When our vacuum clears are talking to each other…

Okay, here’s something cool about the CBC Radio One program Spark: this morning at 11:00 a.m. I taped an interview with host Nora Young. While the episode that my interview will form part of won’t air until next Wednesday, the raw audio of the entire thing is online.

This is wonderful on many levels, perhaps most so because it allows listeners to understand better the voodoo that happens between the raw unvarnished interview and the polished, edited version that goes to air.

You cannot truly appreciate the wonders of Nora Young until you’ve sat on the other side of the microphone from her: she is one of those rare broadcasters who is curious, a good listener, and capable of both understanding and emitting sarcasm. It was a pleasure to be her guest.

Comments

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on November 15, 2007 - 00:12 Permalink

Listening to this, I love the opening line: “So Peter, what does your rabbit look like?” Who would have thought that an opening question I would ever face.

andrea's picture
andrea on November 16, 2007 - 18:11 Permalink

Hi Peter, Thanks for posting your interview — I really enjoyed it and find the whole concept of the nabaztag equal parts thrilling and unnerving.

I recently read an interview with the writer William Gibson in Rolling Stone Magazine (the 40th anniversary issue) where he talked about the challenge of “ubiquitous computing” and how our grandchildren will think it’s quaint that we ever distinguished the digital from the real world. I guess the nabaztag is an inevitable sort of next-step. I think it’s interesting to think about how Oliver and Catherine react differently to the addition/intrusion of Antigone in your home and the difference in their relationship to the technology, and would guess that many children of Oliver’s age will never really experience being “offline” in the old-fashioned sort of way. Maybe? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

I look forward to hearing the finished piece next week.

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on November 16, 2007 - 23:04 Permalink

Just because so many people have asked me about this: Nora Young and I were not, in fact, in the same room for this interview. I was in the small newsreader studio at CBC Charlottetown and Nora was, well, somewhere in the Broadcast Centre in Toronto.

To make this happen a technician in Charlottetown — in this case the talented Ritchie Bulger — had to work with technicans in Toronto to “book a line” for our interview. Ritchie tells me that this involves the actual dedication of a real physical piece of telephone company wire to our purpose.

When I sat down in the booth in Charlottetown, I put on a pair of headphones and spoke into a microphone. I could hear Nora in my ears, and she could hear me.

Andrew MacPherson's picture
Andrew MacPherson on November 19, 2007 - 15:54 Permalink

Nora Young is amazing. Best CBC host since Gzowski.