Saturday, January 26, 2008

Speechification » Blog Archive » Studio 360: Nikola Tesla: Strange Genius:

Forgive me as I stray a little northwards from my Antipodean lair to bring you this quite wonderful edition of Studio 360, presented as usual by Kurt Anderson. It’s devoted to amateur inventors and ‘mad scientists’, with Nikola Tesla as the super-dense object bending the show’s waves around him. The programme lovingly and carefully explores Tesla’s pioneering work in radar, radio, alternating current and just about everything else in the modern world - which was all to little acclaim at the time.

Mike Daisey relates the life of Tesla in a hilarious and bewitching set of excerpts from his one-man show. With a delivery like Emo Phillips with the fast forward button held down, be sure to stay for the story of Tesla’s death ray. Just after the story of Tesla x-raying Mark Twain’s head.