Vindaloo

British boozer under fire in Bay Ridge

The Longbow is a cozy and relatively authentic British pub, with all the good and bad connatations that go along with that assessment. It's run foul of the New York City Human Rights commission for allegedly showing nationalist bias in a job ad. I needed no second invitation to investigate this alluring tale. The results are here, as broadcast this week on BBC Radio 4: 

Download Brit pub NY story

Starting Not To #Bee

It's a watershed year for the American honeybee. After seven years of Colony Collapse Disorder, the commercial keepers are dropping as fast as the bees they're trying to save. Everyone though, it seems, is a little bit to blame. The big question...Are pesticides driving it all? I did one of the first pieces on CCD back in 2007, and this reprise of mine from PA, ran on BBC World Service and WNYC this morning:

Download Bee collapse reprise

Newtown: politics and grief

Doing nothing isn't an option, is what underpins Sandy Hook Promise, and the group's taken a lead in the gun safety debate. But they're also sponsoring the crucial, and non-political element of recovery, which is helping Newtown heal together, and tending to spiritual needs. I went to a public meeting on Thursday night, which aired on Sunday. Mother's Day here in the US.

Download Newtown BBC Matt Wells

 

#IBM #Watson is testing "his" stethescope

Watson was made for better things than just winning Jeopardy, as the scientists training the super-computer tell me in this BBC Radio 4 piece. It's amazing capacity to virtually think and learn, makes it the smartest doctors' assistant ever. Listen up. 

Download Robot docs story

#WoundedKnee - whose is it and what's it worth?

The "deadline" for selling of the Lakota Sioux's most sacred site, is tomorrow. Here's my piece for the BBC's legendary show, From Our Own Correspondent.

Download Wounded Knee FOOC

And here's my BBC News online piece from South Dakota.

 

Mutually Assured Destruction in 30 mins or less #nuke

I got to visit the stuff of my childhood nightmares: The Minuteman Missile launch site in S Dakota that's been turned into a museum, with some "gallows humor" thrown in. BBC shows are running this today. 

Download Missile Museum S Dakota

The nuclear button - there's still plenty of active ones out there, defending the free world from nuclear attack, though asymetric warfare seems to have taken a front seat.

Chinese Christians in Vancouver: an Easter-New Year special documentary.

This got bumped twice due to high drama at The Vatican, but it paints a picture of the extraordinary growth in ethnic-Chinese converts to Christianity, in the West Coast's most Asian city. Will their neo-Calvinism be a bulwark to Beijing's soft power? Give it a listen this Easter weekend if you have time. There's lots of eating and fireworks.

#sciencegenius Dr Chris Emdin and GZA light up classrooms and turn them on to science #BBC

Here's my piece which aired on BBC World Service and Radio 4 over the weekend. Fingers crossed the next Einstein IS in the house. 

Download Science rap

Predicting the Papal Pullout

Strange one this: Tom Ettea's a grizzled but happy theater warrior, who wrote a play two years ago predicting the er, resignation of the pope. He's whipped it out the drawer, and it's going up in May. Here's a flavor, when we met downtown for BBC Radio 4: 

Download Benedictus BBC story

The rough with the smooth

Two utterly contrasting stories of mine which aired in the last 10 days on BBC Radio 4. First there's an update on how slowly Coney Island is really returning to normal post-Sandy. New York hardliners will hate this, but it's the kindness of strangers from Michigan and other states that's making the REAL difference in getting homeowners back on their feet. This ran on PM: 

Download Coney Island Sandy reprise story

Next, a piece about Fashion Week economics, and the fascinating idea that the fashion business is a bit like the newspaper business: a broken model that has an anachronistic reliance on gathering together by expensive runways, while the future is all happening online. The ever fashion-conscious World Tonight commissioned this from me, and at least I didn't try and join the two stories together like the trippy Vogue story recently that must have been dreamed up over 3 too-many Martinis. Here's my BBC piece:

Download Fashion Week burn out story