Say it this way

You can't always say yes. It's hard to say no. But what happens when you try to say both at the same time?

Saurabh Tak tells the story of meeting Olivia one night at an art event, and then bringing her back to his apartment for an evening that got weirder and weirder.

Funky jazz music from Jive Ass Sleepers at magnatune.com.

See the unabridged performance, given at SpeakeasyDC's stage.

You might speak English, but do you understand it ?

Me: 'Give up' means you stop doing something. 'Give in' means you start doing something.

Her: No. 'Give in' also means a polite way of giving up.

English is so confusing. But you don't think about it until you talk to a non-native speaker. Which makes for some great radio.

This piece is from a new project I'm working on called RadioLingual. Check it out!

Also, this podcast is one year old this month.

Three men coach me as I try to record myself peeing.

Me: Oh! I think I'm gonna do it ... [waiting] ... nope. Just stopped. Man 1: What would you like us to sing? Man 2: Should all acquaintance be forgot...

Me: Yeah, that's good!

They were there for a workshop to overcome shy bladder. Turns out mine was the shyest bladder of all.

This is not the shy bladder feature you heard on Prime Time Radio or Word of Mouth. This contains the bits that were too juicy for the public airwaves.

Took a recorder into DC for Obama's big day. Craziness. "We just broke through a bus caravan on G Street. We're like locusts, you can't hold us down."

I've never seen so many people on a Metro train, heard so many boos for an outgoing president, felt so cold and yet so warm. If you couldn't be there in person, this one's for you. Headphones advised.

Also, Patrick was there and took some great photos.

How do you spend recess if you don't want to play kickball?

There are exactly two nylon sacks. Balls in the right sack. And jump ropes in the left. This is a choice that has already been made for Kabir.

Poor Kabir. Jump though he may, he gets "roped" back into the kickball game. Does he overreact? You decide.

A bit of fiction for the new year, set to Prashanti by Ravi Shankar. I originally wrote this piece for a reading event in DC last month organized by the peerless Regie Cabico.

Scary stories about slot machines, as told by anthropologist Natasha Schull"At night while her husband was asleep, she would drive to the supermarket and play until dawn at these machines." What you always wanted to know about the random number generator but were too afraid to ask. Plus, some crazy stories about addiction, escapism, and the early days of email. Natasha Schull is hard at work on her new book. It's a an ethnography of gamblers and game designers that will make us all sit up and listen. Production notes: These are basically the outtakes of a conversation Natasha and I had at WNYC's Studio 360, where I am working on an upcoming feature about slot machines. Derek John was the engineer. Background music: Send and Receive (Chachi Jones Remix) by Tycho, and Track 36 from the soundtrack of Synecdoche, New York.

A children's song mash-up. Vocals by Patrick Callier. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I won- world -kle world world so worlds. What you worlds. In joy joy.

Ever notice how similar the lyrics are in these "classic" American songs? There's a lot of word overlap. So you can take the songs, break them down into their syllables, and then rearrange those syllables into new songs, new melodies that retain more than a shred of the original meaning.

Talk about the end of innocence. My 12 year-old brother interviews my 24 year-old brother about going to Islamic summer camp. "I remember seeing an inscription on the wall next to my bunk bed. It was very simple and straightforward. It said: On this bed, a boy became a man and a girl became a woman."

Also featuring my father. Soundtrack by A.R. Rahman. A different version of this story will be presented by SpeakeasyDC in the coming months.

Andrea's got some advice for couples: Next time you're having an argument, switch sides.

Over the years, Andrea and John have had plenty of disagreements. For example: hair--does it or does it not absorb water? (answer inside.) Through it all, the switching exercise has arguably kept them together. Hear Andrea's sage wisdom in this five-minute musical, youtube-ical radio piece.

Props to the team at alt.NPR's Love and Radio, whose genius production style served as my template. Also props to Efterklang, whose song Tortuous Tracks flavors this piece.

A hypothetical radio conversation where the worst possible host interviews the worst possible guest. In this, I took a 12-minute phone conversation between an actual public radio host and an actual guest. Then, instead of editing out all the rubbish, I edited out everything of substance. What's left is 2 minutes of "non-fluencies" -- all the flubbing, qualifying, and hedging that make this possibly the worst interview of all time.