Credentials Pending · Meet the experts
The Guest Book
Every expert the BBN desk has booked, live via satellite or big on the studio wall. All of them confident. All of them specific. All of their credentials, pending.
- 12experts on file
- 0appearances
- 48specialties
- 0credentials verified
Coach Darnell "The Thermostat" Pruitt
Household Temperature Mediator
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Darnell Pruitt coached youth football for twenty years before finding his true calling: standing between a family and a thermostat. He has settled more than nine hundred temperature disputes, most of them between people who share a bed. He brokered the historic Two-Blanket Accord and still gets holiday cards about it. He believes every argument can be solved with a cardigan and a timeout.
“Sixty-eight degrees. Nobody is happy. That's fair.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Atlanta, Georgia
Dr. Beatrix Okonkwo-Lund
Professor of Sleep Logistics
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Beatrix Okonkwo-Lund folded a fitted sheet on live television, and the footage has been studied ever since. She has a theory that every household owns exactly one pillowcase that fits nothing. Her team measured how long people lie awake thinking about something they said in a meeting years ago, and the answer was "too long". She sleeps diagonally, as a matter of professional ethics.
“A fitted sheet cannot be folded. It can only be negotiated with.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Charlotte, North Carolina
Dr. Ingrid Solvang-Hale
Meteorological Conversation Specialist
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Ingrid Solvang-Hale studies what people really mean when they say "cold enough for you?" Her research mapped the four-second elevator silence and found it is longest on the way up. She has a scale for small talk that runs from "brisk out there" to "they say it's going to turn". She has never once discussed the weather for pleasure, only for science.
“Partly cloudy, with a chance of awkward.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Duluth, Minnesota
Dr. Lucia Ferraventi
Professor of Group Chat Studies
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Lucia Ferraventi has read more unread messages than anyone alive, which she admits is a contradiction. She decoded the national meaning of the single thumbs-up, and it was not good news. Her lab tracks the exact moment a group chat goes quiet after someone asks who is bringing dessert. She is muted in eleven group chats, including the one she started.
“Nobody has read the chat. Everyone has seen the chat.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Providence, Rhode Island
Dr. Maren Castellow
Remote Recovery Specialist
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Maren Castellow has recovered more lost TV remotes than anyone in the Midwest, most of them from the same four couches. She founded the Institute for Couch Studies after a cushion swallowed her thesis. She can tell what is under a sofa from the sound it makes when you sit down. Her family no longer lets her visit without a flashlight.
“Check the cushions. Then check your hand.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Columbus, Ohio
Dr. Priya Vellaswamy
Senior Leftovers Analyst
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Priya Vellaswamy is the country's leading expert on the back of the fridge, a region most families have never fully explored. She can date a casserole to within four days using only a flashlight and a long look. She has catalogued eleven distinct shades of "probably fine". Her own refrigerator is labelled, alphabetised and, she insists, a little lonely.
“If you have to smell it, you already know.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Edison, New Jersey
Dr. Rafael Montecruz
Senior Lecturer in Snack Acoustics
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Rafael Montecruz studies the most dangerous sound in any quiet room: a snack. He has measured the crunch of four hundred crackers in libraries, waiting rooms and meetings that should have been emails. He can open a bag of chips so quietly that the bag itself is unsure. His calibrated decibel meter is named Gloria and he says she has never lied to him.
“Every crunch is a confession.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- San Antonio, Texas
Dr. Yuki Tanabe-Rowe
Director of Packaging Resistance Research
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Yuki Tanabe-Rowe has dedicated her career to the plastic packaging that does not want to be opened. She once got into a sealed blister pack using only a spoon, a deep breath and forty minutes. Her lab rates every package on how many tools it takes and how many words you say while using them. She keeps a pair of emergency scissors in every room, and every pair is still sealed in its packaging.
“The package wants to stay closed. Respect that. Then get scissors.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- San Jose, California
Kofi Asante-Marsh
Chief Parking Officer (Emeritus)
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Kofi Asante-Marsh once parallel parked a moving van into a space his students measured with a ruler, and he did it in one move. He retired from the Center for Parallel Parking Excellence but still critiques every car on his street from the porch. He believes the space closest to the door is a test of character, and he has never taken it. He can hear a hubcap touch a curb from two blocks away.
“Turn the wheel. Now turn it back. Now believe.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Professor Desmond Achterberg
Professor of Applied Waiting
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Desmond Achterberg has spent forty years studying the one thing everyone does and nobody enjoys: waiting. His landmark paper proved that the other line is always faster, and he wrote the sequel while standing in it. He measures hold music in "sighs per minute". He once waited so patiently that the office closed around him and he simply stayed for the next day.
“The line is not moving. You are.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Professor Gus Fennimore
Head of the Department of Junk Drawers
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Gus Fennimore believes every home has one drawer that holds its entire history, mostly in rubber bands. He once catalogued a single kitchen drawer in Tucson that contained two hundred and twelve rubber bands, nine dead batteries and a key nobody could explain. He has never thrown anything away, because "the moment you do, you will need it". He has a key of his own he cannot identify, and he has had it for thirty-one years.
“Everything you need is in there. You just can't have it.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Tucson, Arizona
Professor Harold "Hal" Brimley III
Distinguished Chair of Lawn Studies
- Founding expert
- Booked soon
Hal Brimley has measured his neighbours' grass with a ruler every weekend since the seventies, purely for science. He coined the phrase "lawn envy" and then trademarked nothing, because he is a gentleman. He once testified at a neighbourhood meeting that a hedge was eleven inches too confident. He mows in a diagonal pattern that, he insists, does not spell anything.
“The grass is greener because they lie about it.”
- Episodes
- 0
- Debut
- Not yet
- From
- Boise, Idaho
Parody and entertainment: every expert, institute, study and statistic here is invented. Any resemblance to a real person is a coincidence the guests would call “statistically inevitable.”