Logan Shannon

Our story today on trailer parks got the Word of Mouth team dreaming about the perks of living in a home on wheels. Here's our list of some of the nicest mobile home parks in the best locations. Because even in the world of mobile real estate, it's all about location, location, location.

1. The Shady Dell

A government lab announced earlier this month that it’s been operating a quantum internet at Los Alamos for the past two years. Which led us to wonder, um, WHAT IS A QUANTUM INTERNET???

My mother loves to cook, and as a result she raised an entire family of food obsessed children who also love to cook. My father rarely cooked but was a big fan of eating and proclaimed after every meal, “Dear, this is the best [insert main course here] I’ve EVER had!” She would roll her eyes at his genuine but exaggerated praise and I would chime in with, “Mom, this was the worst dinner ever.” A big grin would spread across her face as she leaned over to pat my head; my mom gets me. Because she cooked an amazing, well-balanced meal nearly every night, my siblings and I were consistently robbed of what we felt was the holy grail of eating: the frozen TV dinner.

What’s a typical day like for the Word of Mouth intern at NHPR? I’m so glad you asked. (And even if you didn’t ask, I’m sure my mom and dad will be interested, so it's cool.)

8:30:09

Having really accurate clocks all over the place can make a person like me who hates being late and is mildly obsessed with numbers a little anxious. For example: I try really hard to walk into the Word of Mouth pod at exactly 8:30:00. Sadly, it has yet to happen. I’m either too early, or in this case, a wee bit late.

This is Taylor Quimby. On the cover of a book. Masterfully created by the impressive and talented Sara Plourde. (With a teeny bit of help from the book cover she 'borrowed' the idea from.)

BRILLIANT! Need we say more.

We have great news! Yesterday’s story about Zach Nugent leaving Word of Mouth to join Disney on Ice was a silly April Fools joke. Ok, maybe it wasn’t our best April Fool’s gag; Zach as a figure skater??? (Well, it’s not THAT far-fetched, Zach is a consummate athlete and we’re fairly certain, that with a little practice he would probably make a half-decent skating fish.)

There’s a long history of April Fool’s radio pranks and we wanted to look back on some of our favorites. In no particular order:

Want to keep your home as signal-secure as the Sistine Chapel will be during the Conclave? 

Today's segment on Faraday Cages really inspired my inner maker-bot so I asked Rob Fleischman to give me instructions on exactly how to make one. It really does seem surprisingly easy to create one out of a few relatively inexpensive materials easily acquired from your local hardware store.

I was so inspired by today's segment on Micro-tasking and the practice of doing mind numbing work over the internet for pennies, I thought I would interview the Word of Mouth team to see which of their worst jobs could go head to head with being an Amazon Mechanical Turk. It's a little game I like to call: Which One's Worse?

So without further ado, here's what I found out my colleagues used to do before they found their groove in public radio:

Our segment today on the profundity of the year 1993 brought up a lot of memories for the Word of Mouth team. I thought it might be nice to share what we were all doing in 1993.

In the year 1993 our very own Zach Nugent almost didn't make it to 1994. While on a field trip to a tree farm in a bus loaded with 8 year olds, the bus driver missed a gear and the bus started hurtling backwards. Luckily he survived the trauma went on to live the real life saga of Boy Meets World with his buddy Taylor Quimby.

The Second Annual Dogs of NHPR is upon us, just in time for the 137th Annual Westminster Dog Show. We have a lovely selection of various breeds, and even a few other pet species thrown in for good measure. So without further ado, we present with minimal editorial input  substantial editorial input, the Dogs [and other critters] of NHPR.