Working on Radio

After spending blocks of time Saturday and Sunday trying to fit bits of audio together, and especially editing the out the "umms" and "uhhs" in quotes, I have a bigtime new respect for those who do this on a regular basis. It took forever for us to make 3 minutes and 45 seconds of radio feature on our first try this weekend, and we have another this week. Thankfully, I found a story that's interesting, chock-full of audio opportunities, and most importantly, appeals to my inner 8-year-old, which is most of who I am. We're developing a feature about some of the MIT baseball players who do research in the sports innovation lab. Some of them are working with a grant from Rawlings to develop better catchers' chest protectors. I don't know whether we'll be able to get sound of them firing the cannon at a mock-up torso, but it'll still be fun.

I love the format, now that I've been on the production side for the first time. It's something I always wanted to do but never got around to. And it re-ignited my desire to listen to lots of public radio. I had to laugh, then, when somebody pointed me to Stuff White People Like, and it of course is on there. That blog is a good meme, though it's sort of like The Onion in that the headlines and photos are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but the text is utterly unnecessary. What I don't understand are the people who apologize in the comments section, or say "Yeah, I'm guilty, Ugh." I understand white guilt about the genocide of Native Americans and about slavery. But are white people -- by which they actually mean urban liberal young white people -- just so used to apologizing for themselves that they feel instantaneously guilty when someone points out that they like Apple computers and expensive coffee? They hint at this through many of the posts that relate to guilt about the world, but on post 100 they should just list "Feeling bad about their fair skin" with no text or pictures, and end the series. You know, go out on top.

Gotta go read about Roman history, and probably do a load of other things I've been neglecting.