The Musical Innertube

We all do it: try to figure out the meaning of the vanity plate on that car that's in front of us.  Isaac Klein took it one step further, getting the stories behind the plates in his podcast Vanity.

Dava Sobel has written about science for her entire career.  Now, she's letting others do the writing.  She's editing a column in Scientific American magazine featuring poetry about science.

Director and editor Sam Pollard talks about The League, his film about the owners, players and patrons of Negro League baseball from the turn of the century until its success proved its undoing in th…

Nurses are the backbone of medical care in the U.S.  They're also overworked and underpaid. Sarah Di Gregorio's book Taking Care tells the history of nursing and details all they do for patients.

The 2023 Comic-Con International in San Diego won't have a big movie or TV presence this year because of the writers' & actors' strikes. But Tad Stones, who's been to a few cons, says it'll be fun an…

HBO Max is now Max. And Max and other streamers are eliminating shows, all while they raise their rates. Last year we talked with expert Robert Thompson about streamers, and a lot of what he said the…

A celebration of our nation's birthday, courtesy of The Musical Innertube Volume 1!

You've heard it a million times: playing violent video games makes kids violent. Dr. Rachel Kowert is a psychologist who's done the research, and she'll tell you that gaming is actually GOOD for kids…

The Surgeon General has called loneliness a health risk that leads to illness and premature death. Psychologist Dr. Shira Gabriel agrees - listen as she recommends ways to make your life a little mor…

We've been talking to Julie for a couple of years now about her efforts to climb the seven tallest summits in the world. Last month she did the ultimate climb and stood atop Mt. Everest, the world's …

The weather keeps getting wilder, with another heat-inducing El Nino on the way. What can we do to prepare for more drought, wildfires, and floods? What about hurricanes? Meteorologist Carl Parker pr…

The U.S. Government and the World Health Organization have officially declared an end to the COVID emergency.  Really?  Bioethicist Art Caplan says the virus is still around, and he adds that we didn…

Lately, we've noticed that, on many political issues, the polls say one thing, state legislatures do the opposite. Political columnist Dick Polman says that's the result of years of behind-the-scenes…

Guest Host Mat Kaplan takes us through the maze that is the minds of John Timpane and Don Rooney, to find out what has made the podcast tick all these years. (Be sure to check for ticks when it's don…

Did you know that standing by a pond and listening to the frogs can help save wetlands? Carrie Bassett tells us why that's true and how you can become a citizen scientist as part of FrogWatch USA.

Lynn Levin: poet, teacher, translator, critic. Is there anything in literature she can't do? Apparently not! Now you can add "short story writer" to that list! House Parties is full of characters, tw…

Everyone can sing the themes to Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, and Friends. Jon Burlingame is rich with knowledge about those themes and many others (My Mother the Car, anyone?). He shares that …

The Musical Innertube gets musical with David Loud! He shares stories from his book Facing the Music about his time as a Broadway actor, pianist, conductor, arranger - and a person dealing with Parki…

Julie McKelvey is in Nepal, preparing to climb to the top of Mt. Everest in May. Here's the talk we had with Julie after she climbed Denali in Alaska, on her way to climbing the 7 tallest peaks in th…