Meryl and Ira in Cleveland

If you’re a fan of This American Life, if you’re an Ira Glass fanboy, or if you’re generally a radio geek, you need to read Meryl’s blog post about seeing Ira and David Rakoff at the Ohio Theater.

It’s a wonderfully told account, with some great moments:

Ira and David both said that a lot of times they’d get to the very end of a story and stop and say, “So what does this actually mean?” and that a lot of stories get thrown out at that point because they don’t seem to have any larger implications. He said that some stories have really strong themes and it’s clear the whole way through what they’re about, but others have to be shaped at the last minute. “It’s always that last paragraph where we scramble for some false epiphany,” Ira said. “And then you add music to make it seem like a real epiphany,” David added.

But the best part is how afterwards, during the book signing, Ira starts giving her story advice (Meryl is a journalism student), and she pulls out her recorder and starts taping him.

Seriously. Check it out. You’ll be jealous.

Gmail supports IMAP

If you haven’t heard by now, you probably don’t care. But Gmail now supports IMAP, which is awesome. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

The syncing is delicious, with no more messy POPping around.

That said, Google’s basic setup instructions are a little too basic for use with Apple’s Mail.app and iPhone. Instead, check out these instructions.

The Prosecast is back

Good news, lovers of books.

Cathi Bond (one half of The Sniffer) and her Prosecast are back in the saddle for another season, so go have a listen. The most recent episode features an interview with Richard B Wright about his new novel, October.

Skype for radio interviews

When you’re doing a radio interview with someone in another city, there are a few options I’ve used:

• Phone – Easiest to set up, but worst-sounding. That said, people are accustomed to hearing phone interviews on the radio.
• Studio-to-studio via ISDN – Sounds pretty good, but requires a studio on both ends. This usually means the guest has to go to a nearby CBC, NPR, BBC, etc. station, so it’s not always convenient.
• Double-ender – When done well, this can sound like the interviewer and interviewee are in the same room, but requires good recording equipment on both ends.

Recently, we’ve been experimenting with Skype to do interviews for Spark, with varying results. Last week, we did an interview with Adrian Bowyer about his 3D printer, RepRap. And it sounds pretty freaking good, considering he was on his hotel WiFi using an inexpensive headset microphone.

The raw interview is posted here. Have a listen. Aside from the occasional blip or dropout (which we edited out for the finished program), the overall audio quality is amazing.

We’re trying to make Spark a radio show that sounds different. Part of that is story selection, and structure, and pace. Another part of that is how we create the show’s sonic landscape. Tools like Skype can help us create an interesting middle ground somewhere between studio-quality and phone-quality.

I wonder if we’ll start to hear more Skype-quality interviews (complete with blips, bloops, dropouts, and walkie-talkie back-and-forth) on the radio in the coming years. Honestly, I’m surprised someone doesn’t make a piece of Skype gear with decent inputs and outputs for studio use.

Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids #3

Last night, at Future Bakery, I ran into Bryanna, who read at the first Grownups… reading night back in February. Seeing her reminded me that there hasn’t been an event since the spring. Which is a shame, because it’s fun.

So today I called up Blake at the Victory, and I’m pleased to announce:

What: Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids 3

When: Monday, November 19, 2007 at 8:00 pm

Where: The Victory Cafe, 581 Markham Street, Toronto

So start digging through your parents’ basement.

Update: there’s a FaceBook event now.