My fellow skeptic Paul Harris is also a long-time radio show host; I used to listen to him at WMAL when I was living in DC, and I’m happy to call him my friend now. I’ve done a few interviews with him in the past, and on Tuesday we had a nice chat about my new book. He’s posted the interview online, so go give it a listen and send him some love.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but right in the middle my "call waiting" lit up, and I think it may have interrupted what I was saying (you may notice I repeat myself several times in the course of about 20 seconds at one point). Then my cell phone rang (it sounds like a doorbell), so much hilarity ensued as I galloped out of my office rapidly. I don’t know if Paul heard all this, so don’t tell him. But that does make live interviews fun sometimes.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Phil, may I suggest a new ring-tone for your cell-phone for the next time you do a radio interview: “My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling…”
November 26th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
So, you DO give interviews. I know a reporter at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine has been waiting weeks to hear from you about a story he’s doing on the asteroid threat. I’ll tell him to be patient.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
It always amuses me as to how Americans like you, Phil, pronounce Moscow as “Mohs-caaw”.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Another person who insists on using a normal sound effect as a ringtone. Amen!
@Ivan3Man
I don’t know why it’s pronounced Mosc-anything with a vowel after the “c”. In Russian it’s pronounced “Moskva”. Which is why we call people from there Muscovites. Which makes no sense if we continue calling it Moss-Cow (a phrase which reminds me of Chia pets).
November 26th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
OT
Oh, another problematic telegraph list. This one is optical illusions.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I love Paul Harris. I used to listen to him in St. Louis.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
@ The Chemist
You’re right. The Russian spelling (Cyrillic) for Moscow is Москва, romanized: Moskvá.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Dr. Phil Plait mentions in his radio interview that the stars are moving around the centre if the Galaxy. Well, here’s an interesting/useless (depending on your mind-set) fact: *The Sun & the Solar-system orbits the centre of the Galaxy at velocity of 251 km/s (new estimate), and takes 225-250 million years to complete one orbit. This is equivalent to about one light-year every 1,190 years, and about one AU every 7 days.
*Source: Wikipedia.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
AARRGGHH!! In the first line it should read: “… around the centre of the Galaxy.”
Phil, can we please have a preview/edit facility here, before I kill somebody!
November 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Paul Harris… Paul Harris… Oh! You mean Harris in the Morning!
Yeah, I know he hasn’t been called that for a decade, since they cancelled his popular and low-key show with a generic box of stale Morning Zoo, but he’ll always be Harris in the Morning to me.