"Only in America"

Jenni Bergal, Senior Editor

On November 4th, Americans elected an African-American man to the office of President for the first time. This historic moment in American history triggered celebrations in the streets and jubilant exclamations of "Only in America." But for black America, November 4th also triggered a lot of soul searching. Listen to Liane Hansen, author and political analyst Jonetta Rose Barras and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page and make sure to share your thoughts with us!

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The Naked Chef Bares All

Gemma Watters, Weekend Edition

If you want to know if the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver was fully clothed during his conversation with Liane Hansen then listen to this week's show -- it's very revealing. Jamie very kindly answered a few of your cooking queries when he spoke with Liane, and we have posted the questions and answers below.

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Transparency or Show Business?

Scott Simon, Host, Weekend Edition

President-elect Obama made extensive use of technology during the campaign. Now he's taking his tech savvy from the campaign to the transition.

This week, President-elect Obama's transition website, change.gov, posted a video with the headline "Inside the Transition: Meet members of the Energy & Environment Policy Transition Team." It's part of President-elect Obama's pledge for more transparency in government.

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Eco-nomical LIVE Chats this Weekend!

Ailsa Chang, Weekend Edition

Join us this Saturday and Sunday, November 22-23 for LIVE online chats with expert craftspeople who will offer advice on how to make your holiday gift-giving more creative and economical. On Saturday, November 22nd, Host Scott Simon will interview Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables.com. The website gets 3.7 million hits per month and shows viewers how to make more than 17,000 home projects. Wilhelm will participate in a live online discussion with all of you Saturday, November 22, from 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm EST on our Eco-Nomical Holidays group page. Please note that to participate, you will need to log-in here.

On Sunday, November 23, Host Liane Hansen will interview Tina Henry-Barrus, AKA Tina Seamonster (http://www.tinaseamonster.com). She's a D.C.-based crafter and artist, affiliated with the Washington City Paper's Crafty Bastards collective. She has a podcast at her crafting blog, http://www.hellocraft.com. Henry-Barrus will participate in a live online discussion with all of you Sunday, November 23, from 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm EST on our Eco-Nomical Holidays group page.

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Los Muertocitos, the Little Deaths

John Burnett, NPR Correspondent

A crime scene in Juarez, Mexico.

Peter Breslow, NPR

 

Juarez, Mexico, is one of the most violent cities in the hemisphere. This year, it's broken its own record--1,300 murders and counting--as rival cartels fight over the lucrative smuggling corridor to El Paso, Texas. So far in 2008, 62 police officers have been killed and last week, the city's best known crime reporter, Armando Rodriguez, of El Diario de Juarez, was gunned down while sitting in his car in his garage.

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Iranian Blogger Arrested?

Andy Carvin, NPR Social Media Strategist

Hossein Derakhshan speaks at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in November 2005.

Andy Carvin

 

The Jerusalem Post, Jahan News in Iran and other regional news outlets are reporting that Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been arrested and accused of spying for Israel. Derakhshan, better known online as Hoder, recently returned to Iran after spending much of the last decade living in Canada. Hoder gained prominence after becoming one of the first writers to blog in Farsi. He began blogging in late September 2001, after observing how people were using blogs to share their thoughts about the 9/11 attacks. Two months later, he authored a Farsi-language guide to blogging, which spawned thousands of blogs in Iran and the Iranian expat community.

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Science Fair with Dave Barry

Scott Simon, Host, Weekend Edition

My metabolism is still set to feel low on Monday mornings. The weekend is over, and it's back to school--err, work. Even when I begin Mondays by having breakfast with my daughters at a cafe, and delivering our 5-year-old to kindergarten, I get a hangdog look when dropping her off at school. She bounds in, happy to see her friends. But I linger on the sidewalk, muttering, "Gee, and we were having such a good time."

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Tod Machover's New Opera

Patrick Jarenwattananon, Visiting Producer

A conceptual rendering of the stage for Death and the Powers, Tod Machover's newest opera.

MIT Media Lab

 

There was a lot we had to leave out of Liane Hansen's interview with Tod Machover. He spoke for more than 35 minutes for a six-minute segment, and some of it was some pretty heavy stuff. Like, what if we could invent an instrument (a hyperinstrument, in his parlance) which was as natural and easy-to-play as the Guitar Hero controller -- but capable of the expressivity of a piano or cello? Wouldn't it blur the lines between the highly-skilled musicians and the complete dilettantes? (Ahem.) The performers and the audience? Would it unlock the artistic potential in all of us?

Fortunately, we were able to preserve most of the weighty philosophical implications of so-called hyperinstruments. One important subject we weren't able to keep in the on-air interview, however, was the new opera Tod Machover was working on.

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Eco-nomical Holidays

Elaine Heinzman, Charla Bear, Ailsa Chang, Weekend Edition

This holiday season we're looking for gift ideas that are both eco-friendly and economical. Click here to join our "Eco-nomical Group" and to participate in the on-line discussions and upload photos and videos.

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Sound Mapping to Inauguration

Patrick Jarenwattananon, Jessica Naudziunas, & Scott Pham, Weekend Edition

"And the whole world loves it when you make that sound ..."
--OutKast, "The Whole World"

This week, Weekend Edition is taking on the globe for our Google Maps sound-mapping project. We're not trying to rule the world, of course -- just plot more points from places like France, Iran, South Africa, etc. where people have been responding to the U.S. elections and anticipating the Obama administration. Again, just click on the little markers to hear sound bites of people speaking out, all recovered from NPR's shows and correspondents. Those which are new for this week are shown enlarged, and in green and purple (for dignitaries such as Vicente Fox and Desmond Tutu).

So go ahead and have a click or two. (Use the zoom feature to help sort it all out.) You have the whole world at your fingertips.

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