Bored and Brilliant Challenge 3: Delete That App
Your instructions for today: Delete that app. And listen in as our favorite casual cell phone video gamer confronts the designer of her worst addiction.
Feb 04, 2015•18 min•Ep. 133
Note to Self
Is your phone watching you? Can texting make you smarter? Are your kids real? Note to Self explores these and other essential quandaries facing anyone trying to preserve their humanity in the digital age.
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Episodes
Bored and Brilliant Challenge 2: Photo Free Day
We take 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") photos per year, mostly on our phones. Today, we want you to start seeing the world through your eyes, not your screen.
Feb 03, 2015•6 min•Ep. 132
Bored and Brilliant Challenge 1: In Your Pocket
Your instructions: As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight. Better yet, keep it in your bag.
Feb 02, 2015•8 min•Ep. 131
What 95 Minutes of Phone Time a Day Does to Us
Prepare for our week of Bored and Brilliant challenges with a peek at the data we're gathering on how much you use your phone and what you want to change. Plus, a psychologist and neuroscientist put it all in context with tips for behavior change.
Jan 28, 2015•20 min•Ep. 130
9 Things We Learned About Phones From a Teenager
"Hello, this is Grace from Westchester. I am 16-year-old girl. I have an iPhone 4 and I am going to record my activities for the next few days."
Jan 21, 2015•21 min•Ep. 129
The Case for Boredom
Minds need to wander to reach full potential, and all that time on your phone might be getting in the way. We're here to help with a big project called Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art of Spacing Out.
Jan 12, 2015•16 min•Ep. 128
Seriously, Listen to Your Voicemail
Find a 20-something, a 30-something and a 40-something. If you’re feeling especially experimental, add in a 70-something and a teenager. Say the word: “voicemail.” Watch what happens. Voice messages — and the etiquette around them — are changing. Some people are rooting for voicemail to disappear completely from our communication repertoire. "Typing and talking have an inverse relationship: as it's gotten easier to write your feelings, it's gotten more difficult to speak them." Gizmodo writer Le...
Jan 07, 2015•13 min•Ep. 127
Tales of Real Life Tech Addiction
This week, an encore of one of our favorite New Tech City episodes ever: The tale of David Joerg, self-professed tech addict. David spent years living the life many kids can only dream of: video games at 3 a.m., Nutella from the jar, unlimited hours clicking from one piece of tech news to the next. Running on three hours of sleep per night, he became, in his words, “a zombie.” He decided it had to stop - so he put his techie mind to work, and built a system that totally cut him off. Spoiler: It ...
Dec 31, 2014•12 min•Ep. 126
Screens Really are a Nightmare for Sleep
May we suggest a holiday activity for the family? Sleep. Without screens. Get a lot of it. New research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that that bluish-glow from computers, smart phones and tablets is, in fact, keeping us up at night, and the impacts are worse than scientists previously suspected. Not only are our devices keeping us up later and later into the evenings, they're actually making it more difficult for us to fall asleep at all. The consequences are ps...
Dec 24, 2014•13 min•Ep. 125
Look How Cute this Military Cyber Warfare Training Ground Is
Somewhere hidden in the sleepy suburbs of New Jersey, there is a very small town. This all-American village boasts good public transit, its own reservoir, a coffee shop, a church, a bank... you name it. Their international airport rarely has delays. Where is this idyllic hideaway? That's a military secret. CyberCity, as it's called, serves as a training ground for a new class of specialized "cyber warriors," capable of defending against cyber attack. Every day, soldiers plot to take over the tow...
Dec 17, 2014•23 min•Ep. 124
Your Facebook Friend Said Something Racist. Now What?
In this week's show, we offer a humble helping hand through a messy digital dilemma. Your Facebook feed has become the new town square. The new water cooler. The new [insert your analogy of choice]. Sometimes your far off "friends" and relatives share views far out of step with your values. It can get ugly. “One of my elementary school friends who I grew up with posted a story about hair salons accepting EBT cards," listener Tamika Cody tells us. "Some of her friends started to chime in. They po...
Dec 10, 2014•26 min•Ep. 123
What to Do When Robots Replace People You Work With
What are you willing to automate in your life? How much robot will you accept? This week, Manoush goes on a journey to find out what she's willing to automate in her life, what the right ratio of robot to human is. This, it turns out, is a personal choice. Maybe you'll book travel online instead of through a travel agent, but you still use a human accountant. Last week, when New Tech City adopted the new robo-friend Amy (http://x.ai) as our personal assistant we had to face facts: our efficiency...
Dec 03, 2014•20 min•Ep. 122
Type "Hello" To Amy, Your Plucky Digital Personal Assistant
Imagine a world where everyone could have a personal assistant to schedule meetings for them. Checking in with your team? Ask for it by next Friday and it shows up on your calendar a few minutes later. Drinks with friends? Handled. This is no longer the luxury of executives. Human assistants, even outsourced to foreign countries, are still pretty costly. But a robot, one that lives inside your email and calendar, that's cheap and could catch on. If it works. "I think it is inevitable that we wil...
Nov 26, 2014•23 min•Ep. 121
Varsity Video Gamers
Yes, you can get a college scholarship for playing video games. So what's it like? E-athletes practice five hours a day in a specially outfitted room plush with sponsored gear called the arena. The football team is a little jealous. (This is part 2 of 2 about the world of video games going mainstream go here for part 1 about middle aged gamers). The Scholarships The athletic director of Robert Morris University in Illinois had a bold idea. He wanted to expand college sports to include video game...
Nov 19, 2014•22 min•Ep. 120
Video Games Meet Middle Age Emotions
The first crop of video gamers are facing middle age with no plans to put down the controller. So the games have to grow up too. Expect less blood splatter, more reflection. (This is part 1 of 2 about new kinds of video gamers. Listen to part 2 here .) Enter the Elder Gamers At 61 years old, Dena Watson-Lamprey is a fierce Street Fighter competitor. Probably because she's been playing the one-on-one combat game for decades. And also because she hates to lose. "I’m not happy with low scores. So I...
Nov 12, 2014•21 min•Ep. 119
Pajama Volunteers: The Digital Front of Disaster Response
Cries for help are hidden by the chatter of chaos. Vital updates are lost in the noise. In the crucial days after a natural disaster, information is not organized. But if it were, lives would be saved. Springing to the cause is a new cadre of volunteers who take it upon themselves to offer help from afar, often without ever leaving their living rooms, or in the case of Leesa Astredo, of getting out of her bathrobe. "Sometimes I'll get on the computer at the beginning of the earthquake and spend ...
Nov 05, 2014•18 min•Ep. 118
The Other Ed Snowdens: Inside the Mind of Two Privacy Whistleblowers
Ed Snowden is not alone. And we're not talking about how his girlfriend has moved in with him in Russia. There have been a handful of other technologists who've taken a bold stand and faced off with the U.S. government to protect your privacy from mass surveillance. We don't yet know if it ends well for any of them. Our two guests in this show each risked their livelihood by refusing to help the NSA or FBI snoop on Americans. Let's get to know them. “This is our responsibility as Americans to sp...
Oct 29, 2014•22 min•Ep. 116
EXTRA: Bill Binney and Ladar Levison Talk Cryptography
This is the raw interview used in our episode " The Other Ed Snowdens " with William Binney and Ladar Levison. In that podcast episode we said the conversation got wonky and in the weeds so we cut out some of the most detailed debate about NSA surveillance and crystallographic options. Well, here is that part of the conversation. If you missed that episode, give it a listen. Bill Binney worked for more than 30 years at the NSA and designed the architecture for programs the NSA later used to spy ...
Oct 29, 2014•26 min•Ep. 117
Containing Ebola Like They Did in This Video Game
Public health officials need to be able to predict how outbreaks like Ebola spread and grow. But that's not so easy. Mainly because it requires knowing how real people will react. Human behavior ain't so easy to plug into a computer model. But, then there was this bizarre and totally accidental video game incident that made real life disease outbreak modeling smarter. The story of "corrupted blood" in World of Warcraft is still inspiring epidemiologists. If you like this episode, why not send th...
Oct 22, 2014•23 min•Ep. 115
Space Tourism Gets Sweetly Personal for These Two Strong Lady Travelers
One woman mortgaged her home to buy a ticket to space. Another decided never to have children so she could accept an opportunity for space travel at a moment's notice, even a one way ticket. These two stories collide in this week's episode about women taking the giant leap of commercial space travel. "I’m going to be seeing the perimeter of the Earth. But still, the whole idea of actually being that far removed from it is, for me, it’s priceless,” Lina Borozdina Lina Borozdina has clutched her $...
Oct 15, 2014•35 min•Ep. 114
BONUS TRACK: How Twitter Has Changed Nonfiction
Fluffly and indulgent as they might be the tiny dispatches and status updates of social media are a narrative gold mine for writers. Nonfiction writing will never be the same again. This came up, oddly enough, when we had Nick Bilton of the New York Times on our show to talk about how Silicon Valley tech executives raise their kids -- many of them are low tech parents as it turns out. While he was in the studio, he dropped a few fascinating tidbits about how he reported his book, Hatching Twitte...
Oct 12, 2014•7 min•Ep. 113
Screens and Kids: Do Techies Have Different Rules than the Rest of Us?
In a world of screens, parents face some tough questions: To limit or not to limit? By how much and when? How different is Candy Crush from Codeacademy? And what is all the new tech doing to our children? In this episode, we dive into the conundrum with the techies themselves -- the parents who code the apps and create the devices on your desk or in your pocket. We want to find out if they know something the rest of us civilians don’t. We’ll hear from Sameer Ajmani, a Google software engineer, w...
Oct 08, 2014•22 min•Ep. 112
Killer Robots + Ancient Rules of War = Trouble
Can replacing human soldiers with robot warriors save lives and make war more humane? We try to find out in this episode. But as we learn, the laws of war are not written in computer code. Modern warfare is not ready for killer robots that "decide" without human input. "When a robot gets blown up, that's another life saved." - Mark Belanger, iRobot. In this episode, we hear from the people making the robots as they show off their lethal products. We meet a former fighter pilot who touts the valu...
Oct 01, 2014•24 min•Ep. 111
Backing Tracks: Why Live Music Won't Be Live For Long
Is your favorite band really playing live when you go see them? Not so much. This isn't about Milli Vanilli. It's about something artists love called backing tracks. From Jay-Z to Justin Timberlake to the indie band at the local bar, performers are playing along to pre-recorded music to make themselves sound bigger, badder, fuller. In this episode, we ask: 'is it right to feel wronged as a fan of live music'? Alex Kapelman did. He's a musician and co-host of the documentary music podcast Pitch ,...
Sep 24, 2014•23 min•Ep. 110
The 'Bi-literate' Brain: The Key to Reading in a Sea of Screens
Paper or screen? There's a battle in your brain. The more you read on screens, the more your brain adapts to the "non-linear" kind of reading we do on computers and phones. Your eyes dart around, you stop half way through a paragraph to check a link or a read a text message. Then, when you go back to good old fashioned paper, it can be harder to concentrate. "The human brain is almost adapting too well to the particular attributes or characteristics of internet reading," says Maryanne Wolf of Tu...
Sep 17, 2014•22 min•Ep. 109
The View from Inside the Glass Cube
Intimate, exhausting, stressful, and satisfying... working in the Apple Store is far from an ordinary retail job. Especially this week. With Apple-mania sweeping the tech world following the announcement of the new iPhone 6 and a slick new Apple Watch, New Tech City is looking past the hot gadgets and straight at the people sweating away in the glass cube: Apple Store employees. "We don't have to sell anything... We could put up a vending machine and it would sell itself." Despite a strict Apple...
Sep 10, 2014•17 min•Ep. 108
Ana and Mia: How Eating Disorders Evolved Online
Pro Ana. My friend Mia. Thinspiration. If you know these terms, you are familiar with one of the dark corners of the internet where vulnerable people go to find support in making bad life decisions. These are pro-eating disorder communities that teach women how to be better at starving themselves. A language emerged to bypass bans and filters, replacing trigger words like anorexia and bulimia, with friendly phrases like: “my friends Ana and Mia.” Bone thin bodies, grim weight statistics, and fri...
Sep 03, 2014•24 min•Ep. 107
How to Be Smarter than Facebook
Habits are powerful. Tech companies know that. It's no accident we reach for our phones 150 times a day and spend more time scrolling through Facebook than caring for our pets. "Our brain loves to latch on to rewards that arrive quickly and Facebook has taught us to expect novelty after novelty," says author Charles Duhigg. "Our brain becomes trained at the pace of rewards, and then begins to crave that pace." But if you are wise to the tech companies' tactics, you can take control of your own h...
Aug 27, 2014•17 min•Ep. 106
Learning To Code and Losing My Mind (Reprise)
Coding is not for everybody. We admit it. But we should all take at least a peek under the hood of the computers and devices that power our lives. It's empowering. Starting at a screen full of cryptic code is daunting, confusing, and might just well up some latent math anxiety. That's how New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi felt, which is exactly why she decided to dive in head first. She signed up for a one-day computer programming intensive. This episode chronicle's how it went. In short: It b...
Aug 20, 2014•13 min•Ep. 105
Me and My Girlfriend Texted Only in Emoji for a Month
Face it, Emoji is here to stay. Texting is visual, and images can enhance how we talk. But, will it also change the content of what we say to each other? In this intimate episode, one couple banishes all written words from text messages for a month to see how it alters their emotional vocabulary. Along the way they are forced to create their own lexicon of imagery -- oddly, not terribly unlike ancient Egyptians and Sumerians. Naturally, this 21st century couple hits a few comical communications ...
Aug 13, 2014•18 min•Ep. 104
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