Can Video Games Solve Real Issues?
Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Fixing Our Broken Systems. Watch Jane McGonigal’s full Talk — Gaming Can Make A Better World — on TED.com About Jane McGonigal’s TEDTalk Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could [...]
How Can Law Be Simplified?
Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Fixing Our Broken Systems. Watch Phillip K. Howard’s full TEDTalk — “Four Ways To Fix A Broken Legal System” — on TED.com. About Philip K. Howard’s Full TEDTalk We laugh at America’s warning-label culture — like the bag of airline peanuts that says “Caution: Contains Nuts” — [...]
How Do Rules Fail Us?
Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Fixing Our Broken Systems. About Barry Schwartz’s TEDTalk Psychologist Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for practical wisdom as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues that rules often fail us, incentives backfire, and the key to rebuilding our world is practical, everyday [...]
The Gregory Brothers: The Masters of the Internet
This week, Ask Me Another welcomes meme-mixing masters The Gregory Brothers, comprised of actual brothers Evan, Andrew and Michael Gregory, and Evan’s wife Sarah Fullen-Gregory. The group behind “Auto-Tune The News” and the “Bed Intruder Song” talk about their unexpected YouTube fame, their sincere musical backgrounds, and who among today’s politicians and pundits makes the [...]
Lost Bike Found After 41 Years; Then, The Story Gets Weird
In 1970 a young girl lost her banana-seat bike. Lisa Brown was riding it across a rickety bridge in Cape Cod, Mass., when she and the bike tumbled into a little river. The bike sank into the muck and was gone. Until, that is, the now adult Brown’s wife, Deirdre Oringer, came across a rusted [...]
Man At Center Of Federal Agency’s Las Vegas Scandal Leaves His Job
Jeff Neely, the regional official at the General Services Administration who hosted a 2010 taxpayer-funded conference in Las Vegas that became a scandal as details about excessive spending, gifts and lavish parties were revealed, has left his job at the agency. “GSA spokesman Adam Elkington would not say whether Neely resigned or was fired from [...]
15 Summer Reads Handpicked By Indie Booksellers
Booksellers know how important a good story is — one that reaches out, pulls you in and keeps you reading late into the warm summer night. As readers seek out recommendations for their summer travels, booksellers are scouring their shelves for the stories that shine. For some suggestions, we turn again to our go-to independent [...]
The Price Of College Tuition, In 1 Graphic
Here are two ways to think about the price of college tuition: 1. Sticker price is the full price colleges list in their brochures and on their websites. 2. Net price is the price students actually pay. Net price accounts for the fact that many students receive grants or scholarships. So can be considerably lower [...]
Egypt May Be Headed To Runoff Between Islamist And Former Mubarak Aide
As Egyptian officials count ballots from this week’s first-ever free presidential election in that country, the Muslim Brotherhood is claiming its candidate got the most votes and will likely be in a runoff next month against ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister. From Cairo, NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson cautions that officials are advising against [...]
What A Show! China’s Movie Theaters Have Improved Dramatically
On Morning Edition, NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported about a Chinese company’s $2.6 billion purchase of North America’s second-largest movie theater chain. Now, he tells us how the movie-going experience has changed in China in recent years: When I first moved to Beijing in 1997, going to the movies wasn’t really an option. Many of the [...]
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