Emily Tops All Other Baby Names

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MIKE PESCA, host:

Welcome back to the Bryant Park Project from NPR News, online all the time at npr.org/bryantpark. There is this phrase called the "wisdom of the crowds." What it means is that a bunch of people thinking together may be smarter than one guy alone, like the stock market, or open-source software.

It does not explain the popularity of boy bands or NASCAR. However, on this section of the show, we'd like to embrace the wisdom of the crowds. We'd like to find out what's the most-emailed, viewed, and blogged on the Internet. What people are telling each other, and sending each other. This segment is The Most.

(Soundbite of music)

RACHEL MARTIN, host:

Tricia McKinney.

PESCA: Mosting it off right off the bat is Trisha in the control room, go ahead.

PATRICIA MCKINNEY: Hello, hello. I have the number three item on Google Trends. People searching Google, typing in the name Kim Kardashian and the word "calendar." For regular NPR types who probably don't know who Kim Kardashian is...

PESCA: To their credit.

MCKINNEY: To their credit. I can't believe I know who she is. She is - I think she fits my definition of a "sub-lebrity." She is a former stylist, a very, very pretty young woman. I believe she was in a sex tape. That's kind of how she became famous, and then she's got a reality show going. So, anyway...

PESCA: I believe Bruce Jenner is her father or stepfather.

MARTIN: What, really?

MCKINNEY: Yeah.

PESCA: She has attached her wagon to Bruce Jenner's star.

MCKINNEY: OK, so now you know who Kim Kardashian is. The reason people are searching for a calendar is she dates NFL star Reggie Bush, and she's apparently shooting pictures of herself to make a calendar for him. But what I really want to talk about is how I've seen Kim Kardashian in the last few days. She's part of this campaign called Celebrity Voices for Burma, and every day...

JEANNE BARON: AKA, Myanmar.

MCKINNEY: They are putting out - AKA Myanmar - but the campaign is called Celebrity Voices for Burma, and every day they are putting out a video starring some celebrity, or in this case, sub-lebrity. So, here is Kim Kardashian summing up the situation in Myanmar.

(Soundbite of Celebrity Voices for Burma video)

Ms. KIM KARDASHIAN ("Keeping up with the Kardashians"): What's this benefit for, burping?

Ms. KHLOE KARDASHIAN ("Keeping up with the Kardashians"): Not burping, Burma.

Ms. KIM KARDASHIAN: I was kidding. I wrote my whole thesis on Burma. It's a terrible situation over there.

Ms. KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN ("Keeping up with the Kardashians"): I know, it's awful.

Ms. KIM KARDASHIAN: The corrupt military regime has control, even though Aung San Suu Kyi's national leader of democracy won over 82 percent of the seats in the 1990 national elections.

MCKINNEY: She almost made it through that line.

MARTIN: Well, bless her heart for trying.

MCKINNEY: I know, and I went on her website, actually, and you know, she has fans who have now heard of Burma for the first time, and they may actually want to help. Her heart's in the right place.

PESCA: If you told Kim that the country's name was "Lurma," she'd have cut the promo for Lurma. That's how much she knows about it.

MCKINNEY: Well, she's very pretty.

PESCA: Also a debatable point. This is one of the most-emailed on Yahoo!. "Chicago students seek Obama's haircut, speedy spud, Weird Al." All right, the headline doesn't tell you what's going on. What's going on is the University of Chicago, for over 20 years, has been sponsoring something like the mother of all scavenger hunts.

Two hundred and sixty nine items were included in the list. Some of them were, get a Nobel Prize winner or "Weird Al" Yankovic to witness your organ-donor registration, get Obama's haircut at Obama's barbershop, or - this is my favorite, and somebody did from a couple of years ago - bring me a live elephant. Check. University of Chicago students, very resourceful.

MARTIN: Get a Nobel Prize winner or "Weird Al"?

PESCA: Yeah.

MARTIN: To witness your...

DAN PASHMAN: Are we going to split hairs?

PESCA: A Nobel Prize winner, or someone who's accomplished something.

PASHMAN: I think "Weird Al" should be an acceptable substitute for any person you need for that scavenger hunt.

PESCA: Also, his parody of the latest particle physics paper was really funny. Jeanne.

BARON: All right, well, I had a most-emailed from the Washington Post. "Legal outsourcing to India has grown 60 percent in the last three years."

PESCA: As opposed to illegal? What do you mean?

BARON: No, I mean as opposed to law work, the work of writing contracts, writing patents, doing research and discovery. There's 300,000 Indians going to law school each year, and now they are helping us here with our legal system. Apparently, there are some similarities. Both the U.S. system and the Indian system are rooted in British, the British model, and...

PESCA: Common law, yes.

MARTIN: Yeah, there you go. So, apparently for what it takes to - what it costs for one lawyer here, you can get 10 lawyers in India. The only thing they can't do is appear in court.

PESCA: That makes sense.

PASHMAN: You know, we should start outsourcing breathing, because it just gets really tiresome after awhile, and you could do 10 times as much breathing, Rachel, that's a fact in India. We've got a most-emailed here from Yahoo! News. "Families will make the case for vaccine link to autism." This is a pretty controversial issue, and this has been several years in the making, that families who claim mercury-based preservative in vaccines triggers autism will come before a federal court today.

It's the U.S. Court of Claims, Office of Special Masters, and they have a few boys who they consider to be test cases who got the vaccines and developed symptoms that parents allege that the vaccines are what caused it. And basically they are having this debate, even though a 2004 committee with the Institute of Medicine concluded there was no evidence that vaccines containing Thimerosal, which is the mercury-based ingredient.

PESCA: Used to be, no longer.

PASHMAN: Right, and we'll see how it goes. The judgment is not expected for several months, but this day has been many years in the makings for these folks.

MARTIN: Yeah, very controversial.

PESCA: That's one of the most-emailed on Yahoo!, and Rachel?

MARTIN: I'm going to wrap it up here with one of the most-emailed at cnn.com. "The top ten baby names." A list that's put together by the Social Security Agency has been released. Top names again for the 12th year in a row for girls, Emily is number one, and for the ninth year in a row for boys, Jacob is number one. Our own Jacob Ganz should feel not special at all because everybody else is named that, too. Other BPP names, Isaac, the new Isaac Stewart Wolff.

MATT MARTINEZ: Is that right?

MARTIN: The name Isaac is 41. It's kind of low, yeah. We're going through the names that aren't on the top ten.

MARTINEZ: But still, that's still pretty good, when you consider how many kids are born every year.

MARTIN: True, you know what? Biblical names, in particular, Old Testament names, tend to be very popular.

PESCA: Ezekiel, Jeremiah?

MARTIN: Not on there. Cassie, 781, kind of low. But Milo, 548.

PESCA: Little Milo!

MARTIN: Very unique, very unique. Yeah.

PESCA: And actually, "Unique" is somewhere in the 400s, I think. I ain't kidding. Matt Martinez. Take us to the river.

MARTINEZ: Yes, I have one of the most-viewed at npr.org right now. You know, this is a story that we were actually talking about in our editorial meeting on Friday, and it's now one of the most-viewed at NPR.

PESCA: Are you saying they scooped us? NPR scooped us?

MARTINEZ: We scooped ourselves, how is that possible?

PESCA: Is there a bug? Is there a leak? Is there a mole?

MARTINEZ: Is there somebody calling down to D.C.? It's a story by NPR's Elizabeth Blair. "Commission calls for MLK statue's redesign." It's a huge depiction of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and a government agency wants it changed. Here's Elizabeth with the story.

ELIZABETH BLAIR: The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is going to be big. The site for it is a four-acre plot on the Tidal Basin, not far from the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Water, stone and trees are the primary elements in a design inspired by a line in Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

(Soundbite of speech)

Dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr. (Civil rights leader): With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

BLAIR: In the original design for the MLK Memorial, a bust of Dr. King emerges almost organically out of the side of the Stone of Hope. To get to the stone, you would walk through two rocks symbolizing the Mountain of Despair. That design won the competition set up by the U.S. Fine Arts Commission, the federal agency that approves anything that gets built on the National Mall, headed up by Thomas Luebke.

Mr. THOMAS LUEBKE (Director, U.S. Fine Arts Commission): The central metaphor of the memorial's experience was Mountain of Despair. This is a difficult thing that our country went through, and Dr. King was the reason why - he led this movement, and so he is part of the Stone of Hope.

BLAIR: But in the new model for the statue, Dr. King is much bigger. His arms are crossed defiantly, and he has a solemn look on his face, and that bothered the Fine Arts Commission. In a letter calling for revisions to the statue, Luebke wrote that Dr. King's character had gone from meditative to confrontational.

Mr. LUEBKE: It looks more like the Stone of Hope is just a background. There's now a full body sculpture of Dr. King in a much more rigid, symmetrical stance.

BLAIR: The architects of the MLK Memorial are considering what modifications they'll make to meet the commission's request. But Harry Johnson Sr. likes the new idea of Dr. King standing tall. He's president of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Foundation. Johnson agrees King's facial expression needs softening, but he wants the statue to be an expression of strength.

Mr. HARRY JOHNSON Sr. (President, Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Foundation): The bottom line is, what depiction of Dr. King do you want? Do you want a depiction of a man - an African-American man not standing tall? The Dr. King we want to see is a man, a warrior of peace, but not a warrior of wars.

BLAIR: The new design for the Dr. King statue was carved by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, and any controversy about his work is fodder for the people who opposed the decision to hire him in the first place. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Foundation was criticized for not hiring an American artist. Lei Yixin has carved many Chinese officials over the years, including Communist leader Mao Zedong.

PESCA: That's NPR's Elizabeth Blair reporting. You can see a picture of the MLK statue on our website, and you can find links to all the stories you heard on The Most by going to our website, npr.org/bryantpark.

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