NPR: Young Catholic Nuns

This story discusses the growing number of young nuns at a Catholic convent in Tennessee. In addition to religious training the women are educated as teachers at St Aquinas College and then work in the schools associated with the congregation. What I found interesting about this report is that Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who regularly produces reports on religion for NPR, describes their role in the community as well as the specifics of how they orient themselves to questions of love and society. The way they talk about their love for Jesus using the language of person-to-person romance is definitely surprising to hear from young American women.
NPR page for the story


PHOTO: CELINE NADEAU

What Shouldn't be Sold

"I don't think of it as constraining peoples' freedom. I think of it as taking on an impoverished conception of freedom that is concerned only with individual or consumer choice in the marketplace."

Professor Mike Sandel explores issues surrounding controversial forms of wage labor and market transactions, such as paid surrogacy, prostitution as well as buying and selling body parts in a conversation on Philosophy Bites with host Nigel Warburton. Is consent on the part of the seller enough? What's the limit of what the market should decide? Excellent questions and responsiveness from Nigel Warburton. A great conversation starter and philosophical brain teaser.

Link to Philosophy Bites page for the episode

Slate DoubleX Gabfest

This week's Slate DoubleX Gabfest(podcast) is terrific; topics include Julian Assange, crying in public and Christmas cards. Download audio file here.

NPR report on Facebook Issues

This short piece by Laura Sydell talks about some common Facebook complaints and describes a startup social network which hopes to manage those issues better than Facebook does. The idea is creating a network that makes users feel less intimdated by information sharing and the possibility of social gaffes. This report points toward some pretty broad questions, like "Do people like themselves on Facebook?" and "What will come after Facebook?" and it made me wonder whether Facebook has been successful because of its social structure or because of reasons that don't really have to do with the way it's organized. When I think about new or competing social networks it seems like the primary challenge is reaching Facebook's critical mass, and without that critical mass, the issues of privacy and information sharing are kind of irrelevant.
(Also, the comments section for this story on the NPR site included this invocation against Facebook usage, presumably directed toward non-octopi: "LOP OFF THE TENTACLE!!")


Link to NPR Page of the story
PHOTO: NOEL FEANS 

Jay Ipson story on PRX

This is one of those stories that will gray out any other thoughts that are in your mind at the time and demand your total attention. I recently heard on PRX this first-person account of survival through the Holocaust told by Jay Ipson and produced by Charles McGuigan.
You can listen to the story, which is about a half hour long, on the PRX website here, but you do need to create a free account first.

Flying

The Moth podcast recently posted an episode featuring two stories related to flight and flying. The second one, by Moran Cerf, is the one I'm really recommending. It's the kind of story you'll want to retell to somebody else as soon as you hear it. He tells it a little breathlessly, starts at 7:20 in:



PHOTO:DUNCAN HARRIS

I've started working my way through the back catalog of Philosophy Bites, a podcast that produces short interviews with philosophers on specific topics. So in that way it is, they are, "bites." (I'm not going to talk about the whole "bites" name thing. I. am. not.) Anyways, it's clear that the creators, Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds, go into each interview with enough background knowledge to steer the conversation in a meaningful direction. I have a long ways to go in terms of catching up but here are two episodes that I enjoyed so far.
(Philosophy Bites is also available on itunes).

Jeff McMahan on Vegetarianism
Goes into strange territory.




Pat Churchland on Eliminative Materialism
 Her herky jerk over-enunciation can be a little grating, but I like how she manages to talk about her and her husband's theories as well as their academic experience trying to advance the them.



PHOTO:STEPHMCG

There Weren't Even Any Mice Stirring

The latest New Yorker Out Loud podcast, an interview with Louis Menand about parody, has him reading a parody of the Night Before Christmas in the style of Ernest Hemingway, by James Thurber . Listen here and fast forward to 4:30.

Tina Brown on NPR

Tina Brown, currently the editor of The Daily Beast, has been making appearances on NPR for about a year, where she discusses newspaper and magazine articles. I really like her picks and her perspective, which tends to be broad, editorial and oriented toward the social sciences.

This particular piece is one of the best ones, from last May, about privacy:


NPR Site for the segment
MP3 Download

Past NPR segments featuring Tina Brown (among many):
August 25, 2010
June 16, 2010
April 1, 2010
May 25, 2010

Oliver Sacks on Face Blindness

I have some complaints about The New Yorker Out Loud podcast, in particular the strange intro that implies there are audio stories coming up which don't actually exist (they're just print stories), but as with the magazine I am often drawn to its topics and personalities, like this short interview with Oliver Sacks. There isn't much heft to this interview but it's a nice opportunity to hear Oliver Sacks' voice, which somehow sounds both affectionately sheepish and lofty.
 A good companion to this would be this fascinating story from the BBC about super recognizers, people who are the opposite of face blind.

Page from the New Yorker for this podcast
Download MP3