A post from Shady Characters

Shady Characters on Alan Alda’s Clear and Vivid podcast

I’m still pinching myself, but recently I had the distinct pleasure on appearing on Clear and Vivid podcast, hosted by the great Alan Alda. I knew of Alan’s work as an actor and writer from the likes of M*A*S*H*, of course, but I hadn’t known that in recent years he has moved into the world of science communication, not least with the foundation of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, New York.

Clear and Vivid is the podcast arm of Alan’s science communication work, and I was very happy to be able to contribute on the subjects of punctuation and writing. We even took a little detour into the history of counting. Have a listen here, and let me know what you think!

*
There’s a title for connoisseurs of unusual typographical marks, if ever I saw one. 

5 comments on “Shady Characters on Alan Alda’s Clear and Vivid podcast

  1. Comment posted by Ben Karlin on

    1937— The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N published, written by Leo Rosten. He later wrote “The Joys of Yiddish” (1971) among other things.

    Nearly three times the number of asterisks as M*A*S*H.

    Warmest regards from Chicagoland.

    1. Comment posted by Keith Houston on

      Interesting! Why is “Hyman Kaplan” styled that way, I wonder?

  2. Comment posted by Roger W Turner on

    I use an RSS reader (Inoreader) to follow these posts. The previous post (MacGuffin) doesn’t appear in their feed so I’ve only just seen it.

    1. Comment posted by Keith Houston on

      Hi Roger – that’s odd! I use Feedly, and it shows up there correctly. Some RSS readers can be a bit picky when it comes to formatting, so perhaps there was something off about that particular item?

  3. Comment posted by Brian Inglis on

    “Foxish Live RSS” under Chromium promptly displayed the “MacGuffin” link and this article at the top of my “Shady Characters” feed folder under my Feeds bookmark folder.

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