The Pod, By Nora Nunn
Grammar Girl: Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Host: Mignon Fogarty
Corporation: Quick and Dirty Tips
Frequency: Weekly
I always knew that grammar could be sexy. But quick and dirty? This was a revelation. Host Mignon Fogarty plays the foureyed yet chic librariantype who enlightens her audience about the vagaries of English grammar. Linguistically succulent titles such as “The Serial Comma Kerfuffle” or “When to Capitalize Cocktail Names” or “How to Search a Corpus” will tantalize language loving listeners. Is Fogarty a knowitall?
Well, yes. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After listening to a bitesized podcast (the average length is seven minutes), you’ll be glad that she is. Because at the end of the day, it means that you’ll know more, too. Fogarty, author of bestselling books such as The Grammar Devotional , has a mission to elucidate the rules and regulations of the English language —not because she’s a pedant, but because she believes that if you can communicate (i.e., write) effectively, you’re more likely to get what you want in life. A typical episode may cover anything from punctuation to verb tenses to flat adverbs. The one drawback of the program is the 45 seconds or so that Fogarty dedicates to plugging various products of her sponsors at the beginning of each episode. Still, it’s a small price to pay in exchange for a morsel of grammatical savoirfaire.
Fogarty, who is a grammar nerd and proud of it, pragmatically takes requests from her listeners, so the topics respond to the grammarphilic commu nity’s needs. I’m still waiting for her to answer my query about umlauts.
Host: Mignon Fogarty
Corporation: Quick and Dirty Tips
Frequency: Weekly
I always knew that grammar could be sexy. But quick and dirty? This was a revelation. Host Mignon Fogarty plays the foureyed yet chic librariantype who enlightens her audience about the vagaries of English grammar. Linguistically succulent titles such as “The Serial Comma Kerfuffle” or “When to Capitalize Cocktail Names” or “How to Search a Corpus” will tantalize language loving listeners. Is Fogarty a knowitall?
Well, yes. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After listening to a bitesized podcast (the average length is seven minutes), you’ll be glad that she is. Because at the end of the day, it means that you’ll know more, too. Fogarty, author of bestselling books such as The Grammar Devotional , has a mission to elucidate the rules and regulations of the English language —not because she’s a pedant, but because she believes that if you can communicate (i.e., write) effectively, you’re more likely to get what you want in life. A typical episode may cover anything from punctuation to verb tenses to flat adverbs. The one drawback of the program is the 45 seconds or so that Fogarty dedicates to plugging various products of her sponsors at the beginning of each episode. Still, it’s a small price to pay in exchange for a morsel of grammatical savoirfaire.
Fogarty, who is a grammar nerd and proud of it, pragmatically takes requests from her listeners, so the topics respond to the grammarphilic commu nity’s needs. I’m still waiting for her to answer my query about umlauts.
The New Yorker fiction podcast
Host: Deborah Treisman
Corporation: The New Yorker
Frequency: Monthly
This podcast is my box of chocolates. By that, I mean that I love it —and that I never know what I’m going to get. Each month, fiction editor Deborah Treisman invites a writer who has been featured in The New Yorker magazine to glean the archives and select a short story by a different writer. The guest author discusses why they chose the story and alerts listeners
details to observe before reading the text aloud. As a faithful listener, I’ve had the pleasure to savor some stories by my favorite writers such as Edwidge Danticat and Loorie Moore. But the program has also introduced me to writers whom I had
never read before. Jhumpa Lahiri (author of Interpreter of Maladies ) chose the story, “A Day,” by Irish writer William Trevor, which chronicles the malaise and regret of a British housewife. Before and after she reads the story, Lahiri explains to Treisman how Trevor influenced her own work. In a different episode, Nigerian author Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie reads Jamaica Kincaid’s tale of a Caribbean child’s occupation with death in “Figures in the Distance.”
Some of these literary chocolates are ones I’d rather spit out. Orhan Pamuk’s reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russian Education” left me bored and listless; Salman Rushdie’s selection of “The Bodyguard” reaffirmed my dislike of Donald
Barthelme. Still, I never regret listening because in doing so I’m transported to another world, and I’m al ways grateful for it.
Host: Deborah Treisman
Corporation: The New Yorker
Frequency: Monthly
This podcast is my box of chocolates. By that, I mean that I love it —and that I never know what I’m going to get. Each month, fiction editor Deborah Treisman invites a writer who has been featured in The New Yorker magazine to glean the archives and select a short story by a different writer. The guest author discusses why they chose the story and alerts listeners
details to observe before reading the text aloud. As a faithful listener, I’ve had the pleasure to savor some stories by my favorite writers such as Edwidge Danticat and Loorie Moore. But the program has also introduced me to writers whom I had
never read before. Jhumpa Lahiri (author of Interpreter of Maladies ) chose the story, “A Day,” by Irish writer William Trevor, which chronicles the malaise and regret of a British housewife. Before and after she reads the story, Lahiri explains to Treisman how Trevor influenced her own work. In a different episode, Nigerian author Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie reads Jamaica Kincaid’s tale of a Caribbean child’s occupation with death in “Figures in the Distance.”
Some of these literary chocolates are ones I’d rather spit out. Orhan Pamuk’s reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russian Education” left me bored and listless; Salman Rushdie’s selection of “The Bodyguard” reaffirmed my dislike of Donald
Barthelme. Still, I never regret listening because in doing so I’m transported to another world, and I’m al ways grateful for it.
Planet Money
Host(s): Adam Davidson, Jacob Goldstein, Zoe Chase, et al.
Corporation: NPR
Frequency: Weekly
“Money makes the world go around, faster and faster everyday.” That’s the tagline of this NPR podcast, which applies economic principals to current events in layperson’s terms. As someone who foolishly avoided econ classes back in college (hindsight is 20/20), I’m indebted to Planet Money for teaching me the basics of Keynesian theory and macroeconomics. The episodes, which run an average of 20 minutes each, address how money operates in this quickly flattening world. A sampling of titles includes: “Why do we tip?,” “Libertarian Summer Camp,” “When Congress Plays Chicken,” and “What is Occupy Wall Street?” The hosts (one of whom moonlights for This American Life), take their listeners on investigative adventures, sneaking into political fundraisers, exploring vaults of the US mint, and rubbing elbows with the 99% in Zuccotti Park. Also, interviews with highprofile economists and academics including Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Fareed Zakaria, nicely complement the banter between the hosts.
Planet Money’s Achilles heel? The woefully Eurocentric/American focus. (Though their rare Asia centered episode on North Korea’s illegal economy was captivating.) Yes, the precarious state of the Euro Zone is a pressing issue, but would it kill the team to explore the economy of Africa? At the end of each show, the hosts exhort audience to provide feedback. Well, Planet Money’s bias towards occidental matters piqued this listener, who wrote an email to request they turn their attention to other continents. That was three months ago. To this day, still no response. Yet still I listen, yearning to make up for my salad days where I shirked Econ 101.
Host(s): Adam Davidson, Jacob Goldstein, Zoe Chase, et al.
Corporation: NPR
Frequency: Weekly
“Money makes the world go around, faster and faster everyday.” That’s the tagline of this NPR podcast, which applies economic principals to current events in layperson’s terms. As someone who foolishly avoided econ classes back in college (hindsight is 20/20), I’m indebted to Planet Money for teaching me the basics of Keynesian theory and macroeconomics. The episodes, which run an average of 20 minutes each, address how money operates in this quickly flattening world. A sampling of titles includes: “Why do we tip?,” “Libertarian Summer Camp,” “When Congress Plays Chicken,” and “What is Occupy Wall Street?” The hosts (one of whom moonlights for This American Life), take their listeners on investigative adventures, sneaking into political fundraisers, exploring vaults of the US mint, and rubbing elbows with the 99% in Zuccotti Park. Also, interviews with highprofile economists and academics including Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Fareed Zakaria, nicely complement the banter between the hosts.
Planet Money’s Achilles heel? The woefully Eurocentric/American focus. (Though their rare Asia centered episode on North Korea’s illegal economy was captivating.) Yes, the precarious state of the Euro Zone is a pressing issue, but would it kill the team to explore the economy of Africa? At the end of each show, the hosts exhort audience to provide feedback. Well, Planet Money’s bias towards occidental matters piqued this listener, who wrote an email to request they turn their attention to other continents. That was three months ago. To this day, still no response. Yet still I listen, yearning to make up for my salad days where I shirked Econ 101.