Assistive Media - Podcasting for the Blind

Susan Sheehan, "The Autism Fight", The New Yorker 2003

THE AUTISM FIGHT

A family with autistic children found a treatment that seemed to help. They didn't know what they'd have to go through to get it.

By Susan Sheehan
Copyright © 2003 The New Yorker
Read by: Marlene Bednarz
Length: 74 minutes

As noted in the Autism News Bulletin:

Parents of autistic children rarely forget the details of the day they are first given the child's diagnosis," Susan Sheehan writes in the December 1, 2003, issue of The New Yorker. In the case of Dan and Regina Wagner, whose son Daniel was diagnosed with autism six years ago, a few months before his second birthday, the diagnosis also set in motion a terrible struggle between his parents, program administrators, and school district officials in Maryland's Montgomery County.

Full text from mhweb.org:

Regina Wagner began to realize that there was something wrong with her son Daniel when he was eight months old. He wasn't sitting or crawling, as her first child, Katie, had done at that age. Over the next year, Regina had more reasons for concern. Daniel didn't make eye contact with her or with her husband, Dan, and he didn't say Mama or Dada. Daniel's pediatrician attempted to reassure the Wagners. "Boys do things later than girls," he said. At eighteen months, Daniel said a couple of words, but he soon stopped. He did not respond to his name. He didn't like to be touched or held. He flapped his hands and feet. At the Sugar Plum Daycare Center, in Bethesda, Maryland, which he and Katie attended five days a week, Katie played joyfully with other children. Daniel remained in his own world and often bit other toddlers who came near him.

Technorati Tags: abby

William Echikson, "Death of a Chef", The New Yorker 2003

The changing landscape of French cooking.
By William Echikson
Copyright © 2003 The New Yorker
Read by: Clelia Steele
Length: 31 minutes

The whole piece is available from The New Yorker site. Read "The changing landscape of French cooking", which starts like this -

Poularde Alexandre Dumaine, a two-hundred-and-sixty-seven-dollar chicken offered at La Côte d’Or, Bernard Loiseau’s gastronomic temple in Burgundy, is filled with julienned leeks and carrots, lightly basted and seasoned with salt and pepper, and baked in an earthenware pot. Truffles inserted under the skin give the bird an earthy flavor, and the meat is tender and pungent. Early on the afternoon of February 24th, Loiseau watched his team of a dozen chefs prepare the poularde for two American chefs who were completing internships in France. After the dish was served, he went home for a siesta. Sometime later that day, he shot himself in the mouth with a hunting rifle. He was fifty-two.

Another piece on Loiseau and French restaurants of interest is "Once upon a time in France" by David Fromkin from The New Criterion.

A recipe for La Poularde à la Vapeur 'Alexandre Dumaine' -

Steamed Hen with truffles - is part of a tribute to Bernard Loiseau on about.com.

Technorati Tags: food, chef, restaurant, france, french, chicken, gtd

Malcolm Gladwell, "Personality Plus", The New Yorker 2004

Employers love personality tests. But what do they really reveal?

By Malcolm Gladwell
Copyright © 2004, The New Yorker
Read by: David Henry
Total time: 36 Minutes

Read the full text of "Personality Plus".

Technorati Tags: gladwell, podcast, mbti

Elizabeth Kolbert, "Mother Courage", The New Yorker 2004

Kids, careers, and culture.

By Elizabeth Kolbert
Copyright © The New Yorker 2004
Read by Melissa Stewart
Length: 17 minutes

The full text of Mother Courage is available from the New Yorker site. It starts out:

I grew up in a family that, save for its stray neuroses, was entirely typical of its place and time—the suburbs of New York in the late nineteen-sixties. My father, a doctor, left for work at eight and came back at six, except on Tuesdays, when he had extra office hours. My mother stayed home. This was true not only in a figurative sense but also, I now realize, in a fairly literal one; every day until we got to middle school, my brother and I trooped back to the house for lunch, and had she not been there, waiting for us, we would immediately have called the police. All of my friends’ mothers stayed home in this way, and I don’t recall thinking there was anything remarkable about it: that was just what mothers did.

Technorati Tags: parenting, mother, mothering, books, newyorker, bookreview

Maxine Kumin, "Jicama, Without Expectation", Prairie Schooner 1995

Maxine Kumin's "Jicama, Without Expectation," a diary of the growing season from her farm, punctuates the collection like a sudden, refreshing shower. (Amazon)

By Maxine Kumin
copyright © Prairie Schooner 1995
Read by Melissa Stewart
Length: 46 minutes

This essay can be found in the collection "Women, Animals, and Vegetables: Essays and Stories".

The University of Illinois has a biography of Maxime Kumin online as part of their Modern American Poetry collection.

Technorati Tags: jicama, farming, farm, agriculture, food

Diane Johnson, "Rolex", The Missouri Review 2000

A cheap fake watch left in a Beijing hotel room is mistaken for real.

By Diane Johnson
© copyright The Missouri Review 2000
Read by June Spence
Length: 45 minutes

Salon's 1997 Wanderlust column author Dwight Garner writes in a review of Diane Johnson's book Natural Opium:

in "Rolex," Johnson discovers that a cheap fake watch she'd left (and forgotten about) in a Beijing hotel was mistaken for the genuine article, and the saga of its delivery back to her changed the lives of several of the Chinese men and women involved. It's a small story, but Johnson is alert to the emotional reverberations it casts.

"Rolex" is one of the readings in the MIT OpenCourseWare course on Consumer Culture, Fall 2002.

Technorati Tags: china, rolex, beijing

Ken Auletta, "Big Bird Flies Right", The New Yorker 2004

How Republicans learned to love PBS.
By Ken Auletta
Copyright 2004 The New Yorker
Read by: David Henry
Length: 33 minutes

Technorati Tags: bigbird, npr, pbs

Scientific American, "The Philadephia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793", 1998

One of the first major epidemics of the disease in the U. S., it devastated America’s early capital. It also had lasting repercussions for the city and country.
By Kenneth R. Foster, Mary F. Jenkins and Anna Coxe Toogood.
Copyright © 1998 Scientific American
Read by: Melissa Stewart
Length: 26 minutes

John Seabrook, "The Slow Lane", The New Yorker 2002

Can anyone solve the problem of traffic?

Copyright © The New Yorker
Read by Richard Wilson
Length: 46 minutes

Read the full text of Can Anyone Solve the Problem of Traffic?

This is one of the readings in the course The Global Oil System and the Middle East taught at the University of Michigan in Fall 2005.

Technorati Tags: oil, traffic

Michael Spector, "That Sinking Feeling", The New Yorker 1999

A letter from Italy. Doesn’t Venice want to be saved?
By Michael Spector
© copyright The New Yorker 1999
Read by Cheryl Schuttee
Length: 19 minutes