Okay…GREAT NPR story from yesterday. And a chance for me to share some behind the scenes action…
I’m caught offguard when the door reopens on the 2nd floor to a camera carrying Bob accompanied by ATC host Michele Noris, Science desk correspondant David Kastenbaum and a few other ATC producers. Bob immediately starts questioning my knowledge of the web videos floating around of people putting mentos into 2 liter bottles of coke. Supposedly there is a chemical reaction that when adding a certain amount of mentos to a bottle of warm carbonated beverage (coca cola) causing a huge geyser.
The weird thing is the mentos for the most part do not disintegrate completely. You can imagine what that is doing to your stomach. Though I’d seen it previously before that, I had just been forwarded one that morning by someone here at work. The videos are pretty cool actually.
People were abuzz with interest for this, from the webteam and blogteam all the way to All Things Considered In true-NPR fashion, they decided to see for themselves if it actually worked. Bob told me that I was needed to grab questions for Michele at the All Things desk. When I got back outside with copy in hand, I did my short interview on camera for Bob about my perceptions of the science and then along with a handful NPR-staff members from the various departments awaited the explosion on the grass lawn adjacent to the building.
This is when Sue rolls up with her luggage in tow, wondering no doubt ‘what the hell is going on here?’ Just as soon as I explained what was going on, the first 12-15 foot geyser erupted from the bottle. Amidst a fair amount of cheers and woots from the captive NPR audience and a few random bystanders wonder what this liberal media was doing this time, Michele interviewed David about what is happening. They tried it several times with various sodas and even M&Ms. This is HARD hitting news here folks. Anyway, I felt that was a great introduction for Sue to the NPR. This might be the best place to work EVER.