Chau Tu will be reading at the Difficult to Name Reading Series on April 9 at Study Hall.
You used to live in L.A. It’s April right now and 38 degrees. Do you ever think of moving back to L.A.?
Ugh, all the time. L.A. will definitely always be my home, and I'll hopefully return to it someday—I don't think I can fully survive in a place that doesn't provide easy access to midnight carne asada tacos—but I'm enjoying my time in NYC right now. I kind of even like when it snows? (I could do without the slush piles though.)
You are a producer and reporter for PRI’s Science Friday and previously you worked for Marketplace. Both shows go very in depth on very different subjects. Was it difficult to move from one world to the other or is it all just about making great radio?
Yeah, Science Friday and Marketplace are absolutely different kinds of shows, in many ways than just in subject and content. But I've primarily worked on the web side for both, and a lot of my work at both has been about thinking about how to translate public radio to the web, or the modern age of technology in general (whatever that may be). I think it's still a constant issue for a lot of public radio, and the key seems to be to just keep experimenting and taking risks. But if anyone happens to have any wacky and innovative ideas, please let me know!
Do you have any transcribing tips?
Oh man. My saving grace right now is a site called Otranscribe, where you can upload your audio into your browser and then transcribe on the same page using hot keys to play the audio. The browser will even save your text in the browser after you navigate away from the page if you accept cookies. It's pretty great...but overall transcribing still sucks, sorry.
What can people expect from your reading?
Let's talk some conspiracy theories, friends!