Use Your NPR Voice!
Until last week, I didn't know I had one. (BONUS! Cartoonapalooza #2!) WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE
IF YOU’VE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS SPACE in the last month, you’ll know that I just started a gig providing humor, commentaries, and animations to Front Range National Public Radio. Americans of a certain age and mental cast have been listening to NPR voices for decades—starting with Garrison Keillor on a Prairie Home Companion and rolling on through Terry Gross and the Iras (Flatow and Glass) and Kai Ryssdal and Peter Sagal. When I listen to the midday news, I sing along with the radio: “From NPR in Washington, I’m Lakshmi Singh.” And now I’m one of those voices too—however halting and tiny, compared with those vocal giants! I can hear them in my head, but could I make those sounds come out of my own mouth? Last week I had the hilarious and freaky experience of hearing my NPR producer reproduce those dulcet intonations while reading a script I had written. Then I attempted my best impression of her doing her best impression of me. It was like learning a new language! I so hope I become fluent in me. It ain’t easy.
NPR COMMENTARY 8.25.23
Banning imagination, one book at a time
HOST INTRO: Kids are back in school and there's lots of noise coming from playgrounds, classrooms, and school libraries. But it's the adults making most of the racket—and commentator Peter Moore (hey, that’s me!) thinks it’s time they pipe down.
DURING A LATE-SUMMER BIKE RIDE, I pedaled past a middle school in Fort Collins. A few cars dotted the parking lot. Just the grownups were inside, preparing for the onslaught ahead.
I’m not talking about an onslaught of students. They come in waves, as they always have. But as those kids streamed through the front doors this month, they faced a gauntlet of challenges, from viruses and book bans to curriculum nannies and fears of school shootings.
In the face of all that, a lot rides on the school staff. Teachers show kids the multiverse of possibilities, and librarians heroically put books in kids’ hands to introduce them to, well, everything, everywhere, all at once. In a binary world that prioritizes ones and zeroes, teachers and librarians show kids the fabulous fractions.
When I was in ninth grade, my English teacher assigned George Orwell’s 1984, one of 1,600 books that have recently been banned from school systems across the country. 1984 freaked me out! Especially when Winston Smith, the protagonist, has a dream about a mysterious dark-eyed woman.
Orwell wrote: “With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.”
Strong stuff for a 14-year-old! But also, necessary stuff.
Click here to listen to me doing my producer doing me!
For those of you who just come here for the visuals, here’s another batch of stuff that made me laugh recently. Of course, that’s not much of a distinction: I find practically everything funny…including my weird speaking voice.
And now for an important announcement: I’m not just doing this for fun, people! Well, come to think of it, I am MOSTLY doing this for fun. But it’s also my career, now. And that means I need support from people like you. Support in the comments, support hitting that “like button,” support from subscribers, both free (thanks!) and paid (no really, I LOVE you). So hit the link below and sign on. The more the merrier the Moore. Act now to take advantage of my special offer: 20% off for the lifetime of your subscription! Or the end of my lifetime! (Whichever comes first.)
Or you could just buy me a coffee.
Grateful either way.