Say It This Way

We got the weirdest phone message from out of nowhere. I thought the voice on the other end was having a stroke, then all of a sudden the operator chimes in. Any explanations are welcome!

I thought I was living with the craziest roommates ever. Turned out I was the crazy one. Music is All His Exes by Sylvie Lewis, and Oh What a World by Rufus Wainwright

How movies get death wrong. And why two paramedics think physician-assisted suicide is a good idea. Music is Elegie by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

A classic story of rodent vs human. Except in this case, it wasn't just any mouse. It was our mouse. A tiny one that we had rescued from a snowstorm and brought home to take care of. It had a name and everything. But mice will be mice. Ours escaped, and this is the story of how we caught it and bid it adieu. Music is Samson by Regina Spektor, and a Count Basie song from YouTube.

The worse her Alzheimer's got, the more he loved her. Arthur tells the story of how he took care of his mom for several years until she died from AD. At first he was her nurse. Then he became her advocate. And finally, he became the only barrier between her and death. This is the story of how he let her go. Music is All His Exes by Sylvie Lewis, plus Spiegel im Speigel and Fur Alina by Arvo Part. Picture is from Seite-3's photostream.

His thesis was stopped at the border. His future as a college student in America was on the line. But Komail gave border agents the slip with a little anatomy lesson. Background music is Balkan's Joke by Jacques Pellarin. Check out Komail Aijazuddin's website. This story was created from outtakes of another story to air on Studio 360 in the coming months.

We're caught wearing shorts in tick-infested woods. But that's because when packing for our trip to Georgia, we had no idea we would be going hiking out there. Nor did we know we would be meeting Marcus, aka Tom Bombadil, who lives in an old wooden house dating from 1870 and who loves to eat wild mushrooms. Listen to us city boys follow him into darkness. Music in this piece is Anitra's Dance by Edvard Grieg, and Tom Bombadil's Song by the Tolkien Ensemble.

A seeing-eye dog learns to find bus stops. In this episode, we meet Powers, a black lab who helps out my visually impaired friend Mike. Powers is smart and obedient. But he has one big weakness. And it's not fire hydrants. The outro for this piece by Lindsay Starke, who handily won last month's podcast challenge. Music is Le Banjo by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, performed by BachScholar.

Who won the 2004 Hilary Duff essay contest? Several tween girls. And a six-foot-six man with a two-foot beard. This is a story about Deep Springs, an intensely academic all-male college, and its obsession with Disney pop princesses. Appropriately, all music in this piece is sung by the titular princess.

Two South Asian women lie to their mothers. In this installment of the podcast, three stories: The first one's a teaser. It's about a car accident. The kind where it's not your fault but you feel like somehow it should be. The second is about arranged marriages, leprechauns, and background checks. The last story, from Subcontinental Drift, is about not coming home all night, police, and convincing mom you were at the computer lab the whole time. Guest hosted by Patrick Callier. Music by General Fuzz at magnatune.com

You can't always say yes. It's hard to say no. But what happens when you try to say both at the same time? Saurabh Tak tells the story of meeting Olivia one night at an art event, and then bringing her back to his apartment for an evening that got weirder and weirder. Funky jazz music from Jive Ass Sleepers at magnatune.com. See the unabridged performance, given at SpeakeasyDC's stage.

You might speak English, but do you understand it ? Me: 'Give up' means you stop doing something. 'Give in' means you start doing something. Her: No. 'Give in' also means a polite way of giving up. English is so confusing. But you don't think about it until you talk to a non-native speaker. Which makes for some great radio. This piece is from a new project I'm working on called RadioLingual. Check it out! Also, this podcast is one year old this month.

Three men coach me as I try to record myself peeing. Me: Oh! I think I'm gonna do it ... [waiting] ... nope. Just stopped. Man 1: What would you like us to sing? Man 2: Should all acquaintance be forgot... Me: Yeah, that's good! They were there for a workshop to overcome shy bladder. Turns out mine was the shyest bladder of all. This is not the shy bladder feature you heard on Prime Time Radio or Word of Mouth. This contains the bits that were too juicy for the public airwaves.

Took a recorder into DC for Obama's big day. Craziness. "We just broke through a bus caravan on G Street. We're like locusts, you can't hold us down." I've never seen so many people on a Metro train, heard so many boos for an outgoing president, felt so cold and yet so warm. If you couldn't be there in person, this one's for you. Headphones advised. Also, Patrick was there and took some great photos.

How do you spend recess if you don't want to play kickball? There are exactly two nylon sacks. Balls in the right sack. And jump ropes in the left. This is a choice that has already been made for Kabir. Poor Kabir. Jump though he may, he gets "roped" back into the kickball game. Does he overreact? You decide. A bit of fiction for the new year, set to Prashanti by Ravi Shankar. I originally wrote this piece for a reading event in DC last month organized by the peerless Regie Cabico.

Scary stories about slot machines, as told by anthropologist Natasha Schull"At night while her husband was asleep, she would drive to the supermarket and play until dawn at these machines." What you always wanted to know about the random number generator but were too afraid to ask. Plus, some crazy stories about addiction, escapism, and the early days of email. Natasha Schull is hard at work on her new book. It's a an ethnography of gamblers and game designers that will make us all sit up and listen. Production notes: These are basically the outtakes of a conversation Natasha and I had at WNYC's Studio 360, where I am working on an upcoming feature about slot machines. Derek John was the engineer. Background music: Send and Receive (Chachi Jones Remix) by Tycho, and Track 36 from the soundtrack of Synecdoche, New York.

A children's song mash-up. Vocals by Patrick Callier. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I won- world -kle world world so worlds. What you worlds. In joy joy. Ever notice how similar the lyrics are in these "classic" American songs? There's a lot of word overlap. So you can take the songs, break them down into their syllables, and then rearrange those syllables into new songs, new melodies that retain more than a shred of the original meaning.

Talk about the end of innocence. My 12 year-old brother interviews my 24 year-old brother about going to Islamic summer camp. "I remember seeing an inscription on the wall next to my bunk bed. It was very simple and straightforward. It said: On this bed, a boy became a man and a girl became a woman." Also featuring my father. Soundtrack by A.R. Rahman. A different version of this story will be presented by SpeakeasyDC in the coming months.

Andrea's got some advice for couples: Next time you're having an argument, switch sides. Over the years, Andrea and John have had plenty of disagreements. For example: hair--does it or does it not absorb water? (answer inside.) Through it all, the switching exercise has arguably kept them together. Hear Andrea's sage wisdom in this five-minute musical, youtube-ical radio piece. Props to the team at alt.NPR's Love and Radio, whose genius production style served as my template. Also props to Efterklang, whose song Tortuous Tracks flavors this piece.

A hypothetical radio conversation where the worst possible host interviews the worst possible guest. In this, I took a 12-minute phone conversation between an actual public radio host and an actual guest. Then, instead of editing out all the rubbish, I edited out everything of substance. What's left is 2 minutes of "non-fluencies" -- all the flubbing, qualifying, and hedging that make this possibly the worst interview of all time.