Poster Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes
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Freds Favorites

Julian Barnes: The inner life of Dmitri Shostakovich

Listen to PT host Fred Child's interview with Julian Barnes
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Music is Music: The Greatest Hoax
The path to becoming a Washington D.C. advisor on climate science and global warming is easy. First study piano and double bass. Then, get a degree in composition. Next thing you know, you're a climate scientist. At least, this is how it happened for Taylor Jordan. Jordan records under the name The Greatest Hoax, a name he borrowed from Senator James Inhofe's (R-OK) 2012 book. The book is a shot across the bow of mainstream science and claims of global warming. So it's fair to say Jordan, a climate scientist who advises members of Congress on climate science, has a bit of a cheeky streak. The name of his 2015 album, "Enso," has ties to Jordan's day job too. It's the acronym for El Nino Southern Oscillation, commonly shortened to El Nino. Now that you've learned something, why not have a listen? Check out The Greatest Hoax on this episode of Music is Music. To find out more about what Taylor Jordan is up to, head over to his Bandcamp page. https://vimeo.com/163992792 Music is Music is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Acclaimed novelist Julian Barnes has published a new book about composer Dmitri Shostakovich, spanning the most turbulent years of his life under the regimes of Joseph Stalin and then Nikita Khrushchev.

In the book, The Noise of Time, Barnes assumes Shostakovich's identity to answer what we've always wondered about that time: what was Shostakovich thinking?

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