Patrick makes light boxes of things he likes. He just finished this one, a tribute to Stop Podcasting Yourself.

As long as I'm announcing conferences I'll be a part of, I should mention that I'll also be "compering" the Build Conference in Belfast this November. I'm pretty sure "compere" is European for "host." It will be my daunting responsibility to make sense of the proceedings during the conference's Big Presentation Day, drawing out themes and making off-color jokes. (OK, I added that last responsibility.) My stepmother's from Belfast, and I haven't been since I was 10 to see her ten thousand brothers and sisters, so I'm looking forward to the trip. If you're a designer on the other side of the pond, I hope I'll see you there.

I'll be speaking at TEDxPoynterInstitute, a one-day conference at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in Florida, on the future of journalism.

The event is October 28th at Poynter in St. Petersburg. I'll be talking about how we used Kickstarter to fund the second season of Put This On, and lots of other media types will be there, like the lady who invented Indexed.com and the obligatory Person Who Works at Twitter and a guy from NPR and a Guy Who Did A Viral Thing. Should be PRETTY SWEET.

You can find more information here. Note that if you're a student, tickets are $25 - email tedx@poynter.org for me details on that.

Sound of Young America and MaxFun favorites Daryl Hall and Jimmy Pardo get together for an episode of Jimmy's web series over at Team Coco.

Roy Ayers performs an Afrobeat version of Everybody Loves the Sunshine that is so f'ing awesome.
Via

Speaking of my pals at Radiolab...

Jad and Robert asked if I could visit their show to talk about one of my favorite comedy sketches of all time, Kurt & Kristen's "Kristen Schaal is a Horse."

It's in the intro to their newest episode, "Loops." If you're one of the 5% of podcast listeners who isn't already subscribed to Radiolab, I've embedded it below. Above, by the way, is the original video I saw of the sketch.

(Kristen, by the way, is also a past Sound of Young America guest.

My friends/heroes Jad Abumrad and Jay Allison gave the opening and closing remarks at the recent Public Radio Program Directors' conference. The PRPD is largely an exercise in self-justification by the largely calcified public radio world, but Jad and Jay both really nailed their contributions. It's inspiring to see guys at the top of their field use their power and influence for good.

Jad, who'd been crowned a genius by the MacArthur Foundation just two days before, talked about change. Public radio is notoriously change-averse, and he did some Radiolab-style research as to why that is. Then he issued a call to arms. Luckily for me, that call to arms included an exhortation to program directors to carry my show. More than that, though, it was a request on behalf of creators to be given the opportunity to create, and see what happens.

The benediction at the conference was delivered by Jay Allison. Jay's a less public figure than Jad, but you may know him as the producer of the long-running essay series This I Believe. He's probably public radio's most prominent independent producer, and created Transom.org, a magnificent website for folks who want to learn to make great radio. He also founded a radio station that serves the Cape & Islands in Massachusetts.

Jay's talk made me cry. He's a man who truly believes in the work he does, and the things he believes in are the reasons that I'm proud to call myself a public radio host. There were more than a few moist eyes in the house, which is a remarkable feat for a Saturday morning. He also took some shots at public TV pledge drive bullshit, which I think we can all get behind.

I post this here because both of their wonderful talks are available free to anyone at the PRPD website. They're not just for public radio people, or even public media people. I think you'll find them moving, informative and inspirational no matter what field you work in. Give them a listen now.

Holy cow, Gabrielle! You're the greatest!

One of the greatest.

An artist named Josh Dorman emailed me from New York a month or two ago. He told me that he used to listen to music while he worked, but he'd spent the past few months listening to nothing but The Sound of Young America.

Podcasts are popular among those working in visual fields, especially lonely ones where people work solo and crave human voices. I do get an email like this from time to time, and it's always nice to hear. Not usually, though, am I so struck by the work. Dorman's paintings are beautiful, a sort of visual wunderkammer, with archaic illustration aesthetics and painting techniques getting all mixed up with maps and print and gorgeous palettes.

His show, Lost Divers, runs for about another month at Mary Ryan Gallery in New York. They're at 527 W. 26th St., and they're open pretty regular hours. I wish I was in NYC so I could take a look in person.