Behind The Mike
Behind The Mike is a daily prep service for radio practitioners: presenters, producers and the people who keep a show alive between the songs.
Every morning, thousands of presenters open a browser at 4am and start hunting. What is everyone talking about? What is the angle? What do I actually ask? Behind The Mike does the hunting, the summarising and the angling, so you walk into the studio with something to say.
Mike Bower is a radio practitioner and content producer. The prep here is the prep he wanted for his own shows: short, opinionated, and written to be said out loud.
Good prep is not knowing everything. It is having one thing worth asking.
Three from today.
Travel bookings show a sharp increase in trips to small towns, cabins and places with famously nothing to do. Operators say guests are asking for no Wi-Fi, no itinerary and no group activities, and are willing to pay more for it. The trend is strongest among people in their thirties and forties who describe their normal lives as permanently over-stimulated.
Researchers tracked heart rate and behaviour in dogs while their owners watched sad, happy and neutral videos. The dogs consistently moved closer, made more eye contact and mirrored stress responses when their owners were upset, even when the owner tried to hide it. The study suggests dogs read chemical and micro-expression cues far faster than most humans do.
A new study of South African households found that years of rolling blackouts permanently changed how families cook, eat and spend evenings together. Gas stoves, one-pot meals and earlier dinners have stuck around even as the grid has stabilised, and many parents say the candle-lit evenings became the best conversations they'd had in years. The researchers call it an accidental national experiment in slowing down.
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