Another Terrific “Book on Tape” January 15, 2015January 14, 2015 Except that with Audible, you don’t need any physical tape or CD — you can start listening right now. Or as you do your power-walk. Or sit in traffic on the way to work. It’s Neil Patrick Harris’s Choose Your Own Autobiography, read by the author, way more fun than reading it with your eyeballs. Yes, I loved Doogie Howser, MD. Is it terrible to admit that? (Watch episodes here.) (And no, not everyone from Baltimore is a doctor just because her name tag reads MD, but I digress.) Did you see his eight-minute entirely live 2013 Tony Awards opening number? Good lord. Clicking that link alone should make the rest of your Thursday, even without reading its back story. And, yes, Broadway is gay — but as he explains here, “it’s not just for gays anymore.” And he’ll be hosting the Oscars next month. If you’re a Neil Patrick Harris fan (I have no idea how he met your mother, but maybe that’s why God invented Hulu), you’ll enjoy having him tell you his story. He even does card tricks for you — with your own deck. ETRM The Perfect Segue Dept.: The aforementioned must-watch eight-minute entirely live Tony number is called . . . “Bigger.” And that’s just what we Americans have become. (I had trouble finding good stats on this — I think airlines now assume passengers will be nearly 40 pounds heavier than they were in 1960 or so — but I couldn’t find the link. Help with that?) First suggested at 90 cents or so a couple of years ago (read that here), EnteroMedics has a device that appears to help with weight loss. The company finally got FDA approval yesterday. From Seeking Alpha: The FDA approves EnteroMedics’ (ETRM +20.3%) Maestro Rechargeable System for weight loss treatment in patients at least 18 years old who have been unable to lose weight with a weight loss program and who have a body mass index (BMI) of 35 to 45 with at least one other obesity-related co-morbidity such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes or hypercholesterolemia. The Maestro delivers VBLOC vagal nerve blocking therapy via electrodes that are surgically implanted subcutaneously in the abdomen. The electrodes are placed in contact with the trunks of the vagus nerves just above the junction between the esophagus and the stomach. The device intermittently blocks vagal nerve signals throughout the patient’s waking hours. This could prove good news for the morbidly obese (did I tell you I took my first Carnival cruise?) — and good news for those of us who own the stock. The entire ETRM gut-busting pie is divided into 69 million slices (“shares”) — and trading volume yesterday exceeded 20 million of them. The stock opened at $1.20, spiked to $2.05, and then quickly gave up most of the gain, as long-suffering shareholders “sold on the news.” (As in: “Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.”) I bought some more at $1.40. It’s still certainly risky — who’s to say for sure how many docs will recommend Maestro and how many patients will follow that recommendation? — but the stock was $4 when it first looked as though the FDA would approve it; then plunged to 90 cents when it didn’t. So could it get back to $4 now that it has? Guru: “ETRM could be worth 5 to 10 in a few years, depending on how sales go. It ‘should’ be a great launch and it ‘should’ be bought out. However, a nation full of obese people is obsessed with spending its money keeping cancer patients alive one more year rather than addressing a monumental public health crisis.”