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The Way We Get By
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, November 10, 2009.
It’s two in the morning on a frigid day in Bangor, Maine. While most of the townsfolk are huddled under blankets, 86-year-old Bill Knight rubs his eyes, pulls on his boots, and heads to the airport.
Like most mornings, a planeload of soldiers is returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. They trudge off the plane in camouflage and boots and into the warmth of Bangor International Airport in Maine - the exit and entry point for the majority of troops deployed in the Middle East.
Bill is a World War Two veteran and knows what it’s like to come home. He’s on call 24 hours a day to make sure the troops get a proper welcome. He's one of a group of senior citizens who wake up before the crack of dawn to greet troops returning to U.S. soil with hugs and thanks and cell phones to make free calls home.
Filmmaker Aron Gaudet profiled three of them in the film "The Way We Get By," which airs this week on PBS's P.O.V. series. Aron joins us along with his mother, Joan Gaudet, a troop greeter who is featured in the film.
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It’s two in the morning on a frigid day in Bangor, Maine. While most of the townsfolk are huddled under blankets, 86-year-old Bill Knight rubs his eyes, pulls on his boots, and heads to the airport.
Like most mornings, a planeload of soldiers is returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. They trudge off the plane in camouflage and boots and into the warmth of Bangor International Airport in Maine - the exit and entry point for the majority of troops deployed in the Middle East.
Bill is a World War Two veteran and knows what it’s like to come home. He’s on call 24 hours a day to make sure the troops get a proper welcome. He's one of a group of senior citizens who wake up before the crack of dawn to greet troops returning to U.S. soil with hugs and thanks and cell phones to make free calls home.
Filmmaker Aron Gaudet profiled three of them in the film "The Way We Get By," which airs this week on PBS's P.O.V. series. Aron joins us along with his mother, Joan Gaudet, a troop greeter who is featured in the film.
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Ben Neill: Mutantrumpet Ninja
By John Diliberto on Tuesday, November 10, 2009.
Ben Neill is the sole player of an instrument called the mutantrumpet. It has three different bells, two sets of valves, a mini-trombone slide and electronics. Neill deploys this contraption in electronica forays full of morphing rhythms and melodies that shift through timbral voices as if they were injected into a kaleidoscope.
Berlin Walls of the 21st Century
By Jen Nathan on Monday, November 9, 2009.
The Berlin wall crumbled twenty years ago today, but that doesn’t mean that physical barriers between opposing regions and countries have gone the way of the dodo. Foreign Policy magazine released its list of the Berlin walls of the 21st century.
What's Becoming Obsolete?
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 9, 2009.
Pity the poor maligned typewriter. It was once the axis of a writer’s life. Hemingway packed up his portable Royal in its well-worn leather case and dragged it to Cuba because he couldn’t writewithout it. In the 1960s, school children practiced speed typing on sturdy Underwoods and adults pushed down shiny black keys whenever they wrote an important letter.
Today typewriters collect dust on thrift shop shelves alongside rotary phones, cassette tapes and Rolodexes. These once ubiquitous objects join the ranks of dozens of outdated items and rituals, from the boom box to airport goodbyes, that journalist and social commentator Anna Jane Grossman has amassed. Grossman’s new book is Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. She joins us talk about her compendium of once essential, now archaic staples of American life.
(Photo by Ricardo Mendonça Ferreira via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Pity the poor maligned typewriter. It was once the axis of a writer’s life. Hemingway packed up his portable Royal in its well-worn leather case and dragged it to Cuba because he couldn’t writewithout it. In the 1960s, school children practiced speed typing on sturdy Underwoods and adults pushed down shiny black keys whenever they wrote an important letter.
Today typewriters collect dust on thrift shop shelves alongside rotary phones, cassette tapes and Rolodexes. These once ubiquitous objects join the ranks of dozens of outdated items and rituals, from the boom box to airport goodbyes, that journalist and social commentator Anna Jane Grossman has amassed. Grossman’s new book is Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. She joins us talk about her compendium of once essential, now archaic staples of American life.
(Photo by Ricardo Mendonça Ferreira via Flickr/Creative Commons)
The Art of the Mixtape
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 9, 2009.
Call us nostalgic, sentimental, or maybe just old, but there’s just something about the thoughtfully crafted mix tape. Jason Bitner, co-creator of Found Magazine, gets this. He helped create an online space to share the songs and the stories behind the cassettes that have been hiding in a shoebox all these years. CassetteFromMyEx.com is the place to revisit your magnetic tape memories. Some of the stories collected there are now compiled in a book -- Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves.
Jason Bitner joins us to explain the project, and then we hear Bitner and others from the site break down the anatomy of the mix tape. Chicago Public radio producer Joe DeCeault spoke with some of the contributors and put together this piece, which weaves together the soundtracks and memories of lost love.
(Photo by leah lockhart via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Call us nostalgic, sentimental, or maybe just old, but there’s just something about the thoughtfully crafted mix tape. Jason Bitner, co-creator of Found Magazine, gets this. He helped create an online space to share the songs and the stories behind the cassettes that have been hiding in a shoebox all these years. CassetteFromMyEx.com is the place to revisit your magnetic tape memories. Some of the stories collected there are now compiled in a book -- Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves.
Jason Bitner joins us to explain the project, and then we hear Bitner and others from the site break down the anatomy of the mix tape. Chicago Public radio producer Joe DeCeault spoke with some of the contributors and put together this piece, which weaves together the soundtracks and memories of lost love.
(Photo by leah lockhart via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Is Greed at the Heart of Capitalism?
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 9, 2009.
One out of every five American households includes an unemployed family member, but that doesn’t mean the men and women ducking into Wall Street offices with leather briefcases and expensive suits will be forgoing their holiday bonuses. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and other Wall Street stalwarts are expected to give out bonuses averaging $500,000 dollars this year. Is this unabashed greed or capitalism at work?
Greed is the guiding principle of Gordon Gekko, the slick stockbroker played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street. As we reflect on the beginning of the end of communist Europe, we’re taking a closer look at greed -- often regarded as the driving force of capitalist progress. Some scholars reject the idea of greed as the engine of capitalism, and don’t believe that greed is a force for good in the American economy.
Jay Richards calls it “the greed myth.” He’s the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. Richards is a contributing editor of The American, the journal of the Greed is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism.
The American: Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism
Forbes: Irreconcilable -- $10 Million Bonuses, 10% Unemployment
One out of every five American households includes an unemployed family member, but that doesn’t mean the men and women ducking into Wall Street offices with leather briefcases and expensive suits will be forgoing their holiday bonuses. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and other Wall Street stalwarts are expected to give out bonuses averaging $500,000 dollars this year. Is this unabashed greed or capitalism at work?
Greed is the guiding principle of Gordon Gekko, the slick stockbroker played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street. As we reflect on the beginning of the end of communist Europe, we’re taking a closer look at greed -- often regarded as the driving force of capitalist progress. Some scholars reject the idea of greed as the engine of capitalism, and don’t believe that greed is a force for good in the American economy.
Jay Richards calls it “the greed myth.” He’s the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. Richards is a contributing editor of The American, the journal of the Greed is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism.
The American: Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism
Forbes: Irreconcilable -- $10 Million Bonuses, 10% Unemployment
East-West Couples
By Hardy Graupner on Monday, November 9, 2009.
German newspapers and magazines are teeming with articles charging that the political and cultural divides between East and West Germany still exist two decades after reunification. Many people still don’t perceive themselves as being part of a single society. For others, these psychological barriers no longer exist.
Artists Take Refuge in Berlin
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 9, 2009.
Later today, the festival of freedom kicks off at the Brandenberg gate. U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton joins French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mikhail Gorbachev and throngs of revelers celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin and Bon Jovi will perform.
The evening culminates when thousands of giant, colored dominos fall along the path where the wall once stood. It symbolizes the chain reaction on that started twenty years ago, the night that East German guards stood stunned as the once mighty border crumbled.
It was an event that triggered an influx of artists, collectors and gallerists into Berlin’s Soviet apartments, industrial buildings, even a Nazi bunker. Artists helped turn cheap real estate into places to create and show art and transformed Berlin into a world art capitol. Catherine Hickley is arts correspondent for Bloomberg News in Berlin. She joins us now from Berlin with an update on the city’s art scene.
The Bloomberg News: Dark Cold-War Art Marks 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall
The CBC: The Berlin Wall - Twenty Years After the Fall
'Festival of Freedom' to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
(Photo by siyu via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Later today, the festival of freedom kicks off at the Brandenberg gate. U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton joins French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mikhail Gorbachev and throngs of revelers celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin and Bon Jovi will perform.
The evening culminates when thousands of giant, colored dominos fall along the path where the wall once stood. It symbolizes the chain reaction on that started twenty years ago, the night that East German guards stood stunned as the once mighty border crumbled.
It was an event that triggered an influx of artists, collectors and gallerists into Berlin’s Soviet apartments, industrial buildings, even a Nazi bunker. Artists helped turn cheap real estate into places to create and show art and transformed Berlin into a world art capitol. Catherine Hickley is arts correspondent for Bloomberg News in Berlin. She joins us now from Berlin with an update on the city’s art scene.
The Bloomberg News: Dark Cold-War Art Marks 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall
The CBC: The Berlin Wall - Twenty Years After the Fall
'Festival of Freedom' to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
(Photo by siyu via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Here's What's Awesome: Prescription Ice Cream, Rubik's Cube Art
By Brady Carlson on Sunday, November 8, 2009.Now making its way down the aisle, from Parts Unknown, the undisputed heavyweight champion of awesome links... Here's What's Awesome!
Now let's forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream
Idea Smackdown
By Jen Nathan on Friday, November 6, 2009.
Word of Mouth has more ideas than it knows what to do with, so let us know what you'd like to hear next week.
Here's a list of things we're considering. Add a comment with the idea(s) you think should win this grueling match. Let the best ideas win.
- Female mobsters
- Health care in China
- Online-only churches
- The subprime student loan crisis
- Why boldness is bad for science
- Paul Bunyan chic
- Census conspiracy theorists
About us
Word of Mouth is all about what's new. Online and on-air, the show looks at our fascinating and ever-changing world, and puts the latest ideas under a microscope. Word of Mouth investigates everything from science and technology, to health and the environment, to new trends in popular culture. The show airs Monday through Thursday at noon and is hosted by Virginia Prescott.
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