Today on All Things Considered, Alisha Niehaus of the Girl Scouts of The USA talks to host Guy Raz about a big update: for the first time in a quarter-century, they’ve completely overhauled the system of badges that Scouts can earn.
Tagged with “npr”
(6)
-
Download
-
How To Save The World, One Video Game At A Time : NPR
Every week, people across the globe spend 3 billion hours playing video games, but that isn’t enough for Jane McGonigal. She says video games can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems — and we really should be playing more.
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135248010/how-to-save-the-world-one-video-game-at-a-time
-
‘American Rust’: Dying Towns And Dreams Deferred
Buell, Pa., the setting of Philipp Meyer’s debut novel, American Rust, isn’t real, but it might seem familiar. Modeled on the manufacturing towns in the Northeast, the fictional city was a thriving middle class community until the steel industry went under — and took the town with it.
"What fascinated me was how we as a society — as Americans — deal with the folks who get left behind when these jobs go overseas," Meyer tells Jacki Lyden.
Meyer knows a thing or two about cities in decline: He grew up the child of academics in a blue-collar neighborhood of Baltimore after the city’s industrial heyday had passed. He read books and acted like an intellectual at home, but felt he had to suppress that part of himself when he went out into his rough-and-tumble neighborhood — where, he says, a man was nearly beaten to death in front of his house.
Meyer says that the current economic crisis is making the problems of places like Buell more commonplace: "Broader society has begun to suffer through what blue-collar folks have been suffering through for the last 25 years in terms of a loss of options, a worry about being laid off, a worry that you won’t be able to pay your bills next month or next year," he says.
Tagged with american rust philipp meyer npr
-
Brian Greene: A Physicist Explains ‘The Hidden Reality’ Of Parallel Universes : NPR
It is possible that there are many other universes that exist parallel to our universe. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, explains how that’s possible in the new book, The Hidden Reality.
Tagged with physics string theory brian greene npr fresh air
-
The Price Of Putting ‘Your Brain On Computers’ : NPR
The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego.
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/29/132369113/the-price-of-having-your-brain-on-computers
-
Comedian Louis C.K.: Finding Laughs Post-Divorce : NPR
In the FX TV series Louie, comedian Louis C.K. plays a divorced father of two struggling to balance his comedy career with being a single dad. It’s a follow-up of sorts to his previous series, Lucky Louie, in which C.K. played a married father of two — which he was, at the time.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128343426