Audio Brain Food

For the last month or so I've been temping, most recently on a placement which involved a lot of brainless data entry. After a week or so I decided that (1) my hands didn't really need my brain's supervision any more, and (2) my brain was dying from neglect. So I downloaded a variety of podcasts and radio programs. Over the next couple weeks, I discovered some gems, mostly from the CBC. Here's a selection:

Radio Economics is something that I thought I would love, until I heard the voice of the presenter - he speaks in a monotone that you would not believe. I haven't gotten more than 40 seconds into any of his interviews. But this episode redeems him. It's a guy named David Jones speaking at Columbia University about urban poverty. Fast forward through the first 20 minutes, because that's how long the introduction is, and listen to what he has to say about the links between sub-standard education, unemployment and racism. It made me almost too angry to type.

The Best of Ideas collects highlights from Canada's most intellectual public radio program, and some of it is truly dull. But I was curiously taken with "The Ideas of Mary Pratt", the unstructured memories of a 70-something East Coast painter. She talks about her childhood, and how she started painting, but the bit I was most taken with was about how she kept painting while raising four children. (Here's a hint: she woke up at 5am.) It was also cool to hear her talk about the way she perceives the world, in light and colour and beautiful messy beds. It made me wish I was more visual.

Writers & Company is growing on me. There's an interview up with Margaret Atwood that made me laugh and feel homesick. She told an anecdote about a Saturday Night contest to complete the sentence "As Canadian as..." with something equivalent to "As American as apple pie." The winner was "As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances." As you might imagine, no one in Edinburgh finds this as delightful as I do.

Finally, I usually follow Dispatches very closely, but I had fallen behind. It's a little folksier than I remembered, but still full of stories I haven't heard before or since.