Sung at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" is the most-recorded gospel song ever.
NPR's Linda Wertheimer speaks with Dr. Michael Harris, a professor of history at Union Theological Seminary, who has written extensively about the song's author, gospel musician Thomas Andrew Dorsey.
NPR 100 Fact Sheet:
Artist: Words/music by Thomas A. Dorsey;
Interviewees: Michael Harris, Union Theological Seminary;
Recordings Used: Take My Hand Precious Lord, Mahalia Jackson
A stunning bit of history in this little mini episode. I always find myself wishing they’d do about 10-15 minutes of the history and a bit less of the song, though this episode did rightly have several covers of it.
Janel Moloney joins Josh and Hrishi to talk about playing Donna, and Ben Casselman gives us an update on the state of the census. Bonus photos:
- Hrishi, when he was a Dungeons & Dragons loving teenager.
- Josh, at his Bar Mitzvah.
Ms. Moloney wasn’t as interesting in the interview as I would have hoped, but she does have an interesting take on how she responds to the fame and adulation of the show these many years later. I highly recommend this portion of the episode for actors who are just starting out.
For Big Block of Cheese Day, Josh and Hrishi are joined by Eli Attie, who was Vice President Al Gore's chief speechwriter before leaving politics and joining The West Wing as a writer and producer. Plus, the truth about David Rosen.
President Ronald Reagan's Challenger Disaster address...
Elie Attie’s appearance on the show made it infinitely much stronger. There was a nice richness to the additional background he brings here in comparisson to Hill’s recent performance. Notes about Gore using the same campaign idea that appeared behind Bartlett in the episode were great to hear.
I’m trying to catch up on episodes of the podcast to match my recent push at rewatching episodes.
Listened to1.04: Five Votes Down by Josh Malina and Hrishi Hirway from The West Wing Weekly
The limits of practical idealism. Plus, Hrishi sets Leo's dialogue to music, and Josh unwittingly reveals a secret.
It’s all about the small tidbits one can discover or rediscover upon watching episodes. This episode had a particularly interesting walk & talk in the opening.
Dulé Hill joins Josh and Hrishi to talk about shooting his first episode of The West Wing, visiting the real White House, and losing to Martin Sheen in 1-on-1.
Amazon to launch its own internal healthcare service. Alphabet's Verily researches naked mole rats to extend human life. Facebook and Google promote local news. Google Clips on sale for some. Facebook Messenger Kids draws ire. Why you shouldn't buy Twitter followers. Bill Gate's new favorite book. The Boring Flamethrower.
Stacey's Thing: Texting with Alexa;
Jeff's Number: Google I/O May 8, Facebook F8 May 1-2
Jonathan Bethony is one of the leading artisanal bakers in America, but he goes further than most, milling his own flour and baking everything with a hundred percent of the whole grain. He’s also going beyond wheat, incorporating other cereals such as millet and sorghum in the goodies Seylou is producing. I happened to be in Washington DC just a couple of weeks after his new bakery had opened, and despite all the work that goes into getting a new bakery up and running, Jonathan graciously agreed to sit down and chat.
And almost as if to prove my point after writing about Modernist BreadCrumbs the other day, Jeremy’s latest episode is a stunning example of love and care in a podcast dedicated to food. I’m really so pleased that he can take a holiday, have so much fun with bread, and simultaneously turn it into something like this.
Even the title reads as if he were trying to out-do the entirety of eight episodes of Modernist BreadCrumbs in one short interview. I think he’s succeeded handily.
There’s so much great to unpack here, and simultaneously I wish there was more. I found myself wishing he’d had time to travel to some of the farms and done a whole series. With any luck he actually has–I wouldn’t put it past him–and we’ll be delighted in a week or two when they’re released.
Bread is immeasurable, no longer bound by precepts. The new dictum of baking bread is built on shapes and sizes we haven’t even dreamt of. This episode, the proverbial breadbox of the series, will hold all the bits of bread we haven’t gotten to yet, or have yet to be made.
This episode did a bit too much waxing poetic on bread. As a result, it probably would have done a far better job of having been episode one of the series instead of the last and instead edited to provide an introduction to bread and its importance. Even more so when I recall how dreadfully put together episode one of the series was.
On the science/tech front there were only one or two vignette’s here that were worth catching. The rest was just bread poetry.
One interesting aside was a short discussion about the “free” bread that restaurants often put out. Sadly, while still all-too-common, most places really put out bad bread instead of good bread. I often think how much I’d rather actually pay for such a product at a restaurant, particularly if it’s good. Perhaps I just need to leave more restaurants when they put out bad bread knowing that things probably aren’t going to improve?
Summary of the series: It wasn’t horrible, but it also wasn’t as great as I would have hoped. The primary hosts always sounded a bit too commercial and I felt like anytime I heard them I was about to hear a bumper commercial instead of the next part of the story. Somehow it always felt like the interviewer and the interviewee were never in the same room together and that it was all just cut together in post. It was painful to follow the first episode, but things smoothed out quickly thereafter and the production quality was generally very high. Sadly the editorial didn’t seem to be as good as the production value. I almost wonder if the book went out and hired a network to produce this for them, but just found the wrong team to do the execution.
Too often I found myself wishing that Jeremy Cherfas had been picked up to give the subject a proper 10+ episode treatment. I suspect he’d have done a more interesting in-depth bunch of interviews and managed to weave a more coherent story out of the whole. Alas, twas never thus.
Elon Musk's great ideas: Tesla, SpaceX, flamethrowers. Apple HomePod arrives next week. Google Clips camera is not at all creepy, we swear. Nobody won the Lunar X Prize. Amazon Go officially opens. Montana, New York, AT&T, John Deere, and Burger King take up the Net Neutrality battle. Intel's Spectre patch is a garbage fire.
EVs and self-driving cars at CES and the Detroit Auto Show. The first cashierless Amazon Go shop opens January 22nd. Apple HomePod is nearly here. Apple hands out $2500 employee stock bonuses as part of its huge cash repatriation plan. Google wants your selfies. Facebook wants you to tell it what "high quality" news is. Twitter emails 677,775 users to tell them that they shared Russian scams.
Listened toI Need You by America from Warner Bros.
"I Need You," released in 1972, is the second single by the band America from their eponymous debut album America. The song was written by Gerry Beckley.
It appears on the live albums Live (1977), In Concert (1985), In Concert (King Biscuit), Horse With No Name - Live! (1995), and The Grand Cayman Concert (2002). The studio version is included on the compilation albums Highway (2000) and The Complete Greatest Hits (2001).
George Martin remixed the studio recording for inclusion on History: America's Greatest Hits (1975). An alternate mix from 1971 appears on the 2015 release Archives, Vol. 1.
MT Net Neutrality, Amazon Go, ICOs
Montana and Burger King want to save Net Neutrality. AT&T seems to want to as well. Google I/O puzzle reveals the 2018 conference date. Google Play sells audiobooks. YouTube won't let stars say bad things about Google. Facebook sends out a news survey and invents a new unit of time. First Amazon Go shop opens. Twitter loses another exec. Don't call the Vine replacement "Vine 2." Indian good morning greetings are eating the internet. ICOs explained.
We have been talking about the problems with Twitter, Facebook, and social media throughout the last year. Our guest has too, and he’s trying to do something about it. Manton Reece, talks about Micro.blog, the technology it is built on, and how he is being thoughtful about building something new.
