Be more Tuned In podcast -- Kevin Clash, the man behind Sesame Street's Elmo...

We spoke with Kevin Clash via telephone at his New York City office for the February edition of the monthly Be more Tuned In podcast. While you might not instantly recognize Clash's name, or even his deep voice, you probably know his work. To most of the world, Clash is the Emmy-award winning Muppeteer of Elmo, the lovable furry red monster from Sesame Street. The mp3 podcast conversation can be downloaded here and can be enjoyed on your personal computer or loaded onto your personal mp3 player for on-the-go listening.

With a lifelong love of puppetry, Clash has turned his childhood passion into a successful, high-profile career. And while Elmo is probably (and justifiably) his best-known work, Clash also has been involved in a number of other big-time puppet projects in the past 30 years. He's worked and voiced a number of Muppets on various Jim Henson productions. He brought the energetic Baby Sinclair to life in the television series Dinosaurs. He was the giant mutant rat Splinter in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. He also worked on various creatures in the fantasy film Labyrinth.

As Elmo, Clash has been able to travel with the three-and-a-half-year-old monster around the world. He's visited the White House. And he's voiced two of the biggest-selling toys of all time -- Tickle Me Elmo in 1996 and the Tickle Me Elmo TMX this past year. Most importantly, Clash and Elmo have been instrumental in the positive development of millions of children that watch the long-revered Sesame Street, which can be found on WPT at 8 a.m. weekdays.

Hockey weekend in Wisconsin...

This weekend, WPT Sports will present the final regular season home stand of the defending National Champion Badger hockey team. The games, against conference rivals St. Cloud State University will air tape-delayed at 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday across WPT's entire statewide network.

As they work toward the year-end tournament, the Badgers have been surging in the past few weeks in hopes of securing a chance to play the first round of the WCHA play-offs at the Kohl Center. If that happens, WPT will broadcast those games, too.

WPT also is offering the chance to vote for your favorite Badger in the Jim Santulli Seventh Man Award. The award is given to the player who best represents the team trademarks of spirit and good sportsmanship.

To catch up with the team's season, visit their home page for stats, rosters and more. Visit here to hear Coach Mike Eaves' recent press comments. Or, point your browser here for an interactive tour of all of the UW Athletics programs and facilities.

A Garden Expo sneak peek...

It might be cold outside but this weekend spring will be in the air inside the Exhibition Hall at the Alliant Center in Madison as WPT presents its 14th-annual Garden Expo. Folks looking for a touch of the warmer, greener days ahead can venture into the show from 4-9 p.m. Friday, 8-6 p.m. Saturday and 10-4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are only $7 at the door, but if you act fast, they can still be bought for $6 at these participating vendors.

The 100,000 square-foot Exhibition Hall will be filled with the colorful displays of more than 200 exhibitors offering innovative products, garden decorations, seeds, power equipment and more. Central to the Garden Expo is a stunning 10,000 square-foot garden display that shows off the landscaping skills and products of dozens of Wisconsin Landscaping Contractors Association (WLCA) members. Stages in the hall will feature dozens of free seminars where professionals will teach the newest techniques to gardeners of all skill levels. In the rooms surrounding the hall, there will be dozens of hands-on workshops, where for a nominal registration charge, participants can work on a new project and take it home with them.

To see how much work goes into creating a virtual garden from a giant concrete floor, and to see what the Garden Expo is like in its pre-show mode, Be more Tuned In snuck behind-the-scenes Thursday morning to see the set-up in action. Take a look at what we found by clicking the link below...

(Click on the photos for a larger view.)

These corridors -- watched over by a fitting spring-like decorated cow -- are empty now, but by Friday night will be filled with eager gardeners.






Plenty of bright green decorated signs are already set-up in the lobby to greet visitors as they enter the hall.






WPT employees carefully craft what will eventually be a fully functional sales and information kiosk at the front of the hall. This WPT booth is the place to find the new Wisconsin Gardener t-shirts, hats and cookbooks. It is also the spot to purchase Garden Expo raffle tickets to win one of dozens of great prizes from Expo donors.



A WPT staffer hoists the station's logo and attaches it to the custom-made booth rigging. The booth is designed and constructed by the staff of WPT's scenic design department -- the same folks who create the sets you see on your favorite WPT television shows.






This row of some of the hundreds of exhibitor booths is still waiting for the best garden-related merchandise and displays to be loaded in by vendors from across the United States.




Elsewhere in the Exhibition Hall, other vendors have already made quick work of crafting new structures on the floor to display their goods.





The distinct smell of diesel exhaust fills the hall, as skid-steer loaders, fork lifts and other trucks do the heavy lifting for dozens of WLCA member landscapers who are busily preparing the central garden display.


Heavy machinery carries in all of the goods necessary to transform the cold concrete floor into a garden paradise that will showcase a variety of garden, lawn and landscape ideas.





It takes tons and tons of rocks and stones, both natural and formed ...







... and dozens of trees, shrubs and even rolls of sod to make this lush garden possible in the middle of a harsh Wisconsin February.






As more vendors arrive, WPT staff members and volunteers help them check in and find their way to their assigned booths.






And, as the morning leads on, more and more of what would be dozens of deliveries find their way from the blustery loading dock, into their weekend home inside the Exhibition Hall. The only ingredients left to add to the mix are the excited gardeners that will make their way to Madison this weekend. Hopefully you will be one of them. Be more Tuned In will see you there!

A scientific trailblazer...

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, NOVA presents a new episode that explores the life of the pioneering African American scientist Percy Julian. In the first half of the 20th century, Julian broke the color barrier in the realm of professional science more than a decade before Jackie Robinson did the same in baseball. The scientific and societal impact of his work is still felt today.

As an organic chemist, Julian made many exciting discoveries. One of the most important resulted in a way to derive synthetic steroids from soybeans, allowing for drugs like cortisone to be created on a mass scale and helping ease the pain of millions of people who suffer from chronic pain.

In addition to the program, which features interviews with friends, family and scientific peers (including his son Percy Julian Jr., a civil rights lawyer in Madison) and dramatizations of Julian's life, NOVA also offers a collection of added resources on a specially prepared Web site. Viewers interested in learning more about Julian's background and important work can find reactions from other folks who knew him, a timeline of his career accomplishments and even an interactive demonstration of the creation of steroids.

Elsewhere on the Web, Julian's alma mater, DePauw University has an in-depth Web tribute to him. As a distinguished member of the National Academy of Science, Julian's biography is available on their site. And Capital Times columnist Doug Moe wrote a recent column about the program and Julian's son.