a few well-mediated moments

[radiantfracture]

Meanwhile, over on Instagram, Daniel Heath Justice is using his Dolly Parton advent calendar to create daily reflections on popular culture, community, music, and love.

Me, I just ate the candy. (N.B. I would quite like to find a magic-themed but non-HP advent calendar.)

And, in imitation of sabotabby but not as deep, some podcast highlights.

Decoder Ring's episode "The New Age Hit Machine," which is about what turns out to be the surprising popular cultural force of PBS telethons. I grew up with KCTS-9 as a lifeline (I had every Red Dwarf telethon t-shirt they ever issued), so this is a sweet spot for me. I confess I was mildly astonished to discover that Yanni's fame (remember Yanni?) was largely manufactured by canny exploitation of PBS telethon spots.

"The Middle of Everything Ever" from Radiolab -- this was interesting, both because it's fun math and because I think ten or fifteen years ago in Peak Radiolab days this would have been an episode of high mathematical wonder, but a lot of disillusion has happened since then, and they can't really get much joy from the questioner who asked "What is the exact middle-sized thing in the universe?" even though the result is at least a little spooky.

{rf}

Note: I know I recently saw a post somewhere about doing better spoiler tags, but where?

Comments

[asakiyume]

Sadly I'm a grumpy crank who dislikes Radiolab... but you have me intrigued at the spooky thing that's the Absolute Middle-Sized. But I don't want to listen to the whole episode. Can you spoil it for me (you can send it via DW messages if you don't want others to see spoilers on your page.)

SPOILERS BELOW

[radiantfracture]

It doesn't always age well, for sure.

They figure it out two different ways (and semantics are definitely an issue here -- the human concept of what counts as "a thing" and so on) -- but both ways come out the same: about 10^-4 or about the size of a large eukaryotic cell, or "the basic unit of complicated life," as Soren Wheeler puts it. Which is kind of sweet.

Re: SPOILERS BELOW

[asakiyume]

Aww, that *is* sweet. Thank you! (And also, yes: you are so right about semantics and what counts as a thing, etc. Do they raise that, or not?)

Re: SPOILERS BELOW

[radiantfracture]

They do! I wanted a bit more, but they probably spend about as much time on it as is reasonable for this sort of inherently hazy question.

[sabotabby]

And now I feel the need to create a magical advent calendar (says the Jew, who has never in her life used or made an advent calendar).

[radiantfracture]

All holiday counting activities trace their origins back to Chad Gadya, though, right?

Maybe some kind of Hallowe'en countdown for the witchily inclined.

[sabotabby]

Ooh, I like that!

[radiantfracture]

Fortunes could be made, my friend

[malada]

I was working in PTV master control room slinging tapes when "Yanni" was a thing. I was too busy doing tech stuff to actually sit and listen and watch but he made us money year after year like gangbusters... then he just... died. It was like going off a cliff. He's basically radioactive now.

We've aired some astonishingly *bad* pledge programs over the years - usually only once. The good ones we air in moderation and rotate in new programs looking for the next "Three Tenors" or "Riverdance" or the still popular Suzy Orman retirement show. I'll have to listen to the podcast when I have the time.

-m

[radiantfracture]

OMG you're an Insider. that's right. That's so cool.

What is your fave / least fave thing you've aired for a pledge drive?

[malada]

I want to take a moment to explain how American Public Broadcasting works. All the "PBS" stations are actually individual and independent stations. PBS is actually a distributor and we don't have to stay lock step with PBS in what we air. To qualify there's a requirement that so many hours are required but we have a lot of leeway. We can purchase other programs or program packages (we have Thursday night slotted for British comedy or drama show) and some of the programs - pledge programs in particular - can come from a lot of different sources. Some are interesting, informative, entertaining and raise the big bucks. Others... well... I've seen a few shady programs in my time.

Favorite pledge show I've aired: The Grateful Dead. I think it was the Grateful Dead Movie repackaged. It was a long time ago and we only aired it a few times. I'm not a Dead Head but it was cool.

Least favorite: I don't remember who it was but it was some "doctor" hawking his latest diet. Public broadcasting went through a brief spell where some of the pledge programs were glorified infomericals - mostly selling diet books. They vanished pretty quickly - they stunk all around. Not our values and not good at fund raising.

Special mention: "Les Mis Live at the O2" - it's still popular, great music, pulls in the funds... it just so long.

[haertstitch]

we loved red dwarf
especially the cat
it didn't last long enough here

we had 'Plato's world' that was local
"https://youtu.be/olMjWuucgfA"

[radiantfracture]

I know nothing of this Plato's World!

Thank you for this link to a remarkable 1992 interview from the Hennepin County Library.

[haertstitch]

Looks like they have a lot of Ira flatow on youtu.be. He was a local radio broadcaster in minnesota.