[Rebecca] The three people in my head.

Okay, are you ready for this?

I am in a studio in Boston, interviewing Richard Saunders in Sydney, Australia. Richard and I are chatting through Skype, which is on my laptop, which is connected to WGBH's ethernet. I can hear Richard through my everyday iPod headphones, and he hears me speaking through my laptop's internal microphone.

Over my iPod headphones, I'm wearing the studio 'phones. Through those, I can hear my engineer Mike, who is on the other side of the glass recording my side of the conversation through the microphone in the studio. On the other end of the world, Richard's side of the conversation is being recorded by his engineer friend Stefan.

At the same time, Mike has connected my producer Richard Paul to hear my side of the conversation. We were nearly able to get Richard P. to be in on the Skype call so he could hear both sides, but his connection wasn't up to snuff.

So at one point, I had two Richards on Skype who could hear one another and who I could hear but Mike could not. Then, I could hear Richard S. on Skype and in my studio 'phones when Mike managed to call his cell phone, hoping to pipe Richard P. in that way to hear both sides. During that time I couldn't hear Richard S. twice with a slight delay, Mike when he'd hit the button to be heard, and Richard P. not at all. Then, for awhile I could only hear Richard S. on Skype and Mike, including Mike's side of his conversation with Richard P. on his cell. Finally, we settled with me speaking to Richard S. on Skype and Richard P. and Mike through my headset. I was the only one who could hear Richard S. I hope this is as close as I get to knowing what it's like to be insane.

Technical issues aside, tonight was fun. I rode my bike straight from work, getting me to the station a little early because I knew we'd have some challenges. Normally Mike meets me in the WGBH lobby, but tonight I noticed the front lobby door was open. So, I walked in and found that there was a shindig going down -- some kind of gala for Masterpiece Theater. When I saw that, I laughed out loud, because seriously? Masterpiece Theater exists? I guess I just figured it had been overwhelmed by its own parody. I'll have to see if I can find clips the next time I'm watching America's Next Top Model on YouTube. It's the least I can do, since I may have accidentally taken advantage of the bar they had set up in the hallway going back toward the recording studio.

At the end of the day, I had scored a nice glass of wine, chatted with friends, learned a bit about urban legends, and recorded a studio-quality cross-continental interview in a completely new and fun (and cheap!) way. Not too shabby!

I made it back home by 9pm, and had about 10 minutes to scarf some food down before Steve called to start recording the podcast. We'll be on this until maybe 11:30pm, and then I'll have to save, record, and upload files. Which means, we're still recording right now. Which means, I should probably stop typing and start paying attention . . .

Oh yeah, and I took some photos but Flickr doesn't feel like uploading them apparently. Maybe later.

edit: here we go! Taken with my MacBook's iSight while Skyping in the studio.

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