Mary’s Notes, March 29, 2007

In House | mary, March 29th, 2007

If you were listening to the show on the radio last night, you didn’t get to hear the third segment of The First Neo-Cons and “The Last Mughal”. This is the pure definition of an executive producer’s nightmare: to be listening to a live broadcast at home and at 7:40 hear a replay of the billboard (Chris’s one minute intro that ends with “first this news”), then five minutes of Indian sitar music, then a replay of the entire first 20 minutes of the show. We can spare the details about the frantic phone calling and cussing that ensued. You can hear the whole show here.

From the mailbag, Chris emailed Steve Pinker the link to the Stanford prison experiment show earlier this week. Pinker wrote back saying that the experiment was a remarkable demonstation that changed “all our minds.” We assume that means the psych profession. “Of course,” he continued, “in any environment some will be more sadistic than others — prisoners all know this — but I think he’s right that there’s more variance in the barrels than in the apples.”

The Norman Mailer post is getting some very interesting comments. We’re going to ask his assistant if Mailer might respond to some of them in writing.

Thanks to Dora for the suggestion for tonight’s program with Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt. His NYRB piece was a great idea for a radio show. We’re adding an Open Source favorite to the mix, New Orleans playwright Jim Fitzmorris.

Since we don’t tape a Friday show, Thursday is Friday at Open Source. And today it happens to be Jake Shapiro‘s birthday. Many happy returns to our PRX pal and Cambridge neighbor.