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| Richard and me in front of an Alaskan glacier |
Heh. Everybody waits until the new year to put up their ‘casts. I have three more now: one rather short, one longer, and one that’s Greek to me.
1) My friend and Aussie skeptic Richard Saunders asked me for a 30 second blurb for whatever I wanted, so I sent him a rapid-fire rundown of the blogs I write for. That’s up at SkepticZone.tv, with my blurb at about 25:30 (here’s a direct link to the MP3). SkepticZone is the #1 podcast in Australian iTunes for social sciences, and is doing very well globally for skeptical and scientific podcasts too.
2) I was interviewed by John Hockenberry (I remember him from MSNBC many years ago!) who does a radio show called The Takeaway. We talked about Obama’s mixed signals for NASA (they contacted me after reading what I wrote on the subject). That was a fun interview; I had to drive to a local radio station to use their ISDN line, so it felt more official. Check out the cool media player they have on their site! Very cute. My part starts at 1:03:50.
3) I was interviewed about the book by Katerina Economakou for the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia. The piece is online, but — in the "duh" category — it’s in Greek. The cool thing is that apparently my name is spelled Φίλιπ Πλέιτ in Greek. κοολ!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Phil Plait spelled in Russian: Фхил Плаит (note the similarities with Greek).
January 5th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I hope you’ve been practicing your Second Life skills for the next visit. *crosses fingers* (Oh, and beware of naked bunnies inviting you to sit on their laps. Or rather, don’t beware.)
January 5th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Phil Plait in Latvian - Fils Pleits
January 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Phil Plait in German: Phil Plait
SCNR
January 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Actually, John Hockenberry was on NPR long before he sold out to MSNBC. He was on a program called Talk of the Nation. Now he seems to have seen the error of his ways and is now on PRI.
I’d be careful when speaking with him on public radio; you might lose your street cred with George Noory and the Coast to Coast AM wackos–er fans. OR you might be cited as an astrologer and approached for advice from Marketplace.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
IVAN3MAN Says:
Phil Plait spelled in Russian: Фхил Плаит (note the similarities with Greek).
Of course there are similarities–the Cyrillic alphabet was invented by two Greek missionaries, Cyril and Mathodias, so they could Christianize the Slavs.
January 5th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Apparently, The Takeaway liked your interview so much they used the line “Cutting NASA is like clipping your fingernails while having a heart attack” as a promo line for their next show.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:44 am
Hello Philip, happy new year to you and all your readers and may this year bring along with happyness, knowledge about the World we live in, our Universe, as this is Astronomy’s year
Anyway, since I’m a greek, if you want I can translate for you the greek article from the newspaper you gave the interview to.. Just say so
Cheers and regards from Greece
January 6th, 2009 at 7:24 am
It’s a brilliant comment and spot-on.
NASA’s real problem (aside from its bureaucratic ones) is one of outreach and making the public understand the good that it does above and beyond its core activities.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Whoa, fellers. Phillip was a Greek name last time I looked; Phil Hippos, friend of horses.
So for the Russian (as a non-native speaker aware of the links with Greek, Kiril and Methodius (hence Cyrillic)) my best guess would be
Фил (or Филип) Плат
Forgive me, Ivan, and maybe you’re a native Russian speaker, but I can’t imagine a Russian actually pronouncing your version ?
No big worry, just intrigued.
Y
January 6th, 2009 at 7:34 am
What a lovely plug for the podcast - thanks!
January 7th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Phil Plait in Japanese: フール プレート
January 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Actually in Japanese it’d be フィールプライト.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
[…] I was interviewed on The Takeaway last week, I was asked what I’d do with NASA were Obama to pick me to run it. I said I’d make […]