Voices in my head
For this interview I was fortunate to get access to Marci Hamilton, a law professor and author who specializes in the legal line between religious freedom and the criminal acts. I was anxious to hear her thoughts because the story in the news right now about the raid on the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints compound in Texas raises so many social and cultural objections that the actual legal strategy of prosecutors gets lost in the din of moral outrage.
The short answer: You can believe what you want, but any actions you take on those beliefs have to be within the law. Law comes before religion regardless of Constitutional guarantees.
Also interesting is the question of whether to treat each child abuse case individually or whether the law is allowed to prove a pattern that covers all of the children taken in the raid.
The mp3 link is here and the
formal page with the video is here.
Lessons this time: The video is buggy, so I recommend downloading the mp3. We're working on figuring out why it has those odd little skips in it.
I have to be careful when I book really timely subjects like this because it makes my production time more urgent (and stressful). I actually had a new video idea where I mixed in general video of the compound and the women while the audio played but I didn't have time to wrestle with the fine points so I went with the standard book cover loop.
This time I didn't record an intro like I usually do. Just two brief introductory slides. The explanation is in the text. I did this because the intro always felt like a boring formality. Better to get to the meat and provide the details another way.
Unavoidable: The miserable head cold I've been struggling with that makes it sound like I'm talking with a clothes pin on my nose.
I saw this book as an opportunity to ask all of those otherwise rhetorical Constitution questions. I tried to recall every time I've thought to myself, "Surely this is not what the founders intended." And I tried to think of complaints I've heard about the Constitutionality of some of the actions by the Bush administration. The authors, Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes, found hope in the Constitution and it's principles but lately I've been feeling pretty pessimistic about the viability of our system. It's nice that the Constitution has a rule for how wars are declared except that we just go to war without technically declaring it so the Constitution doesn't seem very relevant. It's nice that the Congress is meant to check the power of the executive branch, except when they're a bunch of sheep too afraid of coming out on the wrong side of the latest buzzy legis-trend that they can't muster enough spine to do their Constitutional duty. And it's nice that the government is answerable to the electorate except that most Americans don't vote and it's questionable how many of those who do vote really know what they're doing.
Lane and Oreskes addressed these and other questions with intelligence and aplomb.
The mp3 audio can be downloaded here or else this page has a video link so you can listen through the video player with not very much load time (but with an ad at the beginning). And with the video player option you can check out my latest masterful videography with the critically acclaimed sitting-in-a-chair intro/outro.
This interview with Mark Tungate is a good example of what's so fun about talking to someone about their field of expertise. That buoyant enthusiasm is the reason I enjoy doing these "Voices" chats.
In this case the field of expertise is advertising. As I mention in the interview, the only real reason I pay attention to the ad industry is to guard against being manipulated and marketed-to, but Tungate brings a global perspective and sense of history that makes the industry feel less predatory.
The
mp3 for download is here or else on the
main landing page you can listen in the video player with less loading time.
(For those following along with the challenge of producing the video versions of these interviews, for this one I added a brief title screen to a couple clips of myself with the book. There's no slide show so it's just the book cover for most of the video.)
I interviewed the Guardian's environment correspondent, Paul Brown, about his new book on Global Warming. I actually talked to him last week but fitting it into this week's "green" coverage seemed like a good idea (though of course every week is green week on Clicked).
The book itself is really attractive. If you happen to be in a book store it's worth at least flipping through. The interview went well, but listening to it again in the production process I wonder if I sound like a skeptic. It's hard to ask "tough" questions about something I agree with.
This is the landing page with the link to the video.
Here's the mp3 link for download.
Unrelated to the content: The Voices in my Head series is a side project I've been pursuing to practice interviewing skills and learn online media production tools. For this one the publicist gave me some photos from the book so I was able to cycle through those with the audio along with the book cover. I also introduced a small bit of video of myself at the beginning and end. One of the challenges of this series is what the video element should be when the content is only audio. I like the idea behind this one but I think I need some kind of title screen to run with the introduction so I'll try that next time. Let me know if you have any ideas.
Also, I don't know if I mentioned it before, but in case you're wondering where I get these authors, I work with an independent publicity company that pitches authors that may be of interest or have some connection to the news. Not only do they provide me with a variety of authors but I don't end up in any awkward relationships with specific publishers.
I talked to William Bonner about the perils of following the crowd and how trendiness can lead to disaster. This may go without saying, but his book reads a lot like the answers he gave. He answers with stories and illustrates with examples. Granted, I invite all of the Voices guests to speak at length because the format is so open, but Bonner is particularly suited to the longer form. I frankly struggled with the questions, as you'll hear, but he carried the interview well.
You can download the mp3 here or else this page has the audio in the video player for faster loading.
When this book was first pitched to me I thought it was going to be about biofeedback - which is it, a little - but really it's about how the brain literally maps the body as well as its surroundings. Literally, physically, stick-an-electrode-in-your-brain-and-feel-a-poke-in-your-elbow kind of map. It's fascinating and the possibilities of what technology can do once we learn to read and utilize these maps is really exciting.
The mp3 of my interview with the authors is here or else the bottom of this page has the audio set in the video player for faster loading.
You may recall during the Summer I started the interview series Voices in my Head. After a brief lapse I'm picking up where I left off. This first one is with Bill Yenne, author of a book called Guinness: The 250-year quest for the perfect pint.
I confess when I saw the book title I mostly wanted to ask an expert all the thing I'd heard about Guinness as a bartender, so that's pretty much what the first half of it is. The transcript page is here, with a video option so you don't have to wait for the download to play it. But if you prefer to take it with you, the mp3 is here.
P.S. Where else have I been? You may have heard about the big move by MSNBC to new studios. I don't technically have a new desk yet but I did spend some quality time plowing through seven years of accumulated junk, notes, books and ketchup packets.
You should see what the old place looks like now. They didn't take most of the equipment (yet?) so it's basically a fully equipped news center and TV studio but completely empty of people. Totally eerie, kind of like that movie 28 Days Later. I have some pictures, but I also remember this guy so I'm waiting for special permission to post them.
With this chat with Ted Kerasote about his dog Merle the video solution makes more sense because he was able to give me a bunch of photos to show against the audio.
You may have heard of this book already because it's already a bestseller. If you're a dog person at all you'll appreciate it. I admit, I don't always think smiling dogs are actually smiling, so I had a hard time with some of the anthropomorphization. But he also did a lot of research into the science and history of dogs, which I found very interesting. The interview has a mix of the two perspectives.
I've been trying to find a way to add a video component to the audio interviews I do. I used my interview with Jean Pfaelzer, author of Diven Out, as the first, most basic test. The video is just the cover of her book, but I think you'll see that listening through the video player is better than waiting for the audio file to load.
As for the interview itself, Pfaelzer's book was really interesting and it was hard to interview her without just saying, "Oh, tell about this part, now tell about this part." (You can tell by the way my questions run on too long.) I was expecting to just talk about the current immigration debate, but really, the history of discrimination against Chinese Americans is fascinating and something I knew nothing about.
As I mentioned last week, I got to talk with Arianna Huffington on the phone today about her new book "On Becoming Fearless." It probably won't come as a surprise to hear that she's pretty easy to talk to. She's not exactly a media newbie. It sounds like I gave her a huge softball in asking about the Huffington Post's plans for the election but honestly I was expecting her to talk about online activism and I definitely didn't think she'd have that whole answer so well prepared.
I'm feeling out the idea of putting this interview series under the banner of "Voices in my Head." This one is the first time I've put it in the intro so let me know if you think it works. I had considered "Will calls people on the phone" which works well with "This is what I clicked" in its obviousness, but the Voices name is growing on me.
