Boston Marathon
This show is an exciting look at Boston’s 500,000-spectator sporting event, the Boston Marathon.
2007 marks the 111th running of the oldest annual marathon in the world. Started just one year after the first modern Olympics revived the marathon in 1896, the Boston Marathon brings tens of thousands of runners to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, then quite literally runs them out of town toward Boston’s Copley Square — 26.2 miles away. Along the course, the runners battle the weather, their competitors, their own tired bodies, and the notorious Heartbreak Hill.
To get the inside story of the marathon, I went to the Copley Square offices of the Boston Athletic Association. The BAA has organized every marathon since 1897, and my guest this episode has been following those efforts since he was a kid. He’s covered it as a reporter, run it as a contestant, and now helps make it happen from his office at the BAA.
Boston Accent
Today I talked to someone about talking — specifically, the way people talk in Boston.
The Boston accent is famous for its misplaced Rs and strange vowels, as well as its well-known speakers. John F. Kennedy, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Click and Clack from Car Talk, the character Cliff Clavin on Cheers, and even The Simpsons’ Mayor Quimby have all have brought variations on the Boston Accent to the world stage.
It’s a dialect I hear every day, but almost all most people know about it is encapsulated in the phrase “Let’s pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd,” but that isn’t really the way people talk here. To do a little better, I went to someone who could give us the real deal:
MJ Connolly grew up just outside of Boston, and is now a professor of linguistics at Boston College. He’s listened to — and spoken with — the Boston Accent his whole life, so I went to him to tell us what it is.
Omni Parker House Hotel
I’m back after a break with another look behind the scenes in Boston. Thanks to all of you who emailed me suggestions and supportive comments (don’t worry — I’m not going away!). I took a short break, but I’m back now with a show that is just packed full of history.
Boston’s Omni Parker House Hotel sits at one of the oldest intersections in Boston on the site of America’s first public school. The hotel itself was the first luxury hotel built in America, and is now the oldest operating hotel in the country. Throughout its 150-year history, Omni Parker House has housed, fed, or employed such famous names as Longfellow, Dickens, Kennedy, Emerson, Roosevelt, Curley, Ho Chi Minh, John Wilkes Booth, and dozens more.
The hotel is now the flagship property of the Omni Hotels chain, and remains one of the places to stay in Boston. I stopped by for a short stay and a talk with one of their staff members about the place.
The hotel has such an involved history that the “Brief History” pamphlet they gave me is almost 50 pages long, so lets call this episode a snapshot of America’s oldest hotel.
Every city should have a podcast like Boston Behind the Scenes.
This one is a no brainer; add it to your rotation right away.
