Walpole Unitarian Church

          We listen to the programs on our own, then meet on Zoom for conversation and camaraderie at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time, on the first, third and when there is one, the fifth Tuesdays of the month. Zoom links are sent via the Walpole Unitarian Church e-mail list on the Monday preceding each gathering. All are welcome to participate, from all time zones! 

 

To find links for the programs, Google “Invisibilia” and the name of the program as it is listed below. Alternatively, you can go to npr.org and type “Invisibilia” plus the program name into the Search function there (found in the dark gray band at the top of the page). 

To find written transcripts for Invisibilia programs, Search for “Invisibilia transcripts” at npr.org. Transcripts for all programs are linked from that page. 

Program descriptions are adapted from npr.org's Invisibilia pages

 

 

September 5 – The Last Sound

Bernie Krause was a successful musician as a young man, playing with rock stars like Jim Morrison and George Harrison. But then one day, Bernie heard a sound unlike anything he'd ever encountered and it completely overtook his life. He quit the music business to pursue it and has spent the last 50 years following it all over the earth. And what he's heard raises this question: What can we learn about ourselves and the world around us if we quiet down and listen?

 

September 19 – An Unlikely Superpower   

What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift that allows her to see things that will happen in the future that no one else can see. Invisibilia looks at how we think about the future, and the important ways the future shapes the present.

 

October 3 – True You

What happens when you encounter a new concept about yourself that is so different from who you think you are. Do you hold on to your original self tightly? Do you explore this other self? What do you do? We bring you two stories of people who greet this new self in very different ways. 

 

October 17 – The Weatherman

Who gets to be wrong half the time and keep their job? Meteorologists! James Spann, chief meteorologist at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Alabama, has heard the joke a thousand times. And in some ways it's true. There's a lot meteorologists understand about weather forecasting, but there's even more they don't....We explore our relationship with uncertainty through the eyes of a chief meteorologist.

 

October 31 – The Secret Emotional Life of Clothes

We know about the power of clothes to affect how others see us. But does clothing have the power to actually change us on the inside? To boost our intellectual skills or melt our fears? We explore the invisible ways clothes can seep into our skin and change us in surprising ways. 

 

November 7  – Fearless

What would happen if you could disappear fear? We'll hear about the striking (and rare) case of a woman with no fear. The second half of the show explores how the rest of us might “turn off” fear.

 

November 21 – Two Heartbeats a Minute

The strange story of an unlikely crew of people who band together to take on one of the worlds' largest problems using nothing but whale sounds, machine learning, and a willingness to think outside the box. Even stranger, several of the world's most accomplished scientists seem to think they might have a good idea.