BBC or NPR?

I got my wife hooked on listening to National Public Radio. I shouldn't be surprised, really. The NPR media organization and the various affiliated radio stations around the country represent the closest equivalent in these United States to BBC Radio 4. Nevertheless, anyone trying to convince a Briton of American radio's merits faces a serious task: The Archers vs. Shot 97.

The BBC operates a multitude of stations with Radio 4 given over to "intelligent speech." This includes radio versions of books and plays, topical satires, and the quaint and nationally beloved deadpan reading of the shipping forecast. The programming is incredibly accomplished, particularly the clear-minded journalism of the morning news show Today. The station is a daily staple of informed and middle-class households around the country. I recommend the Radio 4 Choice podcast to anyone wanting a sample.

National Public Radio could similarly be considered the airwaves for America's intelligentsia. But instead of carrying the staid tones of a state-funded media apparatus, NPR and its affliated stations operate with the hippie/hipster vibe of a co-op or an arts collective, hence all the pledge drives. Any distinctions between "hippie" and "hipster" come down to generational differences since Garrison Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion) and Ira Glass (This American Life) both maintain public radio's bohemian spirit. A comparison of their images shows that both of them have cultivated the humanities-professor look: Keillor as the rumpled, tenured don and Glass as the bright, young scholar. Both of them bring a laid-back approach to broadcast media, especially compared to other American news outlets, but aside from an hour or two of BBC News content, public radio mostly adheres to the American-centric approach to life and culture found throughout media in the US. I always found it a telling difference that Britain has Gardeners' Question Time as one of Britain's most popular and longest running radio shows. America, by turn has Car Talk. This means it's no sure thing that a Radio 4 listener will embrace NPR.

Fortunately, NPR is run by geeks, which appeals deeply to Passenger H. Radio 4 comes from civic-minded Oxbridge graduates who believe in regional accents. Most of the on-air personalities probably came from nice families, went to nice schools and universities, and then decided to help Britain maintain nice cultural standards. However, NPR producers seem to take up missions and carry them out with American earnestness. Radio Lab looks into science with unabashed awe, curiosity, and slightly manic sound effects. On the Media employs two top-notch journalists as hosts, not to break stories but to wax meta on how various journalistic practices shape public opinion of politics and journalism itself. And Garrison Keillor, of course, has been unashamedly and mellifluously talking up the virtues of traditional American music and poetry for years.

But the geekiness runs deeper than single-minded pursuits. These programs come from people who played in marching band and now consider it the chance-of-a-lifetime to spend airtime asking Leonard Nimoy about old Star Trek episodes. Peter Sagal hilariously brushed off homespun hero Tom Bodett for his ignorance of Star Wars lore on the Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me news quiz, "Darth Vader was a fallen Jedi whereas stormtroopers are clones. It's not. the. same." Even All Things Considered made sure to give the sci-fi television series Battlestar Galactica a fond farewell. Seriously geeky. But maybe it is all part of that American dream where everybody can create her own destiny, even geeks. Arguably, a couple of nerds have been guiding everything since 1975. Fortunately, podcasting and internet availability mean the Passengers rarely have to choose between NPR or the BBC, and in Singapore this summer we will still have both.

Update (16 June 2009): We really can have both. Just yesterday we found a way to stream WNYC through my iPod Touch.

Ranch dressing and the American Spirit

H mixed up a tasty batch of vegetable dip for Saturday's party using only mayonnaise, yogurt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. It was a far cry from the ranch-flavored dips popular all over America and responsible for the traumatizing image above: "Blitz Blintz, a large meat pizza rolled like a blintz filled with ranch dressing," from This Is Why You're Fat.

Passenger H: I think that ranch dressing may be one of the aspects of America I find most disconcerting.
Passenger J: Are you bothered by its exceptionalism or its ubiquity?
Passenger H: Both. Obviously.

This is why my country can seem so bizarre from the outside. We are One Nation, Extra Cheese.

Lunch Break/City Break

The Passengers just completed a lunch date near H's office. We finally motivated ourselves to stand in line, native New Yorkers stand "on line," for our chance to experience Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. In moments of intermittent sunshine, today felt like a warm spring day, but the weather did not prevent us from sharing a concrete, a cup full of frozen custard mixed with chocolate pieces, along with our hot dog, burger, and fries. There is now a restaurant version of Shake Shack on the Upper West Side where customers can sit inside, but the Madison Square Park location represents the initial vision of a "roadside" burger joint, essential a haute cuisine Dairy Queen. The fries use Yukon Gold potatoes. Danny Meyer's Shack makes a unique vegetarian patty based on fried mushrooms, and today's custard flavor was milk and honey. It makes for a yummy twist on childhood favorites, and puts another feather in the Union Square Hospitality Group's cap despite the cutthroat and trendy competition of this city's restaurant business.

In fact, New York City dining features numerous other dining establishments that rely nostalgic palates. We live near the uptown location of Kitchenette, a homespun diner that boasts pot pies, grits, and hole-in-the-bread breakfasts. Though founded by a pair of female entrepreneurs from New York City (via the French Culinary Institute) and Boston, the place feels like a tastefully appointed lunch-counter cafe from a place like Iowa. Sarita & Caesar Ekya developed perhaps the most single-minded enterprises of the genre in S'MAC and the Peanut Butter Co, specialty joints for Macaroni & Cheese and peanut butter, respectively.

A number of factors might be contributors to the fascination with Americana comfort food in Noughties ('01 - '09) New York. A simple explanation sees the taste for simple childhood fare as a logical counter-narrative to the so-called fusion innovations behind global cuisine and molecular gastronomy. But most of these places on the New York scene cannot resist coopting the fusion impulse, thus Mediterranean mac' and cheese with kalamata olives and sauteed spinach. Another factor might be a longing for comfort food in a city redefining itself after a terrorist attack. This could explain the popularity of red velvet cake and pigs-in-a-blanket, but these trends are more national. The culture of juvenalia popularized these foods and encouraged dodge ball leagues for adults and Rock Bank nights for bars.

These cultural currents probably play a part in sustaining these throwback businesses, but as explanations they overlook dining as an experience. These establishments permit young professionals in New York to participate in a vibrant restaurant culture on familiar terms. There will come a day for expense-account dinners in dramatic locations with diva chefs, but these homespun locales provide everyday food at everyday price points, at least "everyday" according to New-York-City standards. I long for a return to college-town drinking prices. Nostalgia from twentysomethings might seem ridiculous, but life in the city can be tough for young careerists. A farm-style brunch with good friends sometimes represents our best substitute for a get-away to a Connecticut farmhouse.

Talking Dolphins

Another Anglo-American collaboration addresses the agonizing question of how to understand the smug patois of a pod of dolphins. An acoustical engineer in Cumbria has produced a "Cymascope" to begin deciphering the speech of seagoing mammals. His device responds to whale and dolphin recordings captured by a Florida researcher, outputting visuals of the sounds the animals make.

The description from Sky News sounds very much like an educational demonstration in an introductory physics course. The lecturer plays a continuous note (frequency) through a speaker underneath a metal plate thinly layered on top with sand. The sound waves vibrate the plate pooling the sand into rings representing the nodes in the oscillations of the sound waves. These cymascope operators recognize that they have lots of work to do to create a reliable understanding of cetacean speech, but questions remain as to what properties of visualization are actually new about this instrument or unique to cetaceans.

Additionally, sci-fi fans everywhere can advise that simply translating a dolphin's speech does not necessarily make him an eloquent conversationalist (sound alert).

Explaining 1950's American pastimes

We have guests coming around for drinks next week. We have been brainstorming activities appropriate for entertaining a professional couple one generation older.

Passenger H: What's that cheesy game again?
Passenger J: What? Do you mean Parcheesi?
Passenger H: Yeah, that's the one.

Parcheesi is known in Europe as Ludo. Fortunately, sarcastic suggestions about 1970's fondue parties are understood on both sides of the Atlantic.