Not Your Classroom Radio

Not Your Classroom, a production of BSR Radio, interviews academics from Rhode Island’s college campuses and turns the tables. We say to faculty “It’s not YOUR Classroom — get out from behind that podium and tell us about your lives, your work and why it should matter to the world.” We chat one-on-one with the biggest thinkers of the smallest state, raising the kinds of questions their neighbors rarely get to ask: If you are a smell expert, how do you pick your perfume? What impact do cultural values have on students’ abilities to learn? How do turtles hold their breath under a frozen pond all winter? What does 18th-century colonial Mexico City have to do with political life in Providence? Exploring the corners of Rhode Island’s eleven campuses for intriguing ideas and thinkers, Not Your Classroom promises no exams, no lectures — just engaging information, tuition-free. We’d rather talk over a cup of coffee than fall asleep in the back of the class.

Not Your Classroom is produced by Brown University students and alumni in collaboration with public radio professionals, and it airs during the academic year on BSR 88.1 FM on Mondays at 7pm — and in month-long stints on WRNI, Rhode Island’s NPR News Station, on Fridays at 9pm then again on Sundays at 8pm. For more information or to send us feedback, get in touch with us by emailing notyourclassroom at bsrlive dot com or visit the BSR website at http://www.bsrlive.com

STAFF
The producers of Not Your Classroom are Josh Lerner, George Mesthos, and Laura Vitale, with help from Colin Baker, Rebecca Lasky, and Mark Doss. The executive producer is Paul McCarthy, and the host is Meghna Chakrabarti. Previous staff has included Addie Goss, Alison Klayman, Anat Mooreville, Ainslie Keith, Kate Osborn, and Kath Connolly.

PODCAST
You can download or listen to these programs individually by clicking on the links in blue at the bottom of each edition’s description (the links ending in “.mp3″), or you can subscribe to the podcast to get the full service. If you are new to podcasting, we suggest downloading the newest version of iTunes (for Mac or PC), navigating to the iTunes Music Store, and searching the podcasts section of the store for “Not Your Classroom”. It’s absolutely free to subscribe to our podcast. If you are a more advanced podcast user, or don’t want to use iTunes, simply copy the link location from the orange button down at the very bottom of this webpage that reads “RSS 2.0″ and paste it into your podcast controller.

FUNDING
Funding for the series has come from The Rhode Island Foundation, The Dean of the College at Brown University, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, the Swearer Center for Public Service and the Office of Student Life at Brown University, and from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.