1. Tomorrow would have been Julia Child's 100th birthday! In her honor, WGBH (Boston's PBS TV station) put together this cute little (1:30) video of favorite clips. Also, on this week's episode of The Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper took a trip down memory lane; it's the first segment of this episode. Worth listening to.
2. As I've mentioned before, whenever I have a longish (>15 minutes) drive alone, I plug in my iPhone so I can listen to it over the car's radio, and I catch up on all the podcasts I've been saving. I rarely seem to be able to listen to my favorite shows when they air, so I download them for later—The Splendid Table, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, Will Shortz's Sunday Puzzle, some episodes of Fresh Air, and so on. This past Friday morning when I was driving into town, I finally got around to listening to the May 14 episode of This American Life, which was the radio version of the live stage show that was beamed to select movie theaters. Ira Glass explained that much of the material was too visual for radio, but there were some he wanted to share. I then listened to one of my favorites, David Rakoff, do a wry and extremely moving piece about his battle with cancer. Toward the end, I nearly had to pull over because I was crying. After that came David Sedaris, another favorite, who had me in stitches. I remember having a half-formed thought at that time, something to the effect of, "I'm so grateful to live in a world where there are all these smart and funny and interesting people."
That afternoon, as I drove home, it was actually time for Fresh Air in real time, so I tuned in a few minutes after it had gotten started and heard Rakoff's voice again, although I recognized the interview from a couple of years back. My heart sank. Sure enough, when Terry came on in between segments, she announced that he had just died the night before. I was stunned. I mean, I knew he was sick, blahblahblah....
I have since found the video for his amazing This American Life piece, and I can't even describe how much more moving it was to actually watch his performance. RIP.
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