Sounding Good on NPR

I was interviewed by Madeleine Brand on NPR’s Day to Day today. They wanted to know about my Countdown Clock. Here is the streaming audio. What was interesting to me was that they sent a sound recordist to my home to record my end of the conversation on digital tape because the sound quality on our typical phone line (and call-in show) is so bad. While I was in my desk chair on the phone to Madeleine in LA, the sound recordist was sitting in my office pointing a huge boom mike at my face. She then uploads the file to NPR’s ftp site and then the engineers there merge my side with Madeleine’s side of the conversation. Mucho work. Isn’t it odd that in 2007, when we can download movies to our home we can’t have a high-fidelity phone line? Does anyone know how feasible it is to create or hack a hi-def home phone line? We have DSL; it should not be that hard.