Search the Fresh Air Archive

Close Search

The Language "Problems" of Answering Machine Recordings.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg shares his thoughts on the peculiar grammatical logic of telephone answering machine recordings.

03:44
Queue

Contributor

Related Topics

Other segments from the episode on November 25, 1987

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, November 25, 1987: Interview with Arthur Miller; Review of Mitsuko Uchida's album "Piano concertos, Nos. 22 & 23"; Interview with Herbert Block; Commentary on answering…
Queue
27:42

Arthur Miller Writes His Memoirs.

Playwright, novelist and essayist Arthur Miller. His plays include "All My Sons," "The Crucible," "After the Fall" and "Death of a Salesman," for which he won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and lasting fame in American theater. He has written an autobiography titled Timebends.

Interview

Transcript

Transcript currently not available.

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.

You May Also like

Queue
21:06

Our Digital Lives, Monitored By A Hidden 'Numerati'

Many people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians.

Interview
Queue
17:48

Our Culture's Quickening Pulse.

Science writer James Gleick ("GLICK"). His new book "Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything" (Pantheon) is about the accelerating pace of modern life. He writes about how technology has created the feeling that life moves too fast, but that we have become "addicted" to the pace and might as well learn to enjoy it.

Interview

Did you know you can create a shareable playlist?

Learn How
Advertisement

Recently on Fresh Air Available to Play on NPR

52:30

Israeli and Palestinian activists share a vision for peace in Gaza

Tonya mosley interviews two men deeply impacted by the violence on either side of the Israeli Palestinian conflict who still believe peace is possible. MAOZ INON (mah-OHZ EE-nohn) is an Israeli entrepreneur whose parents were among the 12-hundred killed by Hamas in October of 2023, the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. AZIZ ABU SARAH (ah-ZEEZ ah-BOO SAH-rah) is a Palestinian peacebuilder. When AZIZ was only 9, his brother was arrested and tortured in an Israeli military prison and subsequently died from his injuries.

Related segments from the Fresh Air Archive:

See All Recent Segments

There are more than 22,000 Fresh Air segments.

Let us help you find exactly what you want to hear.
Just play me something
Your Queue

Would you like to make a playlist based on your queue?

Generate & Share View/Edit Your Queue