $21.95.

Kermit Bale: What do Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog have in common?

Muy chistoso...

Gracias Meema!