Story Meeting Roundup: March 27, 2007

Every morning we meet at 11:00 to talk about the previous night’s shows and what we’re doing for the rest of the week. We drink coffee. Mary tells me to shut my computer and pay attention. Here, as part of an experiment moving forward, today’s recap.

We agreed that we’ll all someday work for Toby Johnson, studio guest on last night’s Women in War and imminent corporate tycoon. Our favorite moment last night, though, came when Tina Bean — after hearing Brian Dunbar’s blog comment that combat duty is a “libido killer” — responded, “You can always find time.”

We heard, both from Toby Johnson and — in the thread — former Marine Brian Dunbar about the importance of leadership. From Brian:

In my experience lax leadership (at any level) promotes a lot of shenanigans, including harassment. When your leadership team is effective, when the troops know that the Man does not tolerate the crap (whatever it is) it stops.

Brian Dunbar, in a comment to Open Source, March 26th, 2007

We’ll be coming back to the role of leadership when we talk about Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prison Experiment in tonight’s show, The Banality of Evil, Part II.

Former intern Henry was in the office; he brought baked goods as always and enjoyed a Norm-like reception.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, check out this Language Log post on the use of the word “compound.” Does it make us think of Kennedys or cults?

Also, we sent two shows, Coal: Mountaintop Removal in Appalachia and Coltan in the Congo, to the graveyard. We do this when interest — on the threads or in the office — has waned on a show, or if the peg — a timely reason for producing the show — has passed. The name “graveyard” notwithstanding, these shows don’t have to be gone forever; if you can think of a great guest or a great reason for doing one of them, let us know.