Only 12 percent of computer science majors are women. That's appalling. It's a shame, a waste and many other nasty words. But it is not hopeless. Harvey Mudd College turned around its computer science gender problem with a concerted effort to quash what they call "the macho effect." A few vocal students who learned programming in high school can dominate and derail a class for everyone else. Those students tend to be male. But as the college found out, it is not a zero sum game to serve those co...
Aug 06, 2014•15 min•Ep. 103
Three award-winning stories packed into one episode. This week New Tech City is bringing you updates on three short shows we did in the past year that won NY Press Club awards . Story 1: Know Thy @Neighbor It’s not always so easy to make friends with your neighbors. Can technology help? Not for our intrepid host Manoush Zomorodi as she tries to grow her own social network for neighbors on her block. We find out what brings people together online and IRL. Plus, you get to meet Joanne, the gravel-...
Jul 30, 2014•23 min•Ep. 102
There is a perfect tone of voice according to Dan Emodi. And he believes his technology can pinpoint it for you. This is the second of two episodes about technology that dissects our voices, pulls them apart, and analyzes them digitally to understand our emotions. Hear how Emodi's company, called Beyond Verbal , is applying 20 years of "emotion analytics" to help us understand ourselves better. These products claim to be able to determine true emotions just from listening to you speak for 20 sec...
Jul 23, 2014•15 min•Ep. 101
Amber Smith's voice is a symptom of illness and an alarm for looming danger, even if she doesn't always hear it herself. Amber has bipolar disorder and her mood swings are a risk: high highs can lead to massive spending sprees and low lows have dipped into suicidal territory. She's managing it now with medication. She's also testing out a new technology to try to catch a mood swing before it starts by using her cell phone to analyze the acoustics of her voice. Tiny variations in how she speaks, ...
Jul 16, 2014•14 min•Ep. 100
This plan went way beyond email. The small startup Outbox had done its homework on the role mail plays in our lives, on the value people place on a letter and a catalog, and they imagined what mail could become. The plan to reinvent postal delivery for the digital age had real promise, the founders thought. So did investors and many customers. It was a new age of mail. And then... well, the Postal Service didn't want to play nice . In this episode: The story of Outbox, a dream crushed. What it t...
Jul 09, 2014•24 min•Ep. 99
The 'get girls interested in coding' push is growing from techie pet project to mainstream movement. Now it has a celebrity spokesperson. A very girly spokeswoman to be precise. "For someone like me who does identify as traditionally girly, it’s a good way to trick girls into thinking its fun and colorful and then they stay because they can do other stuff with it." Actress and TV producer Mindy Kaling of The Office and the Mindy Project is a spokesperson for Google's new Made With Code initiativ...
Jul 02, 2014•19 min•Ep. 98
Our brains are wired to forget. The internet, not so much. That mismatch is a risk to our humanity. Now that the the European Court has ruled that there is a so-called 'right to be forgotten' online, Google must consider requests to remove some search results in the name of privacy. American commentators went nuts over this. Free speech would be lost, went the outcry. A right to know would be buried, echoed the refrain. But maybe Americans are seeing it wrong. This week New Tech City hears from ...
Jun 25, 2014•23 min•Ep. 97
Matt George runs a new bus company that doesn't own buses. And he's making some big promises. He says his company Bridj is going to "rethink the way mass transportation works for the first time, really, since 1897 when the first subway tracks were laid" in Boston, where Bridj just launched its first data-driven routes. George thinks that by crunching enough mobility data he can figure out where people need to go in almost real-time, and create or alter bus routes so there's always one when you n...
Jun 18, 2014•29 min•Ep. 96
Fear of math is real. In fact, psychologists now use the term “math anxiety” to describe the panic many people — particularly girls and women — have about doing math. On this week’s New Tech City , host Manoush Zomorodi plays a new video game that is being developed to alleviate math anxiety by getting physical in front of a screen. Players move into so-called 'power poses.' It's all based on the incredibly popular TED talk below. The game Scoops! from NYU-Poly's Game Innovation Lab turns fracti...
Jun 11, 2014•16 min•Ep. 95
Computer programmers are injecting machines with consciousness and the power of thought. It's time we stop and ask, 'which thoughts?' In this episode we hear how robots can become self-aware and teach themselves new behaviors in the same way a baby might learn to wiggle his toes and learn to crawl. Though this is happening now, Hod Lipson, Cornell researcher, tells us that uttering the word consciousness to roboticists is like saying the "C" word. It could get you fired. We say, it's time to sta...
Jun 04, 2014•20 min•Ep. 94
David Joerg has a problem and he knows it. Until a few months ago his nights would go something like this: He'd put his daughters to bed. He'd wait for his wife to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. And then he'd submit to his craving. "I'd fire up the computer, grab a sleeve of crackers and a fresh tub of Nutella, play video games," and anything else online. Over and over and over until dawn was creeping up on him. He was getting three hours of sleep or less some nights. "I would just be destroy...
May 28, 2014•21 min•Ep. 93
There's a neighborhood in Austin, Texas where the refrigerators tell stories. The roofs are paved in solar panels. There are more electric cars per capita here in the Muëller community than in any residential neighborhood in America. It's a kind of paradise and it could drive you nuts. It's also the future happening right now. Even when she's out, Kathy Sokolic can tell when her husband gets home or leaves because the light switches leave a trail. In their house, every carbon footprint gets trac...
May 21, 2014•18 min•Ep. 92
This episode of the New Tech City podcast explores how technology has changed sleep through the ages, specifically through artificial light. Hear historian Roger Ekirch and psychiatrist Thomas Wehr explain how they each discovered the natural segmented sleep pattern our bodies want. And why we don't sleep that way because of modern technology. Plus, we learn what actually happens to our brains when someone actually does return to the ancient way of sleeping: "People would sometimes say they felt...
May 14, 2014•17 min•Ep. 91
Sure, you read Amazon reviews before you buy. Maybe you even take the time to rate those sneakers (“moderate arch support”) that you ordered from Zappos. But did you know a lot of companies are rating YOU? You probably have a few rankings and scores being kept about you right now. This week is Part 2 of New Tech City’s exploration into the dark side of rankings in a Reputation Economy. ( Here's part 1 if you missed it .) Host Manoush Zomorodi investigates how she got slapped with a bad Uber rati...
May 07, 2014•20 min•Ep. 90
It's getting risky out there in the comment section. This week on New Tech City we bring you a cautionary tale of e-commerce, fine print, and the drastic measures some online retailers will take to protect their reputations, even at the expense of consumers. In part two of our podcast, we explore how a court case over bad Yelp reviews might affect much wider online free speech. It gets extreme. It gets ugly. And it's going to keep happening as the reputation economy keeps growing. The issue is t...
Apr 30, 2014•24 min•Ep. 89
The traditional job interview is obsolete. That is, when compared to an all-knowing video game that peers into the psyche of every candidate. Some companies are adding specially-designed video games to their hiring processes. When a job applicant plays one of the games — like the one we test out in this episode, Balloon Brigade — algorithms monitor the "micro-behaviors" within the gameplay to build a detailed, data-driven portrait of his or her strengths and weaknesses. "This phenomenon, if it d...
Apr 23, 2014•21 min•Ep. 88
For the first time ever, Google has let a journalist into the secretive Google X labs where an eccentric team of big thinkers is hatching plans for the technology of tomorrow. We're talking about hoverboards, a space elevator and floating Wi-Fi hot spots for the developing world. The company talks a big game about chasing these "moonshot" ideas that could improve billions of lives. It's fanciful, it's ambitious, and it's a whole lot like AT&T's Bell Labs of a half-century ago. That iconic co...
Apr 16, 2014•17 min•Ep. 87
Forget Facebook or Twitter. With the inadvertent help of Chinese government censorship, an app called WeChat has taken over the lives of Chinese-Americans. It's part family lifeline, part public square, part dating site and it could be a model for the evolution of social networks. This week on New Tech City, hear what's so special about WeChat as we journey through the hilarious story of a vexed husband trying to understand what makes this app so addictive and pervasive in Chinese-American circl...
Apr 09, 2014•17 min•Ep. 86
Shhhh...don’t tell the kids, but grown-ups are mostly just making up the rules as they go along, especially when it comes to technology and child rearing. This week on New Tech City, we give you a chance to sit and consider where YOU stand on screen-time, video games, and social media for our next generation. Four experts with radically different points of view, ranging from banning all devices, to full digital immersion, present their arguments. Plus we hear parents’ deepest fears and what the ...
Apr 02, 2014•19 min•Ep. 85
Up until the mid 1980s, women flocked to computer science in droves. Then they dwindled away like the dinosaurs. Now, only about 12 percent of computer science majors are women and they hold just one in four "computer workers." * It's bad, but not bleak. We bring you tales of success from technology's gender gap on this week’s New Tech City from the president of a college that quadrupled its female CS majors to a woman whose invisible friend named Ruby helps her code. You see, girls are attracte...
Mar 26, 2014•20 min•Ep. 84
Freelance nation. Micro-work. The gig economy. Call it what you like, it's growing. But can you really make a living taking one-off jobs from websites like TaskRabbit or Fiverr ? Fast Company writer Sarah Kessler gave it a try for one month and told us her story. She discovered that the labor revolution these tech companies promise only serves a very particular kind of worker... one who appreciates inconsistent and sometimes weird jobs and prioritizes pants-free mornings over health insurance an...
Mar 19, 2014•14 min•Ep. 83
This post is by New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi.
Mar 12, 2014•9 min•Ep. 82
The Toyota Production System was developed to maximize efficiency on the auto production line, but some of its guiding principles — " just-in-time " and " built-in-quality " — can be applied to daily life as well. Sure, the every day routines of individuals and families are vastly different from a manufacturing process where the similar tasks are repeated at a high frequency. People are not machines, and it's important to have space and time to adjust, connect, be spontaneous and enjoy the light...
Mar 06, 2014•9 min•Ep. 81
The more we access the web from mobile devices, the more visual our communications seem to become. Smartphone cameras enable us to express ourselves through the photos and videos we spread around on apps like Instagram and SnapChat. Meanwhile, a growing fleet of messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Line make it even easier to incorporate imagery in our casual communications. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are using them to speak to one another in emojis and digital stick...
Feb 26, 2014•26 min•Ep. 79
The Holstee Manifesto motivates a bewildering number of startups and tech companies—Google, AirBnb, Threadless, Zappos, TED and more all hang the poster on their walls. This week's New Tech City podcast tells the story of how a list of simple, earnest, some might say naive, mantras meant to guide three young men through their 20s, became a must-have for all manner of companies in the tech industry. You'll hear how the friendly guys behind Holstee started out with a plan to innovate on the standa...
Feb 19, 2014•18 min•Ep. 78
Log onto an online dating site and you are asking a machine for romantic assistance. That's cool, but you might as well understand how it works, right? There's an algorithm picking and choosing which profile to put in front of which users, and sometimes it works— roughly a third of marriages these days begin online —and other times it doesn't . On this week's New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi tracks down some smart people who are writing, and improving the matching systems of dating sites. Ke...
Feb 12, 2014•14 min•Ep. 77
Let's embrace the delete key, and imagine a world where all our e-clutter wasn't just auto archived by big corporations. When you send a someone a message on Snapchat , for instance, the recipient has just a few seconds to digest the content before it vanishes. The social media service popular with millenials flies in the face of the autosave function that has dominated computing since the 1980s. And that is precisely why it is booming in popularity. This week New Tech City explores whether it's...
Feb 05, 2014•21 min•Ep. 76
Join our host Manoush Zomorodi for a "digital detox" at the intersection of Buddhism and technology. Because, you see, Manoush is an addict. A Pinterest addict. Like many tech lovers who find it hard to unplug, she couldn't manage to power off her iPad during a recent home renovation project: "Just one more pin of Scandinavian kitchens or herringbone hardwood floors," she would plead with herself. The solution, she discovered, was what we're calling a "digital detox," a sort of juice-cleanse for...
Jan 29, 2014•21 min•Ep. 75
Chris is a musician who makes $100 a night by renting out a room in his apartment on Manhattan's West Side through Airbnb, the short-term home rental service. In other part of town, Ken is a landlord whose former tenant in a Nolita building he owns broke various laws by altering and renting out an apartment through Airbnb. The two men have no connection with one another and haven't met, but they're on opposite sides of the debate over the rental website; a debate that has the attention of New Yo...
Jan 22, 2014•15 min•Ep. 74
There are a lot of baby-faced CEOs in the tech sector. But how can someone who's never had a job be a great boss? We bring you three (and a half) personal stories about running companies at extremely young ages, or working for a 24 year-old boss—including the ego wrangling that comes with this flipped age dynamic. There comes a point when CEOs in their 20s have to hire employees in their 30s and 40s or older, especially for C-suite roles (even if the C-suite is starts out as a dumpy conference r...
Jan 15, 2014•15 min•Ep. 73
