Julia Corcoran

Ever day on the Leonard Lopate Show we learn something new and surprising. Here are some highlights from last week:

How to throw a knuckleball: dig your fingernails into the ball behind the horseshoe, then release it at the exactly perfect moment to keep it from spinning. How to catch knuckleball: Some say the best way is to wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.

At the New York Public Library, the use of ebooks is increasing 100% a year.

Lifesaving advice: There’s a time for praying, and there’s a time for running.

You can’t surprise a robot! And most of the volcanoes and earthquakes on the earth occur at the bottom of the ocean.

Teju Cole was on Morning Edition this morning talking about composing Tweets about small, easily overlooked articles in the newspaper. Listen to that interview here!

And start reading his novel Open City and leave a comment or question for our Book Club discussion on May 7.

 

A collection of the odd, wonderful, and even funny things we learned on the Lopate Show this week.

A collection random facts, insights, and impressions from the Lopate Show this week.

Yesterday Melissa Clark stopped by to get us inspired about winter vegetables. Here are a few of the recipes and tips that she shared, as well as a few from callers.

A compilation of the random, unknown, and maybe important things we at the Lopate Show learned during the week of January 30.

The composer Philip Glass turns 75 today, so we thought we'd share some of our recent interviews with him. He was last on the show in November to talk about his opera, "Satyagraha," which was playing at the Metropolitan Opera.

Mr. Glass was also on the show in December 2008 to discuss "The Glass Box," a box set retrospective of his work.

He's on Soundcheck today to talk about his Symphony No. 9. Check out WQXR's blog The Operavore's "Choose Your Own Operatic Philip Glass Adventure."

 

Fun facts and other oddities we learned this week at the Lopate Show.

Last night’s Golden Globe Awards honored a few recent guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Hostess Brands Inc., makers of Wonder Bread and Twinkies, filed for bankruptcy protection this week. In 2007, Leonard Lopate did a Please Explain on Twinkies, in which Steve Ettlinger...

On Thursday, Melissa Clark was on the show to talk about what everyone should definitely have in their kitchen, and which cooking tools and gadgets we can probably do without (listen here). Here’s her list of must-haves:

From Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang’s book Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College, published by Bloomsbury. They were on Please Explain: Children's Brains on Friday, October 14, and we invited them back for Please Explain: The Teenage Brain, Friday, December 2.

 

 1) Which of the following is a good way to get your child to eat his spinach?

            a. Cover the spinach with melted cheese

            b. Start the meal with a few bites of dessert

            c. Feed him with soy-based formula as an infant

            d. All of the above

            e. None of the above

 

We’re nearing the end of the year, the season of best-of lists. The Leonard Lopate Show staff loves books and we read a lot of them! Here are some staff picks for the best books we’ve read this year—many of them were published in 2011, but some are older and worthy of attention.

What were the best books you read this year? Let us know by leaving a comment!

 

Nathaniel Philbrick was on the show this week to talk about one of the greatest American novels, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

"I think of all the classics, Moby-Dick is the most reluctantly read. It is so long, it is digressive. Just when you think you're figuring out where it's going, Melville throws in a short chapter about something completely different. And it's a real challenge," Philbrick explains. "It's a book I find, later in life, when you have some life experiences to bring to the book, you begin to see it in a different light."

The digressions are about things like the whiteness of a whale, and ambergris (which is whale vomit), and chowder—Melville even includes a recipe for chowder!

Peace activist Leymah Gbowee was on the Leonard Lopate Show September 14, 2011, to talk about how she organized women across Liberia to force a peace in after 14 years of ravaging war. She united Muslim and Christian together and founded the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, launching protests and even a sex strike, to help bring an end to the devastating war. She shares the prize with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakul Karman, a pro-democracy campaigner from Yemen.

On October 18, at 10:00 pm, the documentary "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," which features Leymah Gbowee, will be shown on PBS, as part of the series "Women, War & Peace."

Industrial hygienist Monona Rossol was on the show Friday, September 23, along with Miranda Massie of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, to look at the PCBs in schools and how to eliminate them. The segment got a lot of comments, and Monona offers responses to many of the questions listeners left that weren't answered during the interview on air. Listen to the interview and see Monona's responses here.

Here's an article about PCBs in New York Schools in the New York Times.

Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel show "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" just won an Emmy award for "Outstanding Cinematography For Nonfiction Programming." The award went to Zach Zamboni and Todd Liebler, Directors of Photography, for this season's episode on Haiti. The show earned four nominations. Congratulations!

Bourdain was on the show August 29, 2011, to discuss his latest book Medium Raw, the Leonard Lopate Show Book Club's August pick. Listen to that interview here! 

Recently, HarperCollins Publishers' imprint Ecco announced that it is giving Bourdain "an eponymous line of books." Bourdain will acquire books that reflect his eclectic tastes, and Ecco will publish three to five titles a year. Find out more about what Anthony Bourdain's eclectic tastes are here!

There's a new Leonard Lopate Facebook page! He reached the limit of friends on his profile page, so we've created a new page. Visit it and click on the "Like" button!

Find out tomorrow, when Simon Garfield talks about the history of fonts.

Listen to the interview here!

While the coverage of Hurricane Irene is taking over the news this weekend, back in 2008 did an Underreported segment that looked at whether New York City was prepared for a major hurricane. Listen to that here.

And you can find out how New York and neighboring states are preparing for Hurricane Irene on WNYC.org! Plug your address into an interactive flood zone map, follow the hurricane’s path on a storm tracker, and learn how to pack an urban survival kit. Be prepared!