Right from wrong. We teach our kids what this means in the classroom and at home. But what about online? The next generation of tech users could be a part of much more civilized digital universe, but only if they learn how now. Manoush talks to Richard Culatta (CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education) about the five steps to creating good digital citizens, and how to turn the current online “culture shift” into something positive, respectful, and more accessible to all.Sign up for Manoush’s newsletter StableG.com/newsletter and find her other podcasts atZigZagPod.com and IRLPodcast.com

Computer scientist and cult-blogger, Cal Newport, wants you to take 30 dates off from all your personal tech. A month off, he claims, is the only way to truly adopt Digital Minimalism, his method for finding tech-life balance and the name of his latest book. Manoush loves a digital detox as much as the next overloaded person, but she explains to Cal why she has issues with his particular prescriptions.  Manoush writes a newsletter that comes out every other Thursday. Sign up at StableG.com/newsletter and find her other podcasts at ZigZagPod.com and IRLPodcast.com

In 2018, Andria Zafirakou was named Global Teacher of the Year and given $1m in prize money. Why? Because this innovative art teacher (and mother of two) helped transform her struggling school in London’s poorest neighborhood into an educational powerhouse: the Alperton Community School now ranks in the top 4% of ALL UK schools. Andria says the techniques she uses in her classroom can be used to improve education on a global scale. On this episode, she shares her creative know-how and how we can all prepare the next generation of innovators… and get more creative ourselves. Sign up for Manoush’s newsletter StableG.com/newsletter and find her other podcasts at ZigZagPod.com and IRLPodcast.com

The tech show about being human returns with an all new season. Host Manoush Zomorodi kicks things off with the latest on the battle between kids and parents over their screens: do we know how kids are impacted by tech? Does it make them less empathetic? Are they being constantly bullied online? Even if we can help kids figure out their digital habits, are we adults totally screwed? Researcher Elizabeth Englander joins Manoush to share new findings and give the most pragmatic advice about how kids and adults can build better relationships with their tech and each other.

Note to Self helps you navigate the digital age by making sense of its most undervalued component: humans! With all new episodes coming every Tuesday, host Manoush Zomorodi investigates the very personal role technology plays in our lives and how we can live better with it. Because you are so much more than an algorithm.

This week we’re discussing government censorship in China, #metoo and cryptocurrency. Endless Thread is hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, and is made by WBUR. You can listen to the show at wbur.org/endlessthread

Long-distance friends Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec spent a year tracking the little things in life. Thanks yous, coffees, complaints, street sounds. And each week, they turned their small-scale data collections into whimsical hand-drawn postcards. On a minute level, they may not say much. But look at them together and they tell an intimate story. This week, Giorgia and Stefanie talk us through three weeks of data, and all the big lessons in our most mundane moments. Look at more postcards by Giorgia and Stefanie here. 

With former Google designer Tristan Harris, who explains how far Silicon Valley will go to capture and control your eyeballs. And Snapchat artist CyreneQ, who makes her living drawing on her phone all day. For real.

We asked you guys to send us photos. Then we gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else.  

Bot armies are taking over Twitter. But they’re not necessarily trying to advance a point of view, according to Phil Howard, a bot researcher. They’re aiming to sow chaos and make dialogue impossible. At the extreme, the goal is to destabilize our very sense of reality.   “Their strategy is to plant multiple conflicting stories that just confuse everybody," Howard says. "If they can successfully get out four different explanations for some trend, then they've confused everybody, and they're able to own the agenda.” This week, why someone would sic a bot army on Manoush. And what her bot brigade can teach us about how bots are shaping democracy, from the 2016 election to Brexit to the recent French election. You can check if a Twitter account following you is real or fake, with Bot or Not, an aptly-named tool from Indiana University's Truthy project.

This week, Note to Self gets in our time machine, back to the Supreme Court cases that defined privacy for the digital age. Stories of bookies on the Sunset Strip, microphones taped to phone booths, and a 1975 Monte Carlo. And where the Fourth Amendment needs to go, now that we’re living in the future. The amendment doesn’t mention privacy once. But those 54 little words, written more than 200 years ago, are a crucial battleground in today’s fight over our digital rights. That one sentence is why the government can’t listen to your phone calls without a warrant. And it’s why they don’t need one to find out who you’re calling. But now, we share our deepest thoughts with Google, through what we search for and what we email. And we share our most intimate conversations with Alexa, when we talk in its vicinity. So how does the Fourth Amendment apply when we’re surrounded by technology the founding fathers could never dream of? With Laura Donohue, director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology. Supreme Court audio from the wonderful Oyez.org, under a Creative Commons license.  

The Dark Web conjures images of gothic fonts and black backgrounds, like a metal fan’s MySpace page circa 2001. But this section of the internet looks surprisingly normal. Accessible only through the TOR browser, there are Google-style search engines and Amazon-style marketplaces. Except what they’re selling are mostly illegal things—stolen passports, hacked account numbers, and drugs. A lot of drugs. This week, we stress out WNYC’S IT department and venture onto the Dark Web. Where you can get heroin, fentanyl, or oxycontin shipped right to your door via USPS. And we talk to Nick Bilton, author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, about how Libertarian philosophy and tech-bro hubris combined to spark an online drug revolution—and an opioid crisis. And the Dark Web community is starting to recognize the role they're playing. Since we recorded this episode, Hansa Market - the very site we visit in the show - has banned the sale of fentanyl, according to the New York Times. 

Today, listener stories and tips: we wrap up our No Filter series of conversations about how women live online. From YouTube megastar Lele Pons to iconic artist Barbara Kruger, we heard a joyous mix of vulnerable confessions, utter defiance, and (for once) a mostly positive vision of what being a woman on the web can look like. To wrap it up, stories from you. About how you’re reconciling the IRL you with the online you. Plus, The Cut’s editor-in-chief Stella Bugbee is back with her greatest hope for the next generation of women in the workplace.  

We couldn’t close out No Filter, our series on women owning it online, without profiling Jasmyn Lawson, former culture editor at Giphy. That's the search engine that houses all those looped videos we use to express emotion - and ourselves - online. But when Jasmyn started working there, she couldn’t find many gifs that looked like her. "Just having Beyonce and Rihanna and Nicki Minaj is not enough to say you're representing black women." So she made her own. Jasmyn Lawson (Ryan Pfluger)  

  The iconic artist talks to Manoush about our curated selfies, owning a font, and why we all need likes. Plus, The Cut’s editor in chief Stella Bugbee. If you missed the other episodes of No Filter earlier this week, go back! Instagram megastar Lele Pons, Transparent actor Trace Lysette, painter Amy Sherald, who made Michelle Obama’s official portrait, and anchor Christiane Amanpour.

The CNN anchor talks to Manoush about sex, wearing a “uniform,” and staying profesh on air and online. Plus, Call Your Girlfriend co-host and Cut contributor Ann Friedman, who almost fell out of her ergonomic chair when she found out she’d be in the same episode as Christiane. Christiane’s new show is Sex & Love Around the World. And Ann’s podcast is, of course, Call Your Girlfriend, with Aminatou Sow. Christiane Amanpour, on No Filter: Women Owning It Online. (Brigitte Lacombe) Every day this week, a new episode of our series, No Filter: Women Owning It Online, with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Five conversations with badass women. And trust us, you don’t have to be a woman for this series to be a must-listen. We’ve heard from Instagram megastar Lele Pons, Transparent actor Trace Lysette, and painter Amy Sherald, who made Michelle Obama’s official portrait. Tomorrow, we close the week with iconic artist Barbara Kruger.  

Her portrait of Michelle Obama went viral. Painter Amy Sherald dismisses the haters. “Some people want their poetry to rhyme.” Plus, Allison P. Davis, Senior Culture Writer at The Cut, on how picking Amy was like Michelle Obama choosing her own Instagram filter.  Painter Amy Sherald, our guest for day three of No Filter: Women Owning It Online. (Susana Raab ) This is day three of our weeklong series, No Filter: Women Owning It Online, with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Five conversations with badass women. Some old, some young. ALL have bent the internet to their will. And trust us, you don’t have to be a woman for this series to be a must-listen.

Every day this week, a new episode of our series, No Filter: Women Owning It Online, with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Five conversations with badass women. Some old, some young. ALL have bent the internet to their will. And trust us, you don’t have to be a woman for this series to be a must-listen. Transparent star Trace Lysette talks to Manoush about the political nude selfie, her #metoo moment, and constructing her self online and IRL. Plus, how her life as a young trans woman prepared her to confront Jeffrey Tambor and live her truth. With Noreen Malone, features editor at The Cut.  Trace Lysette, our guest for day two of the No Filter series. (Ryan Pfluger ) This is day two of No Filter. Yesterday, Instagram megastar Lele Pons. Coming up, painter Amy Sherald, who created that stunning portrait of Michelle Obama. CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour. Iconic artist Barbara Kruger, who blew all of our minds. Plus writers from The Cut.

Every day this week, a new episode of our series, No Filter: Women Owning It Online, with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Five conversations with badass women. Some old, some young. ALL have bent the internet to their will. And trust us, you don’t have to be a woman for this series to be a must-listen. Today, Lele Pons. And if you’re thinking “Lele who?”, you’re not a teen girl. The Instagram megastar talks to Manoush about crafting her image, controlling her edits, and why she gives her cell number to fans. And Allie Jones, senior writer at The Cut, who wrote a profile of Lele in 2017. Coming up tomorrow, Transparent actor Trace Lysette. Wednesday, painter Amy Sherald, who created that stunning portrait of Michelle Obama. Then CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, and iconic artist Barbara Kruger, who blew all of our minds. Plus writers from The Cut.

It’s here! The first episode in our new series, No Filter: Women Owning It Online, with New York Magazine’s The Cut. Today, our launch episode. Every day next week, a new conversation with a badass woman about the highs and lows of living online. And how they've bent the internet to their will. Trust us, you don’t have to be a woman for this series to be a must-listen. Erica Joy Baker, senior engineering manager. (Amy Harrity ) Since #metoo, we’re rethinking what it means to be a woman in the world. But what about being a woman online? In this first episode, why we need No Filter. Plus, we go deep with senior engineering manager Erica Joy Baker. She’s worked behind the scenes at Google, Slack, Patreon. Sites we use to present ourselves to the world, built mostly by white men. Erica explains why that really matters.   It wouldn’t be a Note to Self series without your voice. How do YOU portray yourself online? How does the internet mess with your head? How do you mess back? Let us know. Record a voice memo from your browser or phone. Or email us at [email protected]. 

Stories of life online, told live. We teamed up with Generation Women, a monthly event where women from their 20s to their 80s share stories on a theme. For this episode, the theme is My Digital Revolution. Tales from the wellness editor at Teen Vogue, Kathy Tu from the Nancy podcast, Chirlane McCray, the first lady of New York. And Carol Prisant, the most baller septuagenarian you’ve ever heard. For real. Plus, Generation Women founder Georgia Clark. Our new series No Filter: Women Owning It Online was inspired by Generation Women’s all ages approach. Since #metoo, we're all rethinking what it means to be a woman in the world. But what does it mean to be a woman on the web? To find out, we've partnered with New York Magazine's The Cut. Hear our launch episode now.

Everyone wants to know if we’re normal. Is my body normal, is my brain normal, are my feelings normal? Data artist Mona Chalabi will tell you. And she’ll explain why normal is BS. In the right hands, data is more than statistics. It can expand our understanding of ourselves, and this strange planet that we call home. Mona is the data editor at The Guardian, and host of the new podcast Strange Bird. She makes hand-drawn illustrations of data, from when people eat pizza to how many women remove facial hair to average testicle size (that one’s an interactive chart. For real). And what data can and can’t tell us about America.  

A little while back, we asked you some questions about posting photos. Do you post pictures of your kids? Do your parents post photos of you? Why, why not? We thought maybe a couple hundred people would answer. But we struck a nerve. We got more than twelve hundred responses, with more than six hundred long-form answers (highlights here). You have strong feelings on this one. Feelings full of nuance and complexity, no surprise. This week, psychologist and author Guy Winch helps untangle our mixed posting emotions. He sees kids and adults, individuals and families in his private practice, and he has a new book, How to Fix a Broken Heart. Plus, Charlotte Philby, a mom whose family posts were part of her brand - until she stopped gramming cold turkey.  

Here’s a real message from OKCupid: “Hi, good evening, nice photos. You are not fat.” And that’s one of the few messages polite enough to share. It’s rough on dating apps. But so many of us are using them. How can romance survive? Well, maybe it can’t. This week, sociologist Eric Klinenberg joins Manoush to make the case that dating apps have killed romance. And Eric co-wrote a book on modern love with Aziz Ansari, so he should know. Eric and Manoush feel so strongly, in fact, that they’re debating Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and Chief Scientific Adviser to Match.com, and Tom Jacques, vice president of engineering at OkCupid. Live, on stage. We go behind the scenes as they prepare for battle. Featuring a mystery dater, full of horror stories and insights in the quest for 21st century love.    

ProPublica reporter Julia Angwin is collecting political ads on Facebook, all across the country. Just in case someone needs to check on them later. Like if the Russians bought thousands of ads to sway an election. And she needs your help. She and her team built a browser plugin that collects ads from Facebook, and asks users like you to decide if the ads are political or not. Ads marked as political are gathered into a giant database - the only repository of these ads available to the public. The last time Julia gave us an assignment, tens of thousands of you helped her reveal racist ad categories and potentially illegal housing discrimination on Facebook. Then Facebook worked hard to fix that. We made change. Let’s do it again. To start submitting political ads you see, download the plugin for Firefox or Chrome.  

When we get big news these days, we reach for our phones. We text our loved ones. Husband, wife, mom, best friend. Or, in some cases, our Invisible Girlfriend. We all need someone to tell (or text) our stories to. Even if they’re paid to text back. This week, we revisit a story from 2015 about a service called Invisible Girlfriend/Boyfriend, and how it’s helping lonely adults use their phones to feel understood. Even to feel loved. Quentin, a man in his 30s with cerebral palsy, wonders if his Invisible Girlfriend is really right for him. Journalist Kashmir Hill became an Invisible Girlfriend, and was paid pennies per message as an emotional escort. And psychologist Sherry Turkle weighs the strengths and limitations of our text-based love affairs.  

Screen time is a daily battle. Between kids and parents, between ourselves and our better judgment. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. There is a better way. This week, Manoush talks with NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz about her brand new book, The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life. Practical strategies, solid research, and some reassurance that mostly we’re all gonna be fine. Phew. And we peek at the extremes of screen obsession, from the north of England to South Korea, thanks to reporter Dina Temple-Raston and her new podcast, What Were You Thinking: Inside the Adolescent Brain.   Links from the show: Common Sense Media Fast Company’s survey on parents and screen time

You send us a lot of questions about managing tech-life. This week, Manoush has the answers.   Is there a secret to managing the overload of information coming at us every day? What about all those random accounts you’ve signed up for over the years - can we EVER make them go away? And how do we stay plugged in with friends and family if we decide to break up with social media? It’s the first-ever Note to Self advice show.   WE HAVE LINKS While researching this show we compiled a list of tools to help you manage information overload and your digital privacy, and ditch FOMO for JOMO. Setting an information goal. Manoush has some tips for resetting how you read, post, and browse online. No need to feel icky about Instagram. But when discipline and diligence don’t work out, it’s okay to seek help. Our favorites: airplane mode (sorry), Moment for iOS, Freedom, and Self Control. Also, try some DIY adjustments to your app permissions - turn off your cellular data for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and you can’t browse when you’re out and about. Oh, also check out Infomagical - a week’s worth of challenges, with Manoush’s moral support, to help you manage infomania. Bonus: Manoush recommends some of her favorite newsletters in the show. What makes it past her info-management threshold? The Ann Friedman Weekly, Axios, Quartzy, REDEF, and Dave Pell’s Next Draft. Reclaiming your digital self. Digital privacy matters - even if you don’t have something to hide. That’s why we dedicated a whole project to it last year: The Privacy Paradox. Good for first timers, and even worth a refresher. Other things the team loves: from the EFF, a tool to help you track what’s tracking you online Deseat.me, to delete the random accounts you’ve accumulated over the years DeleteMe, a service you can pay to opt you out of data brokers Julia Angwin’s DIY guide/report on opting out of over 200 data brokers and JustDelete.me, to find the cancellation pages for the services you’ve signed up for. Bonuses: our friend Mike Rogers, the developer we mention in the show, made a Chrome extension for JustDelete.me, and it’s open source. We also found this page, where Facebook lists the data brokers it buys from and provides their opt-out pages. Pretty helpful.     Also, we mention the quest for a perfect oatmeal cookie recipe in this episode, and how opening your phone for that can send you down a rabbit hole. So, to save you that one hunt, here.  

We can’t stop the world from turning. Or the vitriol getting posted online. But we can control how (or whether) we react. Dan Harris anchors ABC News Nightline and Good Morning America on the weekends. His first book chronicled how meditation pretty much transformed him from a jerk to a total mensch. His latest is Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. His podcast - and app - are also called 10% Happier… and thanks to a listener’s suggestion, Manoush and Dan are on each other’s podcasts this week. To talk the difference between “mindful” and “purposeful” tech use and how meditation can be a political act. It’s inspiring stuff. They jibed. Please check out both episodes.

Chade-Meng Tan was employee number 107 at Google. And before he retired at the ripe old age of 44, he created a class there, Search Inside Yourself. It was about mindfulness, with an engineering twist. He never said go deep into your emotions, because engineers would ask “How do you quantify deep or shallow?” Which itself is kind of a deep question, really… Let’s create some calm as this year ends. It all starts with one deep breath.  

Preserving dead loved ones through AI. Social scoring and ranking. Hacking personal details for extortion. When Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones came on the show, we asked them how it feels to basically predict the future. And Charlie said he doesn’t. He just has a sarcastic vision of the present. Even if you've never seen Black Mirror, this episode is a good listen. Because their fictional stories seem to keep manifesting in reality. Season Four of the Emmy-award-winning Netflix show comes out December 29th. A perfect time to revisit this delightfully witty and optimistic conversation.  

This week, the tradeoffs we don’t see when we shop on Amazon. How the company’s dominance from retail to web hosting could create a dystopia of social profiling. Why the answer isn’t to cancel your Prime. And yes, I test drive the Amazon Look so you don’t have to. Amazon is the new Standard Oil, the “titan of twenty-first century commerce,” as rock star lawyer Lina Khan wrote in her viral law journal note. Which, incidentally, might be a nice thing to include with your packages this year. We made a handy printable card with a link to her 96-page blockbuster. Give the gift of light reading on modern antitrust policy, along with those colanders and scarves. (Note to Self) Download

Dylan Marron is internet famous. He makes clever and (actually) funny little Facebook-friendly videos about light topics like Islamophobia, masculinity, privilege. Which attract a *lot* of comments. Many loving and laudatory. Many… not. Like the message from a grandmother in North Dakota saying he deserved to die. The teenager saying he was the most pathetic human being he’d ever seen. A gay artist in Atlanta saying he was everything wrong with liberalism. At first Dylan was shaken. Then he was curious. So he started calling these people. And Conversations With People Who Hate Me was born. This week, the lovely Dylan Marron on the benefits of talking to our haters, and why it’s good for the country as well as your soul.      

An incomplete list of objects that are listening to us: Siri. Alexa. Google Home. The Nest. Our cars. Our smart TVs.  Cayla dolls. All these listening devices raise digital privacy concerns, of course. But recordings can be really useful, too. If only there was tape from a courthouse hallway in Alabama, circa 1979. A mall in Gadsden, Alabama, early 1980s. A Congressional office building, a USO tour. You never know when a transcript of your everyday life might come in handy. The transcribed life is closer than ever. In this repeat episode, one intrepid woman records every single minute of her life, for three straight days. And then lets us listen in. To a lot of mundane minutia, and one extremely uncomfortable interaction. Tape can change things. Knowing we’re being recorded can modify behavior. It can create accountability. But it doesn’t erase power dynamics. The Access Hollywood recording of then-candidate Donald Trump joking about grabbing women. The audio of Harvey Weinstein in a hotel hallway, admitting to groping Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. Sometimes, a tape doesn’t make a bit of difference. With guest co-host Rose Eveleth, of the Flash Forward podcast.  

Pictured above is Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, speaking in November 2017.  David Carroll is hunting for information. About himself. He knows himself pretty well. And so does a controversial marketing firm. Cambridge Analytica claims it holds up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters. The company implied it was the secret sauce in the Trump campaign (then they took that back.)   But this company may share your online marketing profile with political campaigns, retailers, and potentially foreign governments. What if you, the profiled, wanted to have a look too? David, father of two, professor of tech-design and online ad researcher, made that request and now is suing for further information. This week, what David found. And didn’t find in his file. And what it could mean for our democracy.   You can request your own file from Cambridge Analytica. Let us know if you do and what you find. Feeling super creeped out about what marketing firms know about you? Turn that creepy feeling to action with the Privacy Paradox. Our series designed to help you reclaim your digital identity with easy, daily action-steps and podcasts.

The first chapter in our look at Cambridge Analytica. Back in March, we asked the controversial digital marketing firm what services they provided for Trump. And experimented with our own psychometric profiles.  Listen to our latest episode to learn about the new lawsuit that could shine a light on Cambridge Analytica.

When governments start pulling the strings of power with algorithms and bots... we ALL become political puppets. Listeners, it’s time to consider how online interference moves into the physical world. President Trump recently met with Russian president Vladimir Putin who told him that his country definitely didn’t meddle in the U.S. election last year, online or off. Good thing that’s cleared up. But if for some reason you’re not inclined to take either (or both) of those two men at their word, this week, some tips. How to spot a botnet. How psychometrics sells sneakers - and worldviews. And how to make sure you’re not the useful idiot. The final installment of our Nyet series, with information warfare expert Molly McKew.   Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  Listen to our first and second episodes. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.     

Russian spy tactics have gotten an upgrade since the Cold War. This week how they work now: bad actors, active measures, advanced persistent threats. Cyberwar has its own vocabulary. So we got ourselves a tutor. Join Manoush and information warfare expert Molly McKew, who puts the fun in fundamental assault on democracy.  Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  This is the second episode of our series on Russia. Listen to the first and last parts. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.   

During the presidential campaign, Daily Beast executive editor Noah Shachtman opened up Twitter, saw all the vitriol and fake news and conspiracy theories, and thought 'Man, is this really my country?'  Then Noah and his team started to investigate Russian interference in the election. Videos made in Russia, purporting to be from the American South. Activist groups invented in Russia, prompting Americans in Idaho to attend real-life protests. Is this his country? Yes. Also, maybe no.   As Facebook, Twitter and Google’s parent company Alphabet sit down before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Note to Self is separating conspiracy from reality. Connecting the dots without turning the office into a scene from Homeland. With Noah Shachtman and reporter Spencer Ackerman of The Daily Beast. Plus, a look back at what we knew all along. We started in November 2016 with tech under the Trump administration. In March, we questioned Facebook’s responsibility for fake news with former ad executive Antonio Garcia Martinez. Exploring the Trump campaign’s use of psychometrics, we interviewed the chief product officer of data-profiling company Cambridge Analytica. April brought a foray into the alt-right corners of Reddit, and the origins of the word cucked. And in May, we talked to Phil Howard, an Oxford University professor among the first to research the armies of Russian bots spreading garbage and confusion on Twitter. Turns out, almost without realizing it, we’ve been assembling pieces of this puzzle all year. Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  This is the first episode of our series on Russia. Listen to the second and third parts next. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.   

Manoush is a nice human being. Polite, punctual, present. But man, is she a rude robot. Recently, Manoush attended a conference as a telepresence robot. (Imagine an iPad, on top of two brooms, with a Roomba as the base.) And she careened around interrupting conversations, sideswiping people and disrupting panels. Literally an out-of-body experience. We lose track of our bodies every day now. We spiral into some Instagram stalking mid-commute and bump into someone on the street. We surface from a text at dinner to a peeved friend, still waiting the end of our sentence. We follow the blue ribbon of our GPS right off a cliff.  This week, the big and small ways we’ve put ourselves on autopilot. What we gain, and what we’ve lost. Because there was a time when humans were guided by the stars, not the satellites. With researchers Allen Lin, Johannes Schöning, and Brent Hecht, who have their own embarrassing robot stories. And Greg Milner, author of Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds. The problem with GPS isn’t the machines, guys. It’s you.  

If you’ve ever played video games, or swapped tiles around on Candy Crush, you know the feeling of winning. Like a light in your brain, a mental fist pump. But you probably also know that guilty feeling after realizing you've spent 30 minutes plugged in. That worry, when your kid spends hours on the console. Jane McGonigal, game researcher and futurist, is here to take away some of that guilt. She’s a champion of gaming as a form of self-help. Because, Jane says, that light you feel when you unlock a level - that's your mind being altered. Slightly.  Jane is optimistic about that power. Mind alteration can be a beautiful thing, and with games it is substance-free. But it also takes self-control to keep it healthy. This week, we set some ground rules. We first talked to Jane last year and we're revisiting the conversation with some added insights.   

Eugenia Kuyda and her best friend Roman had a habit of texting back and forth all day. When he was killed in a car crash, the void was enormous. So she put her technical skills to use. She gathered all his texts, his emails, his entire digital footprint, loaded them into a system that finds patterns in data, and created a bot version of Roman. Then she started hearing from other people who had lost loved ones. They wanted to make a bot too. And Replika was born. Replika works mostly by texting with you. Through your chats, Replika learns your speech patterns and habits, thoughts and hopes and fears. It uses them to become you. To use the same emojis you do. Laugh (well, type “lol”) at the things that make you laugh. What could go wrong with a filter bubble of one? Mike Murphy, a reporter for Quartz, spent months talking to Replika - talking to himself. He wrote a strange and powerful article about the experience. It turns out, he didn’t know himself as well as he thought he did.

We used to RSVP to events. Now, invitations live in our Facebook notifications and group texts. And we just ignore them. It’s so easy to forget there’s a human on the other end. Asking you to show up. Renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel says we’re suffering of aloneness. Our phones create distance and intimacy at the same time. Esther has a way out of this strange paradox - some ideas for how we can treat each other better. We do, too. Well, Esther’s idea, our tool. Take five minutes and ask yourself - who do I owe a phone call to? Who do I need to check in with? Who did I leave hanging and never got back to? We know that sounds daunting, so we’re here to help. You can text GHOST to 70101. We’ll reply (well, our textbot will), then we’ll check in a week later to see if you faced facts and made that list.   Correction: In the episode Manoush refers to Esther Perel as Dr. Esther Perel. Perel isn't a doctor, she is a psychotherapist.   

So you’ve finally matched with someone you like on Tinder. Your chats are funny, smooth, comfortable. When you meet in person, you sit at a bar for five hours without noticing the time. “That was so fun! Let’s do this again!” “Yeah, sure!” “How about next Tuesday?” Then… radio silence. Ghosted. Or maybe the fadeaway is more subtle. You try to make plans, and they’re into it, but they’re so busy. A project needs to be finished at work, then friends are in town. Yeah, you’re being simmered. Online dating has given us a lot of new ways to get dumped. Or, you know, not. Esther Perel is our guide to this treacherous terrain. She is a renowned psychotherapist and author. Her new book is called The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, and her podcast is Where Should We Begin. She's giving us a two-part therapy session on how tech is changing romance, relationships, and our expectations of each other. So listen in, even if you’re like Manoush and met your partner over 10 years ago, when things weren’t so complicated.    

Silicon Valley has a gender issue. That's hardly breaking news. But things have escalated recently. Some examples from the last few weeks: The Ellen Pao saga. The James Damore memo at Google. The ouster of Uber’s CEO. The frat-house behavior at SoFi. The utter lack of consequences for VR startup Upload. Sometimes it's straight-up harassment. And sometimes problems stem from the bro bubble - nice guys, but they’re all the same guys. Everyone else “isn’t a good fit.” Ellen Ullman has seen both. She started programming in 1978, when she wandered past a Radio Shack and taught herself how to code on the first personal computer. Ellen's new book, Life in Code, is full of great and awful stories. Her love of the work. The joys of hunting down a bug. But also, the client who would rub her back while she tried to fix his system. The party full of young men drinking beer, including Larry Page, who offered her a job on the spot. Forget about appealing to the tech elite, she says. We have to invade the culture. Find allies where we can, and build an army of programmers focused on our shared humanity. Ellen Ullman and Manoush will be in conversation at Housing Works Bookstore on Tuesday, September 26th. Come see them in person, buy some books, and get tips on storming the gates IRL.  About that stock photo: We had a lot of laughs about all the absurd photos of women and computers. But it’s a real problem when all the images are of white women looking confused when confronting a keyboard, or when photos like this one are called "Cute businesswoman angry with PC." The team behind #WOCinTechChat took on this issue a couple years ago, organizing a collection of stock photos of women of color doing technology right. That project has now moved over to Buffer’s Pablo site, and the images are still available for your use any time you need a photo of any human in tech. 

José Cruz is a college student, research scientist, and phone power-user. He spent 6 hours in one day on his screen. So he wanted to cut back, make more time for research, reading, and mental drift. We gave José a copy of Manoush's new book, Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. The book has a week of challenges, and José did them all. He recorded the journey. It wasn't easy, but boy, was there a payoff.   Plus, seventh grade teacher-turned-neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang explains why José's week of struggle and revelation makes total neurological sense. And what we can all learn about the link between single-tasking and innovation.

Today, the first book to be born out of a crowdsourced podcasting movement - our movement, dear listeners - is here. In 2015, tens of thousands of you joined me in an experiment. Could we separate from our devices just a bit, and turn them from taskmaster to tool? Could we make space for boredom, and let the brilliance in? Together, we found the answer. YES. Enter Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. Today, we connect with Liam and Vanessa, who took part of the original challenge, to hear the surprising places the last two years have taken them. Plus a new conversation with tech-star and NTS friend Tristan Harris, a designer once tasked with sucking your eyeballs to the screen. Now, he’s fighting the good fight to reclaim your brain. COME SEE ME! I’ll be signing books and engaging in some lively discussion around boredom at the Strand in Manhattan this Friday, Sept. 8. Fittingly, with my longtime friend and radio mentor Brooke Gladstone, host of On the Media. And to kick off my virtual tour, because we can’t forget the Internet, I’ll be on Reddit earlier that day. Send me questions through /r/podcasts at noon. I’ll be @manoushz. I’m excited to see your usernames and actual faces.  GET BORED To celebrate the book launch we made Bored and Brilliant phone backgrounds. For reminders to look up, space out, and wander toward brilliance. Download (and share!) now...  (Sahar Baharloo) Download   (Sahar Baharloo) Download   (Sahar Baharloo) Download    

This week, Manoush’s book - the book that started with you, listeners - hits the shelves. To encourage you to #GetBored and find brilliance, we made a weird earworm. It's an interview about the history of boredom... sound-designed to help you space out. With historian Peter Toohey, and some very soothing, meditative music. Our senior producer Kat kept saying she woke up from the episode, every time she listened. Take an audio nap with us. It'll make you happy, we promise. 

TED! TED!! TED!!! A few months ago, Manoush traveled to Vancouver to tell the story of Bored and Brilliant on the TED main stage. And yes, it was big, and nerve-wracking, and totally exhilarating. Listen for her behind-the-scenes memories, and then watch the talk here. Oh, and pre-order the Bored and Brilliant book if you haven't already. Because full transparency: algorithms love pre-orders, and more means the book might make it to Amazon's homepage. Which means more wacko experiments for us to do together in the future.   We want to hear from you (as always). If you did the Bored and Brilliant project in 2015, what's the one thing that sticks out in your mind two years later? Maybe you made a change to your phone habits? Maybe you watch a pot of water boil when you need to solve a problem in your life?  I want to know what continues to resonate most with you. For those wacko experiments to come. Share a memory, a story, a tip with us. Record a voice memo and email it to [email protected]. Don't forget to binge our Save the Planet five-pack, if you haven’t already. Whale poop, giant vacuum cleaners, hard-shelled plants - it’s a weird and wonderful world out there. And in your feed.

This is part of our five-episode pack on how science and technology can fight climate change. With better air conditioning, more whale poop, souped-up plants, and a giant vacuum. If all else fails, planet B. With David Biello, science curator at TED, author of The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age, and contributing editor at Scientific American. It’s August. It’s hot, and no, you’re not imagining things, it is getting hotter. But whatever New York Magazine says, we can still save the planet. And technology can help. We kick off our five-part series with a look at one technology the planet can’t live with, and humans can’t (or won’t) live without. Air conditioning. As the planet heats up, we’re blasting it in more places, and more often. Which heats the planet more, so we need more AC, and around and around. But there is a better way. Thanks, in part, to the internet of things. And a little tweak from you. 

This is part of our five-episode pack on how science and technology can fight climate change. With better air conditioning, more whale poop, souped-up plants, and a giant vacuum. If all else fails, planet B. With David Biello, science curator at TED, author of The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age, and contributing editor at Scientific American. We love blue whales. They’re our ocean’s majestic, floating giants. They have hearts the size of cars. They travel alone or with a single friend. And also they poop. Super-fertilizing, massive turds. The iron in whale poop fertilizes ocean algae. Which then blooms, makes oxygen for us, and helps sink CO2 into the Earth.  Our guide David explains how whale poop has inspired innovations, like iron fertilization and ocean gardening. And how other technologies, riskier but cheaper ones, are stealing the spotlight a little. Note to self, beware of the climate change quick fix.  

This is part of our five-episode pack on how science and technology can fight climate change. With better air conditioning, more whale poop, souped-up plants, and a giant vacuum. If all else fails, planet B. With David Biello, science curator at TED, author of The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age, and contributing editor at Scientific American. Do you want a blue tomato? Because we can make one, thanks to the magic of gene editing. The question, of course, is should we. Genetically-modified foods have been a battleground for years. And the debate about genetically-modified humans is ratcheting up. But what about tweaking the genes in algae? David Biello says we can alter our plants to suck up more CO2 - buying us a little time to get our carbon-spewing habits under control. Closer to home, we can aim for control over our meat-heavy, food-wasting diets. Meatless Mondays, meet tofu Tuesday and fried-egg Friday. 

This is part of our five-episode pack on how science and technology can fight climate change. With better air conditioning, more whale poop, souped-up plants, and a giant vacuum. If all else fails, planet B. With David Biello, science curator at TED, author of The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age, and contributing editor at Scientific American. Humans produce a lot of CO2. When we burn coal, drive a car, take a plane. When we breathe, except we can't help that. Unfortunately, carbon emissions are what's heating up the planet - shooting out of our tailpipes and smoke stacks into the atmosphere. This week, tackling those emissions with a giant vacuum, taking the CO2 and sticking it underground. Which sounds suspiciously like that classic teenage slob move - shove your mess into the closet, deal with it later. Luckily, underground turns out to be a pretty big place. Bigger than our New York City closets, at least. 

This is part of our five-episode pack on how science and technology can fight climate change. With better air conditioning, more whale poop, souped-up plants, and a giant vacuum. If all else fails, planet B. With David Biello, science curator at TED, author of The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age, and contributing editor at Scientific American. Mars is the escape hatch, the backup plan. Planet B. Except for one thing. Mars is uniquely hostile to humans. Its surface is basically rocket fuel. Which means that for Mars to sustain human life, it needs a lot of support from Earth. Oops. So why talk about it at all? Because it sparks innovation - solar panels were an offshoot of the space race. Because it’s freaking cool. And because it inspires. But let's not put all our eggs in that space shuttle just yet.   

Manoush has a secret tech shame: a Yahoo email address. Even with the (three) hacks, the company's sale to Verizon, and its plummeting cool factor, she's stayed. Call it loyalty, inertia, or a bad case of privacy paradox. We heard from many of you, listeners, about your own digital traps. The services you just can't seem to log out of, even when you probably should. This week: the tech loyalties we keep past their expiration date. And how to extricate yourself - logistically and emotionally. Plus, what happens when big companies like Verizon buy big companies like Yahoo. Because it happens a lot, and there are casualties besides your pride. With Brian Feldman, writer for New York Magazine, and Andy Yen, founder of ProtonMail. Maybe the best escape hatch is an encrypted folder in Switzerland.  

The Dark Web conjures images of gothic fonts and black backgrounds, like a metal fan’s MySpace page circa 2001. But this section of the internet looks surprisingly normal. Accessible only through the TOR browser, there are Google-style search engines and Amazon-style marketplaces. Except what they’re selling are mostly illegal things—stolen passports, hacked account numbers, and drugs. A lot of drugs. This week, we stress out WNYC’S IT department and venture onto the Dark Web. Where you can get heroin, fentanyl, or oxycontin shipped right to your door via USPS. And we talk to Nick Bilton, author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, about how Libertarian philosophy and tech-bro hubris combined to spark an online drug revolution—and an opioid crisis. And the Dark Web community is starting to recognize the role they're playing. Since we recorded this episode, Hansa Market - the very site we visit in the show - has banned the sale of fentanyl, according to the New York Times.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

Do your parents post pictures of you? Or did they when you were younger? Do you post pictures of your kid? We want to better understand how families are sharing information online. So we made two surveys - one for parents and guardians, and one for teens and young adults - to help us think about this, together.  Spare 3 minutes to take them now. This one if you're a teen, and this if you're answering as a parent. Then spare another 30 seconds to share our surveys with your network. Your (aggregated) answers will be part of an upcoming episode, and our on-going inquiry into these digital lives we're living.   Here's why we're interested: a 2010 study discovered that 92% of children in the U.S. have a social media presence by their second birthday. A third are online even before they're born - in sonogram photos on their parents' social feeds. Growing up has never been so public or so digital. And that's our bread and butter. Maybe it's yours, too?

There’s David after the dentist. The BBC interview crashers. The Charlie bit my finger kid. That hero girl blanking Snow White. To say nothing of the baby pics in your Facebook feed, kid pics in your Instagram, and the teens in your Snapchat. Kids are all over the Internet. But… should they be? This week, we revisit a friendly debate about whether or not to post pics of children. With one of our favorite podcast hosts, Hillary Frank of the Longest Shortest Time. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK Do your parents post pictures of you? Or did they when you were younger? Do you post pictures of your kid? Let us know. Our team made two surveys—one for parents and guardians, one for teens and young adults. Take just a couple minutes to answer, then share the surveys with your networks. It’s all research for an upcoming episode. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Yeah, it’s been a while for us too. So after a long weekend of photo sharing, music streaming, and group texts, let’s reset. It’s the Bored and Brilliant bootcamp: three quick challenges to help you make space for brilliance in our accelerating world. Maybe you’ve heard this episode before, but even if you have, a boredom refresher can’t hurt. Take some time to daydream, and see what ideas bubble up as your mind wanders. Try the radio instead of Spotify. Chase down the ice cream truck instead of ordering Postmates. Stare at the clouds instead of Facebook. Just for a day. Or an hour. It’ll feel weird. And then it’ll feel great. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Think back to June 2007. Taylor Swift had released her first single, Barack Obama was running a long-shot campaign for the presidency, and the iPhone was about to change everything. That first iPhone had no GPS, no video, no app store. No Candy Crush, no Instagram, not even Google. So how did it take over our brains and the world? In the past decade, smartphones have displaced most of the things in our pockets. Calendars, datebooks, the Walkman. Watches, address books, business cards. Tickets, boarding passes, keys. Cash. Eye contact. Boredom.   This week, what we’ve gained, and what we’ve lost, thanks to the iPhone. With David Pogue, one of the first four (non-Steve Jobs) humans to get his hands on one, and Adam Greenfield, author of Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones are the surprisingly funny minds behind Black Mirror, the binge-watch of choice for dystopian techies. (Besides CSPAN.) These days, their show veers very close to reality. They’ve done episodes on the performative stress of social media, on the lethal consequences of cyber-bullying, and a show from 2013 on a cartoon character running for prime minister. They seem to have an eerily accurate pulse on our imminent tech future. Brooker and Jones came to the Note to Self studios to explain themselves. And it turns out we have a lot in common. They’re also wary of their webcams. They also sleep with their phones close to their heads, and they also feel bad about it. They also worry about information overload and the impact of constant surveillance. They’re our type of nerd. Charlie, Anna and Manoush talked about where their ideas come from, why they haven’t quit TV to launch a startup, and why Twitter is the world’s top video game. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

This Father's Day, a surprise.   You may remember our award winning series Taking the Lead, which we dropped into your feeds last month in celebration of Mother's Day. It follows the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have a tech idea to help harried working mothers rise up in their professional ranks.  If you haven't heard the first few episodes, they're right here: Episode 1: The Paint Point Episode 2: The Paradox Episode 3: The Pressure Episode 4: The Partnership Now, in celebration of Father's Day, we're re-releasing the final part of Taking the Lead: Manoush’s full conversation with Andrew Moravcsik, the accomplished author, academic, and husband to Anne-Marie Slaughter (yeah, the one who literally wrote the book on women in the workplace.) You’ll want to hear Andy’s insights into what being the lead parent has meant for his career, his psyche, and their marriage. When this series originally aired, we created a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. Check it out. And keep the conversation going, we love to hear from you, always.  

When Ron Wyden got to Congress, Oregon was known for its wood products and the Internet was a series of tubes. Now, things are a little more complicated. Government hacking. Feds reading Americans’ emails. Border agents demanding your passwords. Corporations selling off your browsing habits. And our old friend, net neutrality. Sen. Wyden can get down into the weeds with the best of them. This week, he geeks out with Manoush about Rule 41, Section 702, and all the other acronyms and provisions that rule your life online.  “I had to push back against overreach in the Bush administration, in the Obama administration, and I think it would be fair to say I'm going to be no less busy during the Trump Administration,” Sen. Wyden says. With his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which heard from former FBI Director James Comey last week, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions yesterday, odds are pretty good. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.        

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which today is hearing testimony from former FBI Director James Comey. And just a guess, but chances are issues of hacking, data integrity, and digital meddling might come up. But Sen. Wyden didn’t just start thinking about these issues during the 2016 campaign. He’s long been a champion of your rights in the digital realm. He sat down with Manoush earlier this week to talk about where that fight goes next. Here’s a sneak peek at their conversation. Next week, come back for their whole interview, on border device searches, government hacking, cell phone security - oh, and how to keep us all safe without violating our rights.

Rochelle LaPlante works on contract as a content moderator. She’s seen basically every kind of image you can imagine. All the boring, normal stuff - cat videos, vacation snapshots, headshots for dating sites. Weird stuff, like hundreds and hundreds of feet. And the occasional nightmare-inducing photo of horrific violence, child abuse, graphic porn. It takes a toll. Some things, you can’t unsee. Sometimes Rochelle knows who she’s working for, often not. For about four cents a click, she marks whether the images, text or videos meet the guidelines she’s given. Meet the invisible workforce of content moderation. This week, all the pictures that never make it to your screen. With Professor Sarah T. Roberts, who studies digital pieceworkers, and Rochelle LaPlante, who you should really thank for protecting your eyeballs. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Daniel Aaron was the grandfather of our senior producer, Kat Aaron. He was a historian, a writer… and apparently a suspected communist. At least according to the FBI file uncovered by FOIA the Dead, which uses the Freedom of Information Act to request the files of everyone in the New York Times obituary page. So far, that includes anti-nuke leaders, fair-housing activists, journalists, and a flying nun. But what you see when you look back through FBI files of yesteryear is that surveillance is shaped by politics. Whomever catches the eye of the FBI depends a lot on what’s going on in the nation, and the world. Right now, it’s not housing activism or anti-nuclear agitation that are (most) suspect. It's terrorists, it’s Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Maybe it’s you. This week, Parker Higgins of FOIA the Dead and Jason Leopold, senior investigative reporter at Buzzfeed (and so-called FOIA terrorist) join us to look at surveillance past and surveillance very present.   THE SCRAPBOOK Here's a photo from Dan Aaron's scrapbook that we mention in the episode. Many more images are at the Pressed Wafer, the publisher that brought it out into the world.  (Pressed Wafer)   GO FOIA YOURSELF Happy Birthday, Freedom of Information Act! You're 50, and more relevant than ever. Any U.S. citizen (or "lawfully admitted alien") can request information on themselves (or another living person) under FOIA. So why not, right? Here’s how:     Use this portal to submit your request electronically. You can opt for a paper request, and that has its own instructions. Once you click submit, you’ll have to read & agree to some terms. But don’t worry, it’s a short TOS. Enter your email and you will receive a link to continue your request. That link will bring you to a page that asks for info like your name, email, date of birth, and address. The address part is so you can receive your file, which the FBI will send you via standard mail. Because they are old school. From there, the form is pretty simple. At one point you’ll be asked if you’re willing to pay for your file, which is up to you. You do not have to pay. They’ll explain, but shoot us a question if you’re unsure at notetoself at wnyc dot org.  You’ll certify your information and submit! You should get an email with a confirmation. Don’t expect the file soon, though… it can take a while. N2S producer Megan requested her own file while making this list and it took exactly 7 minutes (she timed it).  And a tip from Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold, who we talk to this week - ask the FBI to "conduct a cross reference search as well as text searches of the ECF (Electronic Case File) and a search of ELSUR (electronic surveillance) records." Straight from the expert, guys.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

With all the news of leaks, national security, and hacking destabilizing the world, who better to talk to than Ed Snowden? Manoush sat down with him—via video chat —on stage in D.C. at the K(NO)W Identity conference this week. And they talked about all the obvious things: the NSA, the Microsoft ransomware, and privacy. But they also got really Note-to-Selfy. Manoush and Ed talked about identity, and the self, and the “quantified spiderweb of all our worst decisions” that follows us online. "Privacy isn’t about something to hide," Snowden said. "Privacy is about something to protect. It’s about who you are, who you can be. It’s about the ability to make a mistake without having it follow you for the rest of your life."  A full transcript of their chat is here, if you want. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.      

You know that feeling, maybe in college - you’re suuuper chilled out, maybe chemically-assisted, and you’re like, how do we know we’re even in the same reality, man? That’s what the world has been feeling like, except, not so chill. Were reports that the President leaked classified intelligence fake news? Or was it real, but totally NBD? Was Comey pressured to drop the investigation into Flynn, or not? Was Spicer in the bushes, or among them? Is everything terrible and going to hell, or is America finally great again? Basically, how do we even know what reality IS any more? This week, we investigate reality itself, with our friend Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC’s On the Media and author of a new book, The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time. The trouble with reality, Brooke says, is that it’s different for everyone. Facts and experience—those don’t bring us all to the same conclusion. So here we are, in an America with two sets of people with realities so far apart they’re like universes whose round edges barely touch. Manoush and Brooke were not zapping their brains during this interview, but they do get pretty far out. Huxley and Orwell, Le Guin and Philip K. Dick and Thomas Paine. Sit back, relax as you will, and come along for the ride. Oh, and that article Manoush mentioned in the interview, by Farhad Manjoo? It's here.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

This Mother's Day, a surprise. For all you working mothers balancing deadlines and diapers, ambition and your (lovely) children, we're re-releasing all four episodes of our award-winning series Taking the Lead. This is the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have a tech idea to help harried working mothers rise up in their professional ranks.  Why? Because of numbers like these: 4.6 percent of S&P 500 companies have female CEOs  43 percent of highly-skilled women with children leave their jobs voluntarily at some point in their careers The U.S. is the only developing country that doesn't mandate paid maternity leave. The Family Medical Leave Act gives workers a maximum of 12 weeks off unpaid per year Almost 70 percent of mothers and over 90 percent of fathers are in the workforce Caregiving is projected to be the largest occupation in the U.S. by 2020 Only 7 percent of U.S. startups that received at least $20 million in funding have founders who are women  And mothers often find themselves doing the heavy lifting at home. Enter Rachael and Leslie, who team up to create Need/Done, a digital platform with a feminist mission to help more women make it to the corner office. How does it work? Through a crowdsourced community of parents, the service provides backup childcare and household support. Think: Nextdoor meets Sittercity. Start their story here, with Episode 1: The Pain Point. Rachael and Leslie leave their families behind in a snowstorm to visit Silicon Valley, meet the competition, and find out whether two Brooklyn moms have a shot at VC funding. We also talk to Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of The Atlantic article "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All" and the book "Unfinished Business," about why there's still resistance to gender parity at the top of many corporations.  When this series originally aired, we created a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. Check it out. And keep the conversation going, we love to hear from you, always.  P.S. We hope you keep listening... Find the rest of the series here: Episode 2: The Paradox. Episode 3: The Pressure Episode 4: The Partnership

This Mother's Day, a surprise. For all you working mothers balancing deadlines and diapers, ambition and your (lovely) children, we're re-releasing all five episodes of our award-winning series Taking the Lead. This is the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have a tech idea to help harried working mothers rise up the professional ranks.  If you're here and haven't heard Episode 1: The Pain Point, take a few minutes to listen to that first. This is Episode 2: The Paradox. Rachael and Leslie test out a prototype of the service, and they have one especially eager participant: Manoush. Meanwhile, one of the founders discovers that she may be ready to swap in her corporate blazer for a Silicon Valley hoodie, but the other is beginning to question if she can maintain momentum with her current day job, lead-parenting, and starting a new company. When this series originally aired, we created a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. Check it out. And keep the conversation going, we love to hear from you, always.  P.S. Here's our next episode: The Pressure. It's a good one.

This Mother's Day, a surprise. For all you working mothers balancing deadlines and diapers, ambition and your (lovely) children, we're re-releasing all four episodes of our award-winning series Taking the Lead. This is the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have a tech idea to help harried working mothers rise up in their professional ranks.  If you haven't heard the first two episodes of our series, they're right here: Episode 1: The Pain Point Episode 2: The Paradox This is Episode 3: The Pressure. And it's exactly what it sounds like. Faced with financial barriers, Rachael and Leslie join a startup accelerator and pitch their idea to investors. But while honing their pitch, the business partners' different goals surface. Rachael is focused on the service's potential for social change. Leslie sees the potential to create a giant female-led company. When this series originally aired, we created a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. Check it out. And keep the conversation going, we love to hear from you, always.  P.S. Here's our next episode, the final chapter in Rachael and Leslie's story... 

This Mother's Day, a surprise. For all you working mothers balancing deadlines and bake sales, ambition and your (lovely) children, we're re-releasing all four episodes of our award-winning series Taking the Lead. This is the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have a tech idea to help harried working mothers rise up in their professional ranks.  If you haven't heard the first few episodes of our series, they're right here: Episode 1: The Pain Point Episode 2: The Paradox Episode 3: The Pressure So here we are, in the final chapter of Rachael and Leslie's story. A quick recap: our two Brooklyn moms turned tech entrepreneurs, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker are co-founders of Need/Done, a service for backup childcare and household support. (You can request an invite to it now. Think Nextdoor meets Sittercity.) In the final chapter, the women face difficult choices: Should they drop the feminist mission behind the company when they make their pitch to investors? Does Rachael need to give up entrepreneurship so she can remain the kind of mom she wants to be? Plus, we’ll end the suspense and talk about the seismic shift happening to our culture around women and work with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary Clinton’s former advisor at the State Department. Anne-Marie is now the CEO of New America and the author of Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, which she wrote after detailing her struggles to combine her career with parenting in a hugely popular piece for The Atlantic called "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All." When this series originally aired, we created a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. Check it out. And keep the conversation going, we love to hear from you, always.   

Every day, Manoush is getting dozens of new followers on Twitter. Sometimes hundreds a day. And every new follower is the same. Generic user name, no photo, blank avatar. And even more suspect, these accounts have no followers, no tweets. In other words: Bots.   Bot armies are taking over Twitter. But they’re not necessarily trying to advance a point of view, according to Phil Howard, a bot researcher. They’re aiming to sow chaos and make dialogue impossible. At the extreme, the goal is to destabilize our very sense of reality.   “Their strategy is to plant multiple conflicting stories that just confuse everybody," Howard says. "If they can successfully get out four different explanations for some trend, then they've confused everybody, and they're able to own the agenda.” This week, why someone would sic a bot army on Manoush. And what her bot brigade can teach us about how bots are shaping democracy, from last November to Brexit to the recent French election. You can check if a Twitter account following you is real or fake, with Bot or Not, an aptly-named tool from Indiana University's Truthy project. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Mom sends a group text… to all four of her boyfriends. Another listener's mom sends the crying-laughing emoji - after their neighbor died. Stories of insensitive parents, tech-addicted kids, and the deep meanings of punctuation. And there's one communication fail we all share, young and old. We cop out of tough conversations with a text. Yes, it's transparent, and yes, we all do it. Guys, we're better than this.  This week, we fix intergenerational communication forever. Kidding! But we do have answers. Thanks to an expert - psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz. She's here to help.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.      

Got a mole on your arm? Soon, an app will soon be able to screen it for cancer. That salad you ate yesterday may have been screened by a LettuceBot, an AI mounted on tractors that checks whether individual plants need water. And if you live in In Singapore or Pittsburgh, you might already be cruising around in a self-driving cab. Amazing things are happening to the way we live, eat, and get around. Thanks to robots. But robots are programmed by humans. And those people carry implicit biases, as we all do. And those biases get encoded into the AI. Which can get really ugly, really fast.  Like when Google Photo tagged Jacky Alciné’s photos of him and his friend as gorillas a few years ago. This week, we look back at what he found, how the company responded, and the bigger problem behind this one landmark incident. Plus, an update on what Jacky's doing now.  Manoush and Jacky Alciné take a Note to Self(ie). (Manoush Zomorodi/Note to Self) Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

We asked you guys to send us photos. We got a photo of a woman on the beach. A giant fish statue. Teeth. Yes, really.  We gave them to Andreas Weigend, veteran of Xerox Parc, former chief scientist at Amazon, to see what he could deduce. A lot, it turns out. A little Google image search, a little metadata, and we can find where you are. Maybe who you are. What color phone you’re using to take the shot, and how many SIM cards you have. Reading photos is more than a digital parlor trick. It’s the future of commerce, marketing, policing, lending, and basically everything else. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

There is a lot to take in in our world right now. And there are a lot of ways to do it. You can read articles posted by your Facebook friends, or by the journalists you follow on Twitter. You can watch cable news with your morning oatmeal. Which makes it all too easy to succumb to information overload. That buzzy, anxious feeling of there’s just too much out there to consume - but I need to know all of it, right? That feeling isn’t new. It’s just especially turned up in 2017. So this week, an episode worth repeating. We’re proposing one tweak - a challenge of sorts - to change your day. To help you think deeper and consume information meaningfully. Think spring cleaning for your neurons. With neuron experts Dr Daniel Levitin and Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics. And if you like this episode, you’ll love listening to the entire Infomagical series. You’ll find some calm and some focus. Maybe even magic. If you did the project, it might be time for a refresher! Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

This week, the very ancient roots of a very modern word. Racist, sexist roots. And how this revolting word bubbled up from the dark corners of 4chan and Reddit to, well, this podcast. Cultures and subcultures have always had their own slang. Their own secret languages, the in-crowd lingo. But the wonderful and terrible thing about the Internet is that secrets are hard to keep. Words and ideas can spread. Can become normal. (Think “on fleek” and “stay woke.”) But what happens when the ideas are white supremacy and misogyny? With Jonathon Green, author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang; writer Dana Schwartz of the Observer, who has written about cucked for GQ, and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic, whose book Hit Makers explores how ideas spread online. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Data mining is nothing new in presidential campaigns. But in 2016, the Trump team took voter research to a new level. They hired consultants called Cambridge Analytica, which says it has thousands of data points on every American. They also claim they can use that data to create personality profiles. Assessments of each of our hopes, fears, and desires - and target us accordingly. This is the science of psychometrics. And, as the story went, Cambridge Analytica’s dark digital arts helped Trump win, with ads designed to ring every reader’s individual bell. Or, did they? Over the past few weeks, reporters and data experts started asking questions. Where did this data come from? Could the Trump campaign really execute a micro-targeted social media strategy? Did they have a secret sauce? Or was it just more ketchup? This week, psychometrics and the future of campaign data-mining. With Matt Oczkowski of Cambridge Analytica, psychometrics pioneer Michal Kosinski, and Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times. And if you're curious about Apply Magic Sauce, the psychometric tool we all tried during the Privacy Paradox, you can find it right here.   Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

It’s one thing to get fired. It’s another thing to be escorted out by security. And another thing altogether to have your boss call while you’re sitting in the parking lot in shock, and ask what you might be doing next, and if you need investors. But that’s Silicon Valley for you. Before he got canned, Antonio García Martínez was an ads guy at Facebook. Pre-IPO. He designed the ad tracking system that allows products you searched for one single time to follow you around the internet. But he was also undercover as an author, taking notes for a tell-all. The book he wrote is called Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. Stories of Face-versaries instead of birthdays, what it means to get an email from Zuck, and the cult of changing the world.  Despite all he knows, despite ethnic-affinity targeting, he still thinks online ads are A-OK. So Manoush tries to save his ad-loving soul.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

So, the C.I.A. has a back door to your phone. At least, according to the Vault 7 data dump from WikiLeaks. The documents—as yet unproven—say that if your device is connected to the internet, the American government wants in. And has a few tricky tools to do it. But they’ve had some sneaky tools for a while now. Just ask Daniel Rigmaiden. In 2008, Rigmaiden was arrested for filing fraudulent tax returns. And he couldn’t figure out how he was caught. He was careful. He stayed anonymous online, he used pre-paid debit cards and fake IDs. So he developed what his attorneys thought was a pretty crazy theory about government surveillance. And it turned out he was right. This week we revisit Daniel’s story. What he uncovered was more than a theory—it was a balancing act. The technology the government used to catch him was hidden to allegedly keep us safe. If criminals didn't know about it, they wouldn't be able to hack it. But does that secrecy actually open us up to other dangers? We hear from Nate Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, about a movement to give us a bigger say in how law enforcement does surveillance. Because things are moving fast. For more on what we know about the leaked documents, which WikiLeaks is calling “Vault 7,” read our round-up of the news here. And if these revelations have you thinking about privacy in a whole new way, try our Privacy Paradox challenges. You can start them any time. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Maybe you’ve heard, some big news hit the privacy world on Tuesday. WikiLeaks, the organization behind the DNC leak last year, released a trove of documents (ominously) called “Vault 7.” The files reveal a collection of hacking systems developed or obtained by the CIA, and, if true, these tactics are pretty startling. One tool, for example, code-named “Weeping Angel” can allegedly turn a Samsung TV into a recording device--even if it looks turned  off. Many of you tweeted and emailed us to say these revelations have you side-eyeing your devices. Yeah, we feel you. So here’s a round-up of what we know so far and some suggestions of what to do and read as the story continues to unfold. First thing’s first, what happened. The New York Times broke the news, and we like their breakdown of what’s in the leaked documents, what’s true, new, and how it could affect your tech use. Signal and Encrypted Text Messaging “Vault 7” reveals the CIA can hack iPhone and Android operating systems, allowing it to intercept messages before they get encrypted by texting apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Weibo. The Note to Self team recommended Signal during our Privacy Paradox project as an encrypted messaging app. But does this new information mean Signal isn’t living up to its promise? No. Signal is encrypting all your messages. What the leaked documents suggest is that the C.I.A. can use vulnerabilities in the operating system to take control of your phone. Which, as Wired says, means you have bigger problems. Moxie Marlinspike, one of the developers of Signal, also pointed out to New York Magazine that there are limited uses for those so-called "zero-day" tools--every time they get used, they might be discovered and patched. So the surveillance agencies are likely limiting their use to “nation-state actors,” as Wired puts it. Apple The “Vault 7” leak suggests the CIA uses “zero day” exploits to target Apple’s iOS. That means it gets into the operating system via vulnerabilities that already exist in the software rather than using malware or viruses. But Apple says they had already patched the vulnerabilities mentioned in the report. P.S. Remember Apple’s legal battle with the F.B.I last year? It’s outdated, but gives some weight to this line in their statement: “Apple is deeply committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy and security.” Samsung Samsung TVs are said to be targets of a particularly creepy tool detailed in the WikiLeaks documents--one that allegedly allows the CIA to turn TVs into recording devices, even when they appear to be turned off. Samsung told Buzzfeed News, “Protecting consumers’ privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung. We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter.” Microsoft, Google and Facebook’s WhatsApp are all looking into the claims as well, according to USA Today. While they have not verified specifics, U.S. intelligence officials confirm the documents themselves are legitimate. Here’s what to read while you ponder whether it’s time to trade in your connected TV for a short-wave radio… Leaks usually unearth more questions than answers. Start with these four. (The Washington Post) Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks - hero to villain and back again? (The Atlantic)  Weeping Angel. Brutal Kangaroo. Fine Dining. Seriously, who is the mastermind behind these codenames? Oh. Doctor Who. Of course. (The Guardian) And if these revelations have you thinking about privacy in a whole new way, and you haven't done the Privacy Paradox challenges yet, you can start them any time. 

If you are between the ages of 18 and 34, there’s a good chance you’ve already checked Snapchat today. This week, Manoush joins you—despite her reservations. Those reservations are not just because the Note to Self team isn’t the app’s target demo. It’s because we feel uneasy about the ways Snapchat pressures you to check it, and use it, and check and use again. And again. And again. Former Google designer Tristan Harris explains how far Silicon Valley will go to capture and control your eyeballs. And Snapchat artist CyreneQ explains how she makes her living drawing on her phone all day. For real. Also, our suggestions for apps that don’t just want to control your eyeballs. Moment helps keep track of how much time you’re spending on your phone. Pocket, which helps your read when you choose. Duolingo has a streaks feature, like Snapchat, but on your terms. F.lux adjusts your computer’s colors at night. Tristan has his own list of suggestions, too. Got suggestions? Leave a comment below. And we’re working on a show about the ways we fail to communicate when we communicate across generations. Whether you’re the awkward one, or have a tale of awkward olds, let us know. Send us a voice memo. We’ll share our own stories soon. And they are, indeed, embarrassing. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

At Manoush’s house, there’s an object the size of a big potato chip. Which she stuck to her forehead, and used to zap her brain. This brain stimulation is supposed to calm you down. Maybe replace a glass of wine, just wind you down a little. But it turns out you can wind down a little too far. Too far to ask coherent questions of scientists you’re interviewing. In this repeat episode, hear what it sounds like when the high-octane Note to Self crew chills waaaay out. P.S. Looking for the study we mentioned? Thync’s research is all here. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

When Graceann Bennett got married, she and her husband were terrible at communicating about sex. They were both virgins. They didn’t know how to explain what turned them on, or what turned them off. Over almost two decades, they never quite managed to talk about it. And then the marriage fizzled out. Bennett decided to code her way out of the problem. If an app was too late to save her marriage, maybe it could help someone else. In this repeat episode, Kaitlin Prest and Mitra Kaboli of The Heart take that app on a test drive. Pls Pls Me lets users share their secret desires with their partners. Who can respond with yes please, or… not so much. Things we talk about in this episode include love, sex, spanking, and peeing on people. But also kissing, intimacy, and how to communicate. But you might not want to listen with your kids. Or parents. Or at work. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

There are different approaches to digital privacy. Technologist and entrepreneur Anil Dash tries to flood the Internet with information about himself, not all correct. Reporter Julia Angwin tries to get as invisible as possible. But like Julia says, we’re all kind of losing. Just losing in different ways. Manoush talked with Anil and Julia before a live audience at WNYC's The Greene Space. We chatted about becoming an information prepper, heterogeneity as privacy, and the perennial question: should we all get off Gmail? Also, a surprising amount of laughter. And hope. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

This week, the results are in. Tens of thousands of people joined the Privacy Paradox challenge. And it changed you. Before the project, we asked if you knew how to get more privacy into your life—43 percent said you did. After the project, that number went up to 80 percent. Almost 90 percent of you also said this project showed you privacy invasions you didn’t know existed. When we asked you what this project made you want to do, only 7 percent of you said “give up.” Sorry guys! Don’t. Fully 70 percent of you said you want to push for protection of our digital rights. We have ideas for that in our tip sheet. A third of you said you’ll delete a social media profile. Another third said this project made you want to meditate. And just one more stat. We tallied your answers to our privacy personality quiz and gave you a personality profile. One-fifth of us were true believers in privacy before the project. Now half us are. Manoush says that includes her. In this episode, we talk through the results, and look to the future of privacy. With Michal Kosinski, creator of Apply Magic Sauce, and Solon Barocas, who studies the ethics of machine learning at Microsoft Research. Plus, reports from our listeners on the good, the bad and the ugly of their digital data. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Many of you told us that the Privacy Paradox challenges freaked you out. But you were happy to take back even just a little control. Want to go further? Here's what you can do to protect your personal information. We also heard from you that this problem is bigger than you realized. Keep reading for our ideas on what we can all do, together, to create the web we want to see in the world.    THE BASICS Change your privacy settings on your browser and in social media. Here's how on Chrome, Firefox, Twitter and Facebook.  Try the new Firefox iOs app for private mobile browsing. Create strong, unique passwords.   Join Signal, an encrypted texting app. More on why here, download here. Turn on two-factor authorization for your key accounts (like email). It’s a simple additional layer of protection against hacking.  Fun bonus: Write a letter to a friend on paper. Seal the envelope and mail it. So private.  Do movie night and watch The Lives of Others, or Josie and the Pussycats. Double feature! Read (or re-read) 1984 by George Orwell. Everyone's doing it.  Watch John Oliver’s 2014 segment explaining net neutrality. After it aired, nearly 4 million public comments were made to the FCC.   GET SERIOUS Okay, you have strong passwords. And two-factor on all your accounts. And you’re using Signal. Well, it’s on your phone. Right? Then here are your next steps. Start using a password manager for all your super-strong passwords.  Try browsing with Duck Duck Go, a search engine that never stores your search data.  Take the Tor browser for a test drive.   Learn how to guard against phishing and malware (who knew about the inline images?). Install the https Everywhere plugin for your browser, to minimize what data gets sent without encryption.    Fun bonus: Take a break from any voice activated technology you have.   Read the ten original amendments in the Bill of Rights.  Peruse the report President Obama received from the bi-partisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Manoush likes Principle #7: Because human behavior and technology are intertwined and vital to cybersecurity, technologies and products should make the secure action easy to do and the less secure action more difficult to do.   GO HARDCORE You’ve done the basics and then some. You have the stamina and want to take it to the next level. Remove your information from data brokers. It's not easy, but there are paid services and DIY guides.  Consider a YubiKey (or two, don’t want to lose it!). Pay with cash for a day. Try out facial recognition camouflage. Start the switch to open source software. Fun bonus: Read up on or follow someone who is working on the decentralized web.  Make a faraday pouch for your phone.  Stop emailing with a friend and agree to only meet in person. Make Manoush and Martha’s “Digital Thumbprint Cookies.” Well okay, they're just thumbprint cookies. But make them and serve them at a cryptoparty, maybe.    Three Things You Can Do to Protect All Our Digital Rights This isn’t all on you. These are society-level problems that require collective response. Here’s some ways to take action. 1. GO STRAIGHT TO THE TOP Let your Congressperson know you care. Find an EFF campaign you like and sign.  Not happy with what a tech company is doing with your info? File a privacy complaint to the FTC. Help the technologists and researchers building better tools. 2. CHECK OUT THESE (NON-PARTISAN) GROUPS WORKING ON PRIVACY Electronic Privacy Information Center World Wide Web Foundation Access Now 3. TALK ABOUT PRIVACY OPENLY At workTalk to your IT department what the protocol is if you get hacked or doxxed. Ask team members to check with whom they’ve shared documents outside the company. Have a team meeting out of the office or off-the-record to promote open discussion. At homeShow parents, kids, or grandparents how to put a password lock on their phone and change privacy settings. Consider getting everyone on the texting app Signal. Talk to kids especially about why having a private inner life is vital. With all the other people in your lifeAsk your babysitters, doctors, teachers, accountants and anyone else relevant to be mindful of protecting your personal information. Have them ask you before they post pictures of your kids or tag you in photos. Just telling them you have privacy on the brain could make them more conscientious. 4. BONUS FOR TECHNOLOGISTS Lend your skills to projects like Solid, Simply Secure, Time Well Spent or other good causes. Sign a privacy oath. Or start another for your field.  Read your company’s Transparency Report and pass it on.   This should go without saying, but just in case: We’re not suggesting that you use any of these tools or tips to hide illegal activity or nefarious deeds. We’re suggesting you use them because the U.S. Constitution affords us a right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects. And digital privacy is the 21st Century version of that.

You've made it. It's final chapter of the 5-day Privacy Paradox challenges. We hear from the one and only Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. And we set some terms for ourselves about how we want to live online, and what we—all of us, together—can do to create the web we really want. And while you're thinking about the future, take our Exit Strategy Quiz to find out how far you’ve come, and get a tip sheet with actions—big and small, individual and collective—to re-invent the internet to work for us.  Sir Tim thinks we can do it. And hey, he already did it once, right? And if you haven't already—sign up for the 5-day newsletter here to get details on each day's action step. Don't worry if you're signing up after February 10th, we'll get you the challenges on your schedule. The project lives on! Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

In this episode, we hear from Elan Gale, executive producer of the Bachelor. Yes, that Bachelor, THE reality show, with a single guy, in a mansion, surrounded by a bevy of young women trying to get him to pick her as “the one.” It sounds so weird when you spell out the premise like that. He has a few things to say about our performance culture and what it means for our privacy. And we hear from Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a professor of Clinical Psychology at Stanford University, where he runs the OCD clinic. He’s the author of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality. And he’s worried that all our posting and sharing is making it hard for us to protect our true, inner self. Or even find it. And it's not too late - you can sign up for the 5-day newsletter here to get details on each day's action step.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

In this episode, we hear from Luciano Floridi, University of Oxford professor of philosophy and ethics of information. In 2014, he was appointed as Google’s in-house philosopher, advising the company on the right to be forgotten. Think you have nothing to hide? As Floridi says, a life without shadows is a flat life.  And if you haven't already - sign up for the 5-day newsletter here to get details on each day's action step.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

In this episode, we hear from Joseph Turow, professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s studied the marketing and advertising industries for decades, and recently wrote a new book called The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power. And we hear from our friend Julia Angwin at ProPublica, who’s been doing brilliant reporting on algorithms and how they’re being used online and off. Her series Breaking the Black Box lifted the lid on ad targeting at Facebook. And if you haven't already - sign up for the 5-day newsletter here to get details on each day's action step.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

What does your phone know about you? And what can you do about it? Welcome to the first day of our week-long series of podcasts and action-steps designed to help you take back your digital identity. We’re starting with trimming your digital exhaust - your metadata. Many of your apps track your location even when you’re not using them. Others listen in via your microphone when you’re not talking to them. In this episode, renowned security technologist and cryptographer Bruce Schneier takes us on a guided tour of our phones and the metadata they’re giving away.     To get details on the day's action step, sign up for the 5-day newsletter here. If you want to check out the secure messaging app Signal that Bruce and Manoush talk about, that's online here. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Hello! If you don't see an answer to your question here, you can get in touch at [email protected]. We'll read all your emails and respond as best we can, even if it takes a few days. We'll be updating this page as the questions come in. 1. Questions About the Privacy Paradox 2. Questions About the Team 3. Press Inquiries   QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PRIVACY PARADOX 1. What is the Privacy Paradox? It’s a five-day series of challenges, newsletters and mini-podcasts, that will help you take back control over your personal information and digital identity. It’s also the term behavioral economists use to describe the disconnect between our feelings about digital privacy (we value it!) and how we act online (we give privacy away!). 2. Why should I sign up for the Privacy Paradox project? Because you’ll be part of a community that also wants to know where their information goes, what the trade-offs involve, and how they can live a better life, online and off. Plus, privacy is right. Claim it before it drip, drip, drips away. 3. But I don’t have anything to hide! Tell me again why I should do this? Because a life without shadows is a flat life. You don’t have to be subversive to want to live in a world where your every thought and action is not tracked and quantified. Free will, anyone? Also, what about people who DO have something to hide? Be a mensch. If everyone protects their privacy, it won’t be considered “suspicious.” 4. How will the project work? It’s easy. Put in your email address at PrivacyParadox.org. And yes, we promise to protect it. Then, if you want a thought-provoking giggle, take our Privacy Personality Quiz. Find out if you are The Believer, The Realist, or The Shrugger. Then, every morning, you’ll get a special newsletter that includes mini-podcast with the experts behind that day’s challenge. And tips. Lots of tips. 5. What happens at the end? Good stuff. We don’t want to ruin the surprise but you’ll get easy tip sheets to take with you and share. And we’ll measure how people want to move forward afterwards. We have some ideas. More soon. 5. I missed the launch date! You said it started February 6th - can I still join? You bet. Just sign up for the newsletter, and you’ll get the launch newsletter. Then, for five days after that, you’ll get a challenge newsletter in your inbox.   6. Do you really know what you’re doing? Yes. Amazing people like inventor of the web and 4th Amendment legal experts have helped us create the Privacy Paradox. And we’ve done these big interactive projects before. Check out Bored and Brilliant and Infomagical. This is the new digital literacy, sugar.   QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TEAM 7. What is Note to Self? A ridiculously fun and smart podcast for anyone trying to preserve their humanity in the digital age, if we do say so ourselves. We call it the tech show about being human. You can find us on Twitter @NoteToSelf and on Facebook at Note to Self Radio. We're produced and distributed by WNYC Studios – home to Radiolab, On the Media, Freakonomics and more. 8. Who is Manoush Zomorodi? Manoush is a hard-core journalist and also kind of a weird public radio mash-up between Morgan Spurlock and Tina Fey. She tweets @manoushz. You can learn more about her here. 9. You didn't answer my question. How do I get in touch? Feel free to send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or email (notetoself[at]wnyc[dot]org.)   QUESTIONS FROM THE PRESS 10. I want to write about The Privacy Paradox/Infomagical/Note to Self/Bored and Brilliant/Manoush Zomorodi/WNYC Studios. Who do I talk to? Awesome, we’d love to talk to you. You can contact Senior Director of Publicity Jennifer Houlihan at [email protected].

We've heard so many stories from you, listeners. You love the convenience of living online. But you want more control over where your personal information goes and who can see it. Researchers call this the Privacy Paradox.  Our 5-day plan, starting February 6th, is here to solve that digital dilemma. This week, we're laying the groundwork. What it'll take to resolve the privacy paradox -- and how it starts with you. In this episode, we'll hear from behavioral economist Alessandro Acquisiti, retired Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, who coined the term “Surveillance Capitalism," and -- of course -- more of you, dear listeners. Stories of ex-wives hacking social media accounts, stolen social security numbers, and (from a lot of you) that vague creeped out feeling.  Then, after you listen, join us and start resolving your paradox.  Sign up for the Privacy Paradox newsletter here. And, take our quiz to find your Privacy Personality.  From February 6th to 10th, we'll send you a daily newsletter, with an action step and a short podcast on the science, psychology, and technology behind that day’s challenge. You’ll learn where your digital information goes. You’ll weigh the tradeoffs you're making with each new app or service. And you’ll learn how to make digital choices that are in line with your values. We can do this. We can do it together. And it starts today.  Learn a little more about our upcoming challenges: day one, two, three, four, and five.    PS - If you're already signed up for the Note to Self newsletter, (a) thank you and (b) you also need to sign up for the Privacy Paradox newsletter. They're separate. The Privacy Paradox newsletter is time-limited and just for these challenges.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

In a room at The MIT Media Lab, you can find the dreamscape of small children everywhere. Giant cities, in perfect detail, constructed entirely from tiny white Lego.   Sandy Pentland built them. These dioramas use all sorts of data, from foot traffic to investment dollars to tweets, so cities--and the people living in them--can be improved in ways they’ve never been before. A few doors down is Rosalind Picard’s office. She met a young man who just could not tell if his boss was happy or furious. And it kept getting him fired. He was on his 20th job. So she built him a glasses-mounted camera that reads facial expressions, matching what it sees against a huge database of faces. Problem solved. That’s the promise of big data. It can smooth social interactions. Solve sticky municipal problems. Cure cancer, slow climate change. But the data has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is us. This week, as we get ready for our big project on privacy, Note to Self looks at the good that can come from all the data we share. IF people are good, and make good choices. Except we’re often not good. And we make bad choices. So, what then? Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

This week, Note to Self gets in our time machine, back to the court cases that brought privacy from the founding fathers to Google Docs. Stories of bookies on the Sunset Strip, microphones taped to phone booths, and a 1975 Monte Carlo. And where the Fourth Amendment needs to go, now that we’re living in the future. The amendment doesn’t mention privacy once. But those 54 little words, written more than 200 years ago, are a crucial battleground in today’s fight over our digital rights. That one sentence is why the government can’t listen to your phone calls without a warrant. And it’s why they don’t need one to find out who you’re calling. But now, we share our deepest thoughts with Google, through what we search for and what we email. And we share our most intimate conversations with Alexa, when we talk in its vicinity. So how does the Fourth Amendment apply when we’re surrounded by technology the Founding Fathers could never dream of? With Laura Donohue, director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology. Supreme Court audio from the wonderful Oyez.org, under a Creative Commons license.   If you want to visit a phone booth, there are four left in New York City. They're all on West End Avenue, and there's even a kids book about them. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

See more friends. Take more walks. Read more books. Get more sleep. Why don’t those intentions stick? You want to change. But it doesn’t seem to take. Maybe you just haven’t identified what house you’re in. Gretchen Rubin, mega-bestselling author of The Happiness Project, says the key to long-term habit change is understanding how we respond to expectations. She names four broad categories of responders: the Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Slytherin of habit-changing. Figuring out your cognitive house might be the key to changing your bad habits for good. Including one habit we hear about a lot: clinging to the phone right up until our eyes drop closed. If you want to know which house you’re in, there’s a handy quiz. An online sorting hat, if you will. Manoush is a Questioner. Obviously. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

New year, new you. That’s the idea, right? And 2016 in particular left a lot of people extra-eager to start fresh. One problem. Our fitbits and apps and tracking tools all collect data on us. The slate isn’t clean - it’s full of digital permanent marker. In an ideal world, all that information helps us become better people. More fit, healthier, rested, hydrated. And for some people, those stats are the motivational key to a better life. But what happens when the data just sabotages you? For some of us, data just isn’t the magic bullet for optimizing our quantified selves. So instead of resolving to track every calorie, minute slept, and stair climbed, how about this: be gentle with yourself. This repeat episode can help. This episode originally aired in 2016. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

It's cold. Bed is so tempting. As is your sofa. But the siren song of your phone is calling you. According to Instagram and Facebook, every single person you know is looking gorgeous at the world's best party, eating photogenic snacks. Fear Of Missing Out. It's so real. And social media amplifies it 1000x. But maybe there's another path. Another acronym to embrace. The Joy Of Missing Out. JOMO. Caterina Fake popularized the term FOMO, with a blog post waaaay back in 2011. And her friend Anil Dash coined the term JOMO (after missing a Prince concert to attend his child’s birth). On this week's (repeat) episode of Note to Self, the two talk about the role of acronyms, the importance of thoughtful software design, and the recent history of the Internet as we know it. And if you want even more Anil Dash, he'll be talking to Manoush on January 31st at the Greene Space in New York City. We're teaming up with our friends at ProPublica for an event called Breaking the Black Box: How Algorithms Make Decisions About You. Anil, plus ProPublica’s Julia Angwin, and Microsoft Research's Solon Barocas. Come! For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Ginger Johnson is battling cancer. She’s also preparing her digital legacy. Ginger has three amazing children, and she wants to stay in their lives, even after she’s gone. That’s why she’s using a service that helps her make messages and then schedules them for delivery in the future. Videos, audio recordings, emails and photos, pegged to specific days and personal milestones. Moran Zur created this service, Safe Beyond, after his own father died of cancer. He wanted to give people a chance to be remembered as they choose, not through Google search results or in a hospital bed. As vibrant people, full of wisdom. Full of, well, life. Can Silicon Valley really help us cheat death? And what does it mean for the people we leave behind? This isn't the first time we've talked about messages from the afterlife, actually. If for some reason you want even more of this, check out our episode on voicemail from 2015.   For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

We've been measuring drunk driving for years. Since the Drunk-o-Meter was invented back in the '30s. But now, it's distracted driving that's killing people, and tracking that is just getting started.  That's what Ben Lieberman learned, when his teenage son was killed in a crash. Lieberman checked the driver's phone records. And anyone who listened to Serial knows those are powerful documents. They can show what cell tower your phone was near, calls in and out. But what they can't track is swipes, taps and clicks.  So Lieberman created the Textalyzer. Like the Breathalyzer, but for your phone. It can reveal every touch - just the action, not the content. And the company behind it might be familiar, if you followed the saga of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.   SHARE YOUR PRIVATE THOUGHTS. WITH US, AT LEAST.   If the idea of the Textalyzer sets off your privacy Spidey sense, we understand. We're all figuring out where to draw the line on data sharing, and how to balance privacy, safety, and our modern lives. It's something we're going to be thinking about a lot more in the new year, and we want your help.  TELL US WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT PRIVACY, ONLINE AND OFF Every year, Note to Self teams up with our listeners to take on a project together. We've tackled information overload and boredom. Next, we're taking on privacy: the how, and the why. But we need to hear from you, about what matters and what you want to learn.  Please take a few minutes to fill out our survey. The project won't be the same without you.   For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.         

When Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in 1980, an estimated 25,000 people were killed in drunk driving crashes each year in the U.S. Then Frasier stepped in.  We all know, now, that drinking and driving is a big no-no. But how do we all know that? In part, because shows like the Simpsons and Cheers dedicated plot lines to designated drivers. Growing Pains introduced a character (Matthew Perry!) just to kill him off in a collision. TV producers didn't just come up with this on their own. They did it because a team at the Harvard School of Public Health made a case for the message. Now, that team is taking on distracted driving. And it's proving to be a much trickier problem.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

For Hillary Clinton, that private email server was an Achilles heel. For Donald Trump, late night tweet-storms and the echo chamber of the so-called alt-right were rocket fuel. For American voters, the power of technology was inescapable. We've seen the good, bad and ugly of tech this election cycle. And we all have big feelings about it. So Manoush hosted a good old-fashioned call-in, for listeners to share their thoughts and fears about our digital lives under a Trump administration.  Joining Manoush was Farhad Manjoo, New York Times technology columnist, and Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.  They looked back at how social media shaped the Presidential race, and forward at privacy in the Trump era. We wish we could tell you it's uplifting. But we don't like to lie.  The call-in show was part of the United States of Anxiety, a series from WNYC Studios. If you're having big feelings about what the new administration means for the arts, women, the economy or just in general, they've got you covered.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

What does it really take to put more diversity - however you define it - into your news feeds? We tend to click on things we agree with already. It makes us happy. And social media networks like it that way. Bumming out your customers is a bad business model.  A while back, we got tips on escaping the echo chamber from Katie Notopoulos, co-host of BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer podcast, and Tracy Clayton, co-host of the BuzzFeed podcast Another Round. When we first talked, this felt like an important idea, a step towards an expanded mind. Now, post-election, it feels a lot less optional.  Katie and Tracy joined Manoush to talk about how to get just the right amount uncomfortable online, and why the first step is to just try.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Thanksgiving is here. The holidays are right around the corner. And with politics on everyone’s minds, dinner table conversations can feel like a minefield. We have you covered. We’re bringing back an episode from the archive, with strategies on how to be calm, collected – and constructive – when faced with racism online, or IRL. And if you’re doing a little Internet detox, like we talked about last week, don’t worry. We made you some printer-friendly tools for navigating your Facebook feed – or maybe just the Thanksgiving table. Deep breaths.   (Note to Self/Piktochart) LARA is a system promoted by the National Conference for Community Justice. (Note to Self) For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

It’s time to figure out how to be online in this post-election world. Note to Self listeners are wondering how we can stay well-informed without simultaneously bathing in a toxic stew. What do you do when going online makes you unhappy? Here to help is Gretchen Rubin, author of mega-selling books that include "The Happiness Project" and "Better Than Before." She's a researcher, a journalist, and host of the podcast "Happier with Gretchen Rubin."  Author, researcher, and journalist Gretchen Rubin. (Elena Seibert) Didn't hear last week's special note from Manoush? Listen to it here. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

We're all processing this election together. We want to create a nurturing, constructive space to do that. Please take a minute and listen to Manoush's short audio message to you, dear listener. We believe this is the beginning of a rigorous and critical conversation between us, you and your fellow listeners.  So we move forward. And whoever you voted for, chances are you're still thinking about the surprise of the results.   The fact that no one picks up their phone anymore meant pollsters were WAY off. The way we get our media and journalists do reporting contributed to one of the biggest political surprises in history.   Donald Trump became our president. It would be weird to pretend things here in podcast land are just "business as usual." Yes, we are grappling. Sure, we're asking ourselves: "What does this election mean for the country?" But we're also asking: "What does this election mean about me? About how I live my life? About how I connect to human beings and information?" As a way to start processing all of this: we curated a list from the archive... 7 Episodes For Your Post-Election Reality There is no right way to deal with the election aftermath. It’s time for me to get out of my social media echo chamber. We click on things we agree with already. Here are some concrete steps to get out of our comfort zone and expose ourselves to different people, opinions, and voices online.  How can I deal with the hatred or racism in my social media feed? There's a formula for a productive conversation about tough topics. Please. Get me some Zen. Kindness would be nice too. Chade-Meng Tan, Silicon Valley's mindfulness coach, is making meditation accessible and he's got tips to incorporate it into our everyday lives. I need to rethink my information intake. Information overload. Enough said. How can I deal with the confusion I’m feeling without hiding beneath a large duvet? In a time of racial tension, how do you manage the storm of news online when paying attention is painful? Two friends find their answers. Should I have paid closer attention to the nuances of the election? We dive deep into the modern media diet with theSkimm co-founders Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, and John Herrman, media reporter at the New York Times.  I need to escape to a galaxy far far away. Failed 2016 presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan (convincingly) explains why you might live forever and vote for him in 2040. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

You probably didn't vote for him, but Zoltan Istvan has been on a two-year quest to merge politics with the scientific and technological movement called Transhumanism. He's been running as a 2016 U.S. presidential candidate, representing the party of those who believe humans will ultimately merge with machine. And once we merge, our superhuman selves could live forever. This is not your typical post-election analysis, people.   Zoltan Istvan in front of the Immortality Bus in Washington DC (Roen Horn)  "I would be very surprised if people are human beings," Istvan explains to N2S Executive Producer Jen Poyant. "I think we'll all be cyborgs at that point. I think there will be body shops where we're replacing our limbs...all controlled by software, all working together. We'll be able to run faster than cheetahs." Hear more about Istvan's predictions about our impending future, the issues you'll likely be voting on in 2040, and how he plans to do for Transhumanism what Al Gore did for global warming. Jen, however, has a soft spot for appreciating life as it is. It's a political debate you'll actually enjoy. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Mindfulness is quite the buzzword these days. Especially within Silicon Valley, where many tech workers have been known to seek out guidance and spiritual direction in Eastern practices. HBO's Silicon Valley parodied the trend with a tech company CEO who seems to be attached at the hip to his spiritual advisor.  Putting fiction aside though, we've talked a lot about information overload and our addiction to our gadgets. We're living in a world where it is challenging to be mindful. And, well, we all can't afford to have a spiritual guru following us around non-stop. So, we brought in an actual spiritual advisor from the actual Silicon Valley to help bring us more kindness, compassion, and happiness (especially during this election season). His name is Chade-Meng Tan and he's a former Google software engineer where his job title was, "Jolly Good Fellow." After retiring from Google in 2015, Chade-Meng began focusing on bringing mindfulness to the masses. "I'm calling it transformational philanthropy, which is to try to transform human beings. Make peace, joy, compassion the default state of all human beings," he says. In his quest, he recently wrote Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within.  And he stopped by N2S to share some simple exercises for us all to find more joy and happiness. Step one: take one very long inhale in and then slowly exhale, listening to the sound of your breath as you do so. Then hit "play" above to find some serenity now.    For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Legendary performance artist, Marina Abramović, got more than 750,000 people to slow down and wait in line at MoMA just to sit at a table across from her. She also convinced Manoush and N2S Executive Producer Jen Poyant (and hundreds of other New Yorkers) to lock away their phones, sit in silence for 30 minutes, and then listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations. She just published Walk Through Walls: A Memoir and she thinks that our over-caffeinated, hyper-productive society needs her now more than ever.   With the everyday upkeep of our virtual selves on Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat, many of us have become nearly as performative as Marina herself. And so, in response, she's changed her work to become more about us. She is focusing on ways to help us put our phones down and to restore our overtaxed systems in a digital world. Here are just a couple of her suggestions: Find ways to truly be alone. Marina suggests things like: going to the desert, hiking to a waterfall, (and for the brave of heart) looking inside of a volcano. Find ways to be be with nature in any way you can.  Re-channel your energies. As an experiment, instead of checking emails or immediately texting right after you wake up, take some time (a whole bunch of time) and sit by a window. Marina says that in the beginning you'll feel restless, but push through it, you have to train your body to funnel that energy into other places. Host Manoush Zomorodi with performance artist Marina Abramović. (Jen Poyant)  For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Artist Marina Abramović – the woman famous for staring into a record-breaking number of people's eyes at MoMA, letting an audience point a gun at her head, and convincing the public to take performance art seriously – has some opinions about our phones. Namely: They are distracting us, and we need to stop pretending like they aren't.  Her 2015 project was called "Goldberg," and it was a collaboration with celebrated pianist Igor Levit and the Park Avenue Armory. The team says it was designed to help audiences remember what full attention actually feels, looks, and sounds like. Through a performance of J.S. Bach's notoriously difficult Goldberg Variations, they were attempting "a reimagining of the traditional concert experience," in which attendees first trade their tickets for a key. Each key had a corresponding locker, in which they were instructed to put their phone, watch, computer, and any other personal belongings that tell time or receive a signal from outside. Guests arriving at the Armory, putting their distractions behind lock and key. (James Ewing) Once they had locked the doors, they were given a pair of noise-canceling headphones. For the first thirty minutes of the performance, that's it. The entire audience – and also Levit, the performer – sat together in complete silence.  The audience sitting in total silence. Yes, total. (James Ewing) Levit then broke the silence by starting to play his version of the Goldberg Variations.  Legend has it that Bach originally wrote the Goldberg variations to soothe an insomniac Austrian Count through the night. (James Ewing)  On this podcast extra, Abramović explains her "method" for really, truly listening: Marina Abramović: You're taking a taxi, you’re concerned you’re on time, you’re answering [a] last phone call and so on. And you’re arriving, and you sit down, and you hear the concert... but you’re not ready to hear anything. You’re just too busy. So I’m giving this time and space to the public to actually prepare themselves. Manoush Zomorodi: But surely, I mean, we’re grown ups right? I’m coming to the concert. Can’t we just turn off our phone? Why does it have to be so heavy-handed? Abramović: ...If Igor has enormous discipline to learn by heart the Goldberg variations with 86 minutes, and play [them] in the most incredible magic way, we can have discipline to to honor this. And to just see, to have [a] new experience... the moment you don’t have your phone and you don’t have the watch to check if you’re sitting there for five minutes or ten, it just gives you a completely different state of mind. Zomorodi: I’m concerned that my state of mind won’t be one of calm but rather one of agitation. That it’s going to be very difficult for me. Abramović: Well this is where you have the real problem then. That you have to address the problem in your life. That is why it is good for you. Listen above or anywhere you get your podcasts. Bonus points if you sit in total silence for 30 minutes first. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

This episode features new writing from both Kim Brooks and Kiki Petrosino. Find Kim's essay, "The Problem of Caring" here, and find the poem Kiki wrote for this project, entitled, "Letter Beginning: If My Body is a Text," here. Six years ago, Kim Brooks started going on "news fasts." She was struggling with parinatal depression at the time and the news of the world was often too much—too terrible—for her to absorb. So she got into the habit of taking time away from headlines and her Twitter feed to turn her focus inward.  During the week of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling's deaths, Kim was on one of these fasts. When she returned to her screen, she realized her break from the news was possible because of the color of her skin. Kim is white. She doesn't have to think about police brutality. According to Pew Research, there’s a significant difference in how black and white adults use social media to talk about race-related content. About two-thirds of black social media users (68%) say at least some of the posts they see are about race or race relations. One-third of whites agree. And there’s a similar racial gap when it comes to posting, too: among black social media users, 28% say most or some of what they post is about race or race relations. 8% of whites say the same. "This is one of the ugliest manifestations of my privilege that I can envision: the luxury of ignorance." Kiki Petrosino, a poet, professor, and a friend of Kim's, saw the internet as a necessary way to immerse herself in what was happening. Kiki is bi-racial, and while Kim was offline, Kiki noticed a striking paradox at the center of the storm of circulating images, video, and information on her feed. "On the one hand we're brought really front and center, because you can literally watch someone dying, which is probably the most intimate moment of a life. But we don't know that person. We can't touch them, we can't talk to their family. It really throws into question how to participate in community given all these technological advancements that we're making..."Videos of police shooting young, black men and a troubling election cycle, played out on social media, have made racism in this country more visible. How do we balance being informed people with being healthy? Kim and Kiki come up with a strategy for absorbing, understanding, and addressing the news—from places of fear, exhaustion, and privilege. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

"We have an opportunity to do what we want - choose our path instead of the teachers making a choice for us."  Meet Piper, a blond, freckled 9-year-old from Brooklyn who talks like a seasoned grownup. She used to go to public school with Manoush's son but now - with the help of financial aid - she's enrolled in a new experimental school in her neighborhood: AltSchool. AltSchool is not your typical private school. Its founder is Max Ventilla, a former Google executive with a vision to reform education. Ventilla's company, with over 100 million dollars from investors like Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreesen, uses tech to teach and track students' social and academic skills. Ventilla's idea is that over time, that data can build a more thorough picture of each student and determine how she is taught. This method of "personalized learning" (think Montessori 2.0) is being prototyped in eight "micro-schools" in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and New York City, with the goal of applying it to schools everywhere. Manoush went to visit one in Brooklyn. NPR's education reporter Anya Kamanetz is skeptical of Ventilla's goal to optimize education for the masses, and she's concerned about Silicon Valley's foray into education. "They have a giant promise, which is that the right software system, the right operating system, is going to transform teaching and learning... and, what it ultimately means is that they have shareholders to satisfy." This week: can a tech startup engineer a better system for learning everywhere and make money doing it? And would these two tech reporters/mothers send their own kids there? There are a lot of buzzwords in education technology — including the phrase "education technology!" We've rounded up some of the most common in this list. Consult it as you and your kids face more tech in the classroom.  For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Life is made up of gestures, sayings, emotions, and sounds. Note them one by one and you see them as individual elements, granular aspects of our day-to-day. On a minute level, they may not say much. But look at them together, draw them out, and they can begin to tell a story. (When we say "draw" here, we mean literally draw.)  That's exactly what two whimsical data scientists did in a new book, Dear Data . It's a collection of whimsical postcards Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec exchanged over the course of 52 weeks.  Each week, Giorgia and Stefanie would assign themselves a small-scale data collection project-- to track their "thank yous," or their desires, or their productivity, or the frequency with which they checked the time-- and then exchanged their findings in hand-drawn postcards. This week, Giorgia and Stefanie took us down the rabbit hole of three postcards: "thank yous," "complaints," and "sounds." You can check out the images here along with the original music made by Hannis Brown featured in the episode.     Now it’s your turn, dear Note to Self listener.  Have you been collecting data about your life? No topic is too small or too large. We want to see your homemade data visualizations.  Share with us a weekly visualization of the times you walk your dog, or boxes of mac and cheese your kids eat, or the strange sounds your car makes, or the times you text your spouse, or the places you daydream of visiting on vacation… or anything else. We'd love to get a postcard from you; our snail mail address is: Note to Self c/o WNYC, 160 Varick St., New York, NY 10013. You can also email a photo of your postcard to [email protected]; or share it on Twitter or Facebook.   Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

Algorithms operate everywhere in our daily lives. Using the information we give them, they're constantly learning about who we are and what we're more likely to buy. (Remember how that pricey coffee maker you looked at online showed up in your Facebook ads for the next two weeks?) Most of the time, it's no big deal. But in an era where more than 40% of Americans get their news from Facebook, these algorithms can have a real impact on how we see the world. They may even have the power to shape our democracy. (Cue ominous music.)  So here's the thing: every time you "like" something, share something, tag yourself in a photo, or click on an article on Facebook, the site collects data on you and files it away in their folder of YOU. And it's not just your activity on Facebook that they're keeping track of. They also track what device you used to log on, what other app you came from, other sites you've visited, and much more. All that data helps Facebook paint a detailed picture of who you are and what you like for advertisers. The problem is that we don't know how, exactly, that picture is formed. The algorithms at work are a "black box." We don't know how these algorithms decide whether we're a "trendy mom" or a "frequent traveler." And we don't know how they decide which ads to show us. In short, no one is really accountable.   On this week's episode, we talk with ProPublica investigative journalist Julia Angwin about how Facebook collects data and uses it to categorize us. And here's where you come in, dear N2S listener. We are collaborating with ProPublica on their Black Box Data Project, which has just launched. You can take part in this important digital experiment. So go download the Google Chrome extension for your web browser at propublica.org/blackbox. Tell us what you find out and how it makes you feel. Reach out in the comments section below; email us [email protected]; holler at us on Twitter or Facebook; and fill in ProPublica and Julia Angwin too.      For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Who is probably the only person in the world who can talk about technology and global equality, breastfeeding, and how her kids’ Grandpa used to be president? Yup, it’s Chelsea Clinton.  Manoush recently caught up with the daughter of the Democratic nominee for President at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.   Chelsea has been collecting and analyzing data and stories about women, girls, and tech in developing countries to understand how learning to code and getting digital access can help them build better lives. And she'll talk about why she's so frustrated by the gender gap in tech, how she juggles time between her 3 month-old and the campaign trail, and why she's passionate about policies that support parents in the workplace.    Chelsea Clinton and Manoush Zomorodi snap a selife at CGI. (Manoush Zomorodi/WNYC) Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Video games are the new self-help, and Jane McGonigal is here to tell us why. She's an all around gaming boss (see here and here) and she's the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California where she's spent years researching our brains during what she calls, "the state of play." After wading through tons of research, she found that gaming is a wonderland of possibilities to make us smarter, happier, and more creative people.  So game play isn't just an escape? Nope, it doesn't have to be. Jane says that the key to finding positive emotions and empowerment is to ground your gaming in real life. So when you're trapped in Minecraft, don't give up and walk away, trudge on. Fight. Or use creative problem-solving to get to to the next level. Those skills or resources will spill out from the virtual world and into the real one.  In fact, gaming can help cope with depression and combat anxiety, but it's all about the dosage (i.e. how much gaming you're doing). And we didn't want to leave you hanging when it comes to figuring out which games are best for what. Here are Jane's prescriptions: If you're trying to lose weight: "When you feel a craving coming on, play a visual pattern-matching game on your phone -- like Tetris or Candy Crush Saga – for ten minutes. These games have been shown in scientific studies to reduce cravings, by monopolizing your visual imagination and blocking your brain's ability to picture the thing you crave. Research shows that players make healthier eating choices in the hour after they've played!" If you need to reduce stress or combat anxiety: "Try the new game Reigns. It's a simple and easy-to-learn game in the style of games known to activate the same blood flow patterns in the brain as meditation, creating a blissful state of mind known as "flow." Research shows that twenty minutes of these flow-inducing games, three times a week, will help you focus your mind and calm yourself, and improve your mood for hours afterward. (Believe it or not, I’ve met many Buddhist monks who play Angry Birds!)" If you could use a boost of extra energy and motivation: "Play a really tricky puzzle game, like Sudoku, Cut the Rope, or The Room. Research shows that trying to solve a difficult puzzle increases dopamine levels in your brain, which is the neurotransmitter that increases your work ethic and will power. It doesn't matter if you successfully complete the game or not – just trying will do the trick, and the harder the better. So if you have a difficult project to tackle, or a complex problem to solve, prime your brain for success with fifteen minutes of puzzling first." Manoush is an old-school Tetris addict and she just downloaded it on her phone to play guilt-free. But what's your jam? Tell us what you like playing and why. As per the usual,  get in touch at [email protected], or the comments section below, or on Twitter or Facebook.   UPDATE: You've been writing in to tell us about the games you use to de-stress or stretch your brain, and they sound so good we had to share.  Below, suggestions from Note to Self listeners:  "If you're looking for a game to play before bed, Harvest Moon is my all time favorite. Nothing is as relaxing as simulated farming." - Maggie "I like playing a game called Wordament to help deal with stress or to calm my brain down at the end of the day. It forces my brain to focus on just one thing rather than having scattershot thoughts." - Chris "The Witness is the epitome of puzzle games. If you want a mind-tearing, beautiful, and unbelievably involved puzzle game, that is the game for you." - Justin "Words With Friends keeps me connected. Monument Valley just tickled me. Klondike Solitaire to empty my head." - Peg "Since I was 11 years old, The Sims has been one of the most effective stress-relieving aspects of my life. There’s something about the steady, creative process of building a house, achieving perceived long-term goals (Barista -> Manager in 1 hour, what?!) and social experimentation that completely relaxes me. Crazy to think after 15 years of turbulent high school emotions, unrewarding internships, stressful career deadlines, that this one game has evolved with me and, in my opinion, heightened by durability to the pressures of everyday life." - Angelique "I remembered  while looking into Monument Valley in particular that the soundtracks are so also so helpful for studying. My favorites right now are MV's, Journey, and Firewatch!!" - Tracey "I play ancestry.com. It’s the only technology driven game I’ve ever played. I find it fun, interesting, challenging and then I have a kinship chart for my children when I’m finished." - Leslie "My game is Spelltower. My daughter enjoys playing many games- Satellina, Monument Valley, Pictoword, Twist -- and I think most are useful in teaching problem-solving." - Leanna  For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Come along with us... into the future. A place where there is a written record of everything you've said-- ever.  We're calling it the transcribed life, and our guide is Rose Eveleth, the host of the Flash Forward podcast. This week, Rose delves into the benefits and dangers of this not-so-distant future.  The tech is coming. It's just a question of getting past the "sheep and goats" hurdle according to Steve Renals, professor of speech technology at the University of Edinburgh. Sheep and goats? It's a nerdy metaphor technologists in the field use.  Sheep are the voices the software can easily recognize. Goats are outliers. As the technology gets better, it'll hear us all as sheep. Once the machines can consistently recognize-- and transcribe-- our speech patterns, things get tricky.  Sara Watson, technology critic and research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, considers whether such technology could fundamentally change the way we communicate with each other. Finally, we get a taste of the transcribed life with Heather Ratcliff, who, because of a rare genetic disorder, wants a detailed log of her day to help her fill in gaps in her memory. Her experiment brings some unexpected results.  As we consider the pros and cons of this technology, we want to hear from you, dear N2S listener. Does the transcribed life sound good to you? Or does this searchable record terrify you to your core? Tell us about it. Record a voice memo and email it to [email protected], or tell us in the comments section below, or send us a message on Twitter or Facebook.   For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

It's tough being a teenager these days. This week, we head to Fayetteville, North Carolina where high school star quarterback, Cormega Copening, faced five felony charges of sexual exploitation of a minor for exchanging racy (or romantic, depending on your point of view) photos with his girlfriend in 2015. Just half of states in the U.S. have proposed or implemented laws that address teen sexting directly. Depending on where you live, teens who send or receive a sext to/from anyone under 18 can be charged with child pornography. In Fayetteville, things took a turn for the Kafkaesque because of a North Carolina law that treats 16-year-olds as adults if they are charged with a crime. Fayetteville Observer reporter, Paul Woolverton, explains, "We're one of two states that say that if you are 16 or older, if you're charged with a crime, you're an adult. But if you're the victim of a crime, you're a minor. So in these cases, since they were under 18 but over 16, they were both the adult criminals who exploited their minor selves."  Click "listen" above to hear more about the case of two consenting teenagers who expressed themselves in sexts and became the center of a very public debate.  Further listening:  Last year, N2S spoke to Cañon City Schools superintendent the day after students were found trading nude photographs "like baseball cards."  Listener favorite: Manoush and Peggy Orenstein discuss what it's like to be desired AND empowered as a young woman. And don't forget, 16-year-old Grace who schools Manoush on how cell phone envy is still a thing. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired is stocked with all kinds of gadgets: singing calculators, talking typewriters, even video games that you navigate using only sound. Most are specialized and expensive — the school can afford them, but a lot of families can’t. There is one piece of tech, however, that almost every student has, and, absolutely every student wants. It’s a status symbol, it’s a social media machine, and it will read text out loud. Yes, it's an iPhone. And 'reading' on a smartphone is gaining prominence as a reliable tool for the visually impaired.  However this tool is the center of a larger question blind students and society at large are facing: Are iPads and iPhones rendering Braille obsolete? And if so, should advocates for the visually impaired be worried? Click "listen" above and hear reporter Ryan Kailath take us into The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to hear all sides of the issue.  And don't forget to check out our test to see how fast you can 'read with your ears,' a skill that blind kids often acquire and master.  This is a repeat episode which originally aired in 2015. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.   Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

"You go, 'Damn, just it’s not my crazy person... it’s everyone’s crazy person!'" – Elan Gale, creator of Texts From Your Ex, Tinder Nightmares, Unspirational and more If you're not one of Text From Your Ex's 1.9 million followers already, here's what you need to know: Elan Gale's brainchild is an Instagram account with pages and pages of awkwardness captured in screenshots. They're submitted by email, and Gale says he has a backlog of 40,000 "just sitting around." ROCK AND ROLLLLLL A photo posted by Unspirational (@textsfromyourex) on Jun 9, 2016 at 10:16pm PDT It turns out, reading through hundreds of thousands of other people's emotionally loaded conversations gives you some pretty profound insight into relationships, technology, and privacy (or rather... the utter lack thereof). "You’ve never had an interesting text conversation that hasn’t been sent to ten people. That’s just what people do," Gale says. "Even though we treat relationships more casually because of text messages and the way we communicate, you have to actually trust people more to be open and honest with them because you have your entire personal life on their phone, or their watch, or their unguarded computer. And they're irresponsible dicks... and at any moment anyone could just have a lapse of judgement for 45 seconds and leave their phone on a table without a passcode and your entire life is visible. So why pretend that it’s not?"    Seems like a fair trade A photo posted by Unspirational (@textsfromyourex) on Sep 9, 2015 at 2:06pm PDT Elan Gale's "Texts From Your Ex" book is available in paperback. This is a repeat episode which originally aired in 2015. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.   Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

According to the internet security company AVG, 92% of children in the U.S. have a digital presence by the time they turn two. But a University of Michigan poll from March 2015 found that three-fourths of parents think another parent has shared too much information about their child online. In this episode, we bring together three people with very different approaches for a conversation about ethics, photography, and the struggle of weighing future consequences in a world we can't quite picture yet (no pun intended). Here's where our three moms stand on posting photos of their kids: Note to Self Host Manoush Zomorodi, who posts nothing. Note to Self Executive Producer Jen Poyant, who posts every day on Instagram. Longest Shortest Time Host Hillary Frank, who posts drawings and side-angles but no faces. This is a repeat episode which originally aired in 2015. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.     

Reading this right now?  Congratulations. You're winning. Yes, all of the usual corporate and government entities know you're here. Google remembers everything you've ever searched, BuzzFeed knows how you've scored on all their quizzes, and your cell phone provider knows who you talk to and who you sleep with. Terms of Service agreements are an exercise in futility, encrypted email often takes more trouble than it's worth, and yeah, sure, go ahead and give Facebook a fake name, but don't think you're fooling anyone. Companies are collecting your data from just about everywhere, storing it through time unknown, and using it however they want. Oh, and that's where the FBI-and-friends find it. But Bruce Schneier, author of the book, "Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World," says the fact that you've taken the time to read this far means you've got the one reliable protection available to us in year 2016: awareness. Schneier also happens to be a security technologist and cryptographer and well, he's kind of a tech hero - a Chuck Norris - of the digital sphere. His cause: privacy. In fact, even before The Economist called Schneier a "security guru," a different company tried to make him into an $100 dollar action figure (he didn't like their price and proposed $40 instead). Go to the site, "Bruce Schneier Facts," and you'll find photos of Schneier's face pasted onto different movie heroes' bodies, bearing captions like: "Bruce Schneier watches Blu-ray movies by looking at the discs." Click on listen above and hear Manoush and Schneier discuss ways we can feel less helpless when it comes to protecting our data and maintaining some online privacy.  PLUS: We still want your feedback on N2S and we want YOU to help us decide what we should cover in our next big project. So please, fill out this short survey - it's only 11 questions and won't take you more than 3 minutes.  This is a repeat episode which originally aired in 2015. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

Do we need to be worried about our phones tracking our every move? Because it sure seems like they are. Walter Kirn wants you to know that you're NOT going crazy and maybe you should be a little paranoid with your phone. He covers privacy, tech and surveillance, and – unrelated – he wrote the book behind "Up in the Air" with George Clooney. He answers some of your most pressing questions on phone privacy and how concerned we should be about what our phones are tracking. Here's a sampling of one of the many questions we've received from listeners that captures a thought-to-be-private moment: Between Me and My Dog"So, I get out of the shower and I’m getting dressed and of course my dog is over there on his chaise and I’m looking at him and I’m feeling all sad that I’m about to go to work for a couple hours. I’m humming to myself a song... my poor dog is tortured by this, but I start singing, 'Every time we say goodbye I cry a little, I die a little,' you know... that song. I get in the car, I put on the iPhone music. I have 6157 songs. I hit shuffle randomly, and the first song to play is the song that I was just humming... I haven’t heard this song in forever... So anyway, that's my question... and make sure you sing to your dog whenever you can because they love it, they absolutely love it." – Michael Grant So... should we be paranoid? Do we know whether our gadgets are passively listening to us? No. We don’t know for sure, beyond what they tell us in their privacy policies. But we do know that voice recognition is what many major companies are trying to get us to start using. Google has OK Google, Apple has Siri, and Amazon has Echo, a home appliance that listens to you all the time. We know that many third party apps use location data services, and we know that personalization – especially personalized ads – rely on tracking.   Listen to the our show to hear our interview with Walter Kirn and if you're interested for more phone privacy discussions, be sure to read his article in The Atlantic, "If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy." Also, enjoy the picture below (from listener Michael Grant) if you're feeling stressed out by all the privacy talk. Note to Self listener Michael Grant wrote in with a strange story about a private moment talking to his dog, which may or may not have been overheard by his phone. This is that dog. (Courtesy of Michael Grant and Bodhi the dog) One last thing: We want your feedback so Note to Self can get better and better. Please, fill out this survey. Your answers will help us make content that fits into your day-to-day and keeps us at the top of your playlist.  This is a repeat episode which originally aired in 2015. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

We just wrapped up our four-part series "Taking the Lead." It’s about two Brooklyn moms turned entrepreneurs with a big idea to revolutionize caretaking. It’s also about women, work, families, priorities and relationships... and how our listeners are juggling all those things. If you missed the series, start at the beginning and enjoy the ride. It’s right here: Episode 1: The Pain Point Episode 2: The Paradox Episode 3: The Pressure Episode 4: The Partnership In this bonus episode, listen to Manoush’s full conversation with Andrew Moravcsik, the accomplished author, academic, and husband to Anne-Marie Slaughter (yeah, the one who literally wrote the book on women in the workplace.) Even if you listened to our "Taking the Lead" series, you’ll want to hear Andy’s insights into what being the lead parent has meant for his career, his psyche, and their marriage.     For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

It all comes down to this — we’ve arrived at the fourth and final episode of our month-long series about women and work: "Taking the Lead." And the timing couldn’t be better: Ivanka Trump took on equal pay and affordable childcare during her speech at the Republican National Convention last week, becoming the model mother/entrepreneur for her dad’s campaign. Hillary Clinton goes into the final stretch as the Democrat’s presidential candidate, breaking political glass ceilings no matter which way you vote. Back in podcast land, a quick recap: our two Brooklyn moms turned tech entrepreneurs, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker are co-founders of Need/Done, a service for backup childcare and household support. (It doesn’t exist yet but think Nextdoor meets Sittercity.) If you missed the first three episodes of our four-part series, enjoy catching up here: Episode 1: The Pain Point Episode 2: The Paradox Episode 3: The Pressure In the final chapter, the women face difficult choices: Should they drop the feminist mission behind the company when they make their pitch to investors? Does Rachael need to give up entrepreneurship so she can remain the kind of mom she wants to be?   Plus, we’ll end the suspense and talk about the seismic shift happening to our culture around women and work with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary’s former advisor at the State Department. Anne-Marie is now the CEO of New America and the author of Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, which she wrote after detailing her struggles to combine her career with parenting in a hugely popular piece for The Atlantic called "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All." And yes, we’ll tackle the male perspective on caretaking and professional ambitions by speaking with Anne-Marie’s husband, Andrew Moravcsik. He’s a professor of Political Science at Princeton University and the "lead parent" at home. Andy explains how being his family’s primary caretaker has affected his career, psyche and marriage... and why he feels so strongly that the conversation about work/life balance is really about men and their role in society. A special note to listeners: Your thoughts on these issues have been a hugely important part of this series. Thank you so much for being so honest and open with your stories and struggles. We want to continue to hear what you think — any/all of your reactions. Send them to us by recording a voice memo or emailing [email protected].   We’d also like to make a request: Please share this episode with one person whom you think needs to know more about this topic (or needs to know she's/he's not alone!). Share and talk about the series with a colleague, boss, spouse, or friend by cutting and pasting this link here [http://www.wnyc.org/story/work-life-balance-need-done-partnership] in a Facebook post or email. Also, if you enjoyed the little bit of our conversation with father and lead-parent Andy Moravcsik, we’ve got great news: You can listen to his full conversation with Manoush in a bonus episode right here. For more Note to Self, and to get episodes like this one sent straight to your feed, make sure you’re subscribed in iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.

Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker are two Brooklyn moms and the co-founders of Need/Done, a digital platform with a feminist mission to help more women make it to the corner office. How does it work? Through a crowdsourced community of parents, the service provides backup childcare and household support. Think: Nextdoor meets Sittercity. If you missed the first two episodes of our four-part series, catch up. They're right here: Episode 1: The Pain Point Episode 2: The Paradox Faced with financial barriers, this week Rachael and Leslie join a startup accelerator and pitch their idea to investors. But while honing their pitch, the business partners' different goals surface. Rachael is focused on the service's potential for social change. Leslie sees the potential to create a giant female-led company. This week the pressure is on: The pressure to deliver the perfect pitch; pressure from family; and — this is a big one — financial pressure. Under the strain, they make a strategic move that confounds Manoush. Next week, on the fourth and final episode of "Taking the Lead," Manoush shares what she learned from the investors with Rachael and Leslie. Plus, Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of "Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family," returns — this time with her husband, Professor Andrew Moravcsik — for an intimate conversation about the professional and personal sacrifices they have made for their marriage. Housekeeping Several of you have asked us how to listen to podcasts. We've got you covered here: Look! I Taught My Dad To Download Podcasts. We're also making a master resource list of articles/books/podcasts for surviving the work/life balance struggle, so please continue to add your favorites to our growing list here. In the beginning of this week's episode, Manoush labels (in a fun way!) Rachael and Leslie with a personality test called the "Enneagram Test." It's a pseudoscientific survey that categorizes people into 9 groups that represent a person's core qualities, or most primal selves. Rawr. Take it for yourself here. If you have an opinion on our series, Rachael and Leslie's strategy, or your own work/life balance story, please tell us by sending a voice memo to [email protected]. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast,Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.    

Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker are two working moms who hatched the idea for Need/Done, an app that they think could help get more working parents — especially working moms — into top-tier positions, while also being present at home. How does the app work? Through a crowdsourced community of parents, the service provides reliable childcare, meal planning suggestions, and groceries delivered to your door. Think: Nextdoor meets Sittercity. In the second installment of our four-part series, the co-founders test out a prototype of the service on 20 Brooklyn moms, including one very eager and willing participant: Manoush. She wants to check dinner off her to-do-list... but things don't go quite as planned.  "They delivered sausages with pork casing which is a problem for my Jewish husband, so I took all the sausage meat out of the casings, and I’m cooking it now before he gets home so he doesn’t find out about it. Except now I’m telling you." Meanwhile, one of the founders discovers that she may be ready to swap in her corporate blazer for a Silicon Valley hoodie, but the other is beginning to question if she can maintain momentum with her current day job, lead-parenting, and starting a new company. If you like this episode, you’ll want to check out the first episode in our month-long series,"Taking The Lead: The Pain Point." We're also making a master resource list of articles/books/podcasts for surviving the work/life balance struggle, so please continue to add your favorites to our growing list here. Also, we'd like to thank those of you who reached out to tell us about your own experiences. We know that families come in all shapes and sizes and we love hearing your stories. If you have a work/life balance moment tell us about it by sending a voice memo to [email protected]. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast,Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Welcome to a very special month of Note to Self. For the next four weeks, we're telling the story of two Brooklyn women, Rachael Ellison and Leslie Ali Walker, who have an idea (a tech idea) to help harried working mothers who still want to rise up in their professional ranks. Why? Because of numbers like these: 4.6 percent of S&P 500 companies have female CEOs  43 percent of highly-skilled women with children leave their jobs voluntarily at some point in their careers The U.S. is the only developing country that doesn't mandate paid maternity leave. The Family Medical Leave Act gives workers a maximum of 12 weeks off unpaid per year Almost 70 percent of mothers and over 90 percent of fathers are in the workforce Caregiving is projected to be the largest occupation in the U.S. by 2020 Only 7 percent of U.S. startups that received at least $20 million in funding have founders who are women  Being a working parent can take its toll. Between school lunches, conference calls, soccer practices, quarterly reviews, sleepovers, and PowerPoint presentations, many of you told us that maintaining your sanity, succeeding professionally, and being a present parent feels nearly impossible. Here's what some of you said: I am a freelancer and because of that don't have paid maternity leave. Thanks, America. We ended up in this situation where I could only really take the day I gave birth off. - Amy   I am a full time high school English teacher and I have two young sons. Last year, my younger son was sick. He had some sort of fever so he couldn't go into preschool, and my husband had a meeting at work so he couldn't take him in, and I couldn't get a sub on short notice. So he came into school with me. And everything worked fine for a little while and suddenly I heard "mommy" said in the tone that all moms know is not a good sign. And it was followed by the sound of my poor child vomiting everywhere.  - Serena   I was schlepping a breast pump into an old bathroom of a building I used to work in that was not remotely accommodated for nursing moms. And I had an extension cord coming out of the bathroom into the stall with my laptop while I was on a conference call and pumping and staying on mute and sending out an evite for a girls night reunion at my house. - Rebecca   My daughter was about three or four and she was sick and had to stay home from school, but I didn't have anyone to stay with her. So I took her to work with me. I was working in an office with cubicles, so I sort of stuffed her under my desk at the bottom of the cubicle where a couple of pairs of shoes and a lot of wires and my hard-drive were, and I kept her under the desk for the whole day. - Julia   Even though we live in progressive times, some mothers still find themselves doing the heavy lifting at home. Enter Rachael and Leslie, who team up to create Need/Done, a service they think will help working mothers conquer their to-do list and concentrate on their professional ambitions. Think of it as the working mom’s command center. This week, Rachael and Leslie leave their families behind in a snowstorm to visit Silicon Valley, meet the competition, and find out whether two Brooklyn moms have a shot at VC funding. We also talk to Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of The Atlantic article "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All" and the book "Unfinished Business," about why there's still resistance to gender parity at the top of many corporations.  As part of this series, we're creating a list of stellar content (books, podcasts, etc.) to help anyone trying to stay sane as a working parent. To kick things off, Manoush started a list of things that she's heard and read that have stuck with her. And we want to grow that list by hearing from you, so please share your resources for work/life balance with us in the comments section or by emailing [email protected].  For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast,Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Support Note to Self by becoming a member today at NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.   

Get ready to meet Rachael and Leslie, two working mothers in Brooklyn, who have a big idea (a tech idea) to help women "have it all." From Manoush:  Hi lovely listener, For the past two years, I’ve been following two newbie entrepreneurs as they try to build a service to solve all our work/life balance issues... but they end up struggling more and more with those issues themselves. (Oh, the irony of being a working mother in tech. #meta) Their journey illustrates how tough it can be for women to reconcile their professional identities with their caretaking identities. The series also brings up so many broader questions: Can women find a place in the tech economy? Is society ready to radically redefine gender roles in the home? What has to change in our culture to get more women into the C-Suite?  Note to Self listeners and I share our own parenting and professional horrors and triumphs. Plus, special guest Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of The Atlantic article "Why Women Still Can’t Have it All," also stops by during the series to talk about work/life balance, lead parents, and the career advice every millennial needs. Tell your partner, sibling, boss, employee, mom or dad to join you and us for Taking the Lead!  Let's have this conversation! Manoush 

Bored and Brilliant is back. This time, with a special announcement: The Bored and Brilliant book is coming in 2017!!! Manoush is spending a ton of time sorting through your feedback, listening to your experiences and getting super bored in order to make this book exceptionally useful. So, now it's time for a summer refresher. Last year, tens of thousands of you took part in our Bored and Brilliant Project, a week of challenges that pushed us to rethink our relationship with our phones and jumpstart our creativity. We adapted the idea into a short, condensed version with three very doable, modifiable challenges for those of you on a beach (or stuck at the office wishing you were on a beach). This is not a digital detox. This is not an edict to lock your phone away in a drawer. This is not an ode to mindfulness. It is a way to apply what we know about constant notifications, neuroscience, and productivity to our lives. Right now. Listen above for the boot camp!   And for those of you who want all of the challenges at once, here's the full, extended series: The Case for Boredom What 95 Minutes of Phone Time a Day Does To Us Challenge 1: In Your Pocket Challenge 2: Photo Free Challenge 3: Delete That App Challenge 4: Fauxcation Challenge 5: Small Observation Challenge 6: Dream House The Winning Dream Houses The Results The Personal Stories One final note: Tomorrow we're very excited to drop a preview episode of our upcoming series about work/life balance. So do us a favor — subscribe on iTunes and tell a friend. We've been working on this project for two years, and can't wait to share it with you. For more Note to Self, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

You might personally aspire to leave work at the workplace, but in some parts of Europe there is actual legislation built around a worker's "right to disconnect." And in Korea, Wi-Fi is so strong and available that people watch hours-long live broadcasts of other people eating. This week we're taking you overseas to learn how people in other countries commune with tech. Consider this podcast your RTW ticket for the world's tiniest, pocket-sized airplane. Eleanor Beardsley, Elise Hu, Gregory Warner — if these names get you excited, you might be a nerd. They're NPR international correspondents who live and report in France, Korea and East Africa. We asked them to share some of their insider knowledge about how tech functions differently in the lives of people abroad. For example, mukbong in Korea. See for yourself:   In the name of discovery, we hope this week's episode inspires you to do some personal reflection. Does your culture influence how you use technology? Also, look outside of yourself. Here's a reading list to get you started: France: France bans Wi-Fi in nurseries (Feb., 2015) French employers agree to ban company email after work hours (April, 2014) More email-after-work bans (May, 2016) French parents try to explain terror attacks to their kids (Nov., 2015) France tries to tax smartphones (May, 2013) French people don't love cat videos as much as Americans (Nov., 2014)  Korea: Korean teens are addicted to the internet (May, 2015) The first Korean tech rehab (Nov., 2007) Korean tech rehab today (Jan., 2016)  Koreans have an insatiable appetite for watching strangers binge eat (March, 2015) East Africa: Ethiopia's Internet (Feb. 2016)  Kenya's taxi economy (June, 2015)  The Kenya-based company, Toto Health (May, 2016)   Kenya's digital currency, M-Pesa (May, 2014)  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Think about where you go to find news. Podcasts? WNYC? The New York Times? Facebook? Twitter? Newsletters? Do you want us to stop asking questions? Welcome to the Attention Economy. There is fierce competition for your eyes and ears — (thank you for choosing correctly). Media companies know that a good way to find an audience is to write and speak like the people they're trying to reach. It's the reason Buzzfeed, Vice, Mashable and so many others are popular with Snake People. Identity Media is a big part of why theSkimm — a newsletter that targets Millennial women by rounding up the day's news from Kanye West to Ban Ki-moon — has over 3.5 million subscribers. You might be one of them. This week we talked to theSkimm co-founders Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg about how they go about presenting the news. Identity Media is more than just a business model, it's changing how we consume the news. To try and sort out why this "Skimm" approach to serious stories made her feel a little queasy, Manoush talked to John Herrman. He reports on the media for the New York Times. Together, Manoush and John embark on a mission to answer that age-old question: Do Justin Bieber and Hiroshima belong in the same sentence? Here's a rundown of links to supplement this week's episode: The Skimm issue that mentions President Obama's trip to Japan The New York Times article about the same trip How the Japan Times covered the same trip How Buzzfeed covered it, and then went in a different direction The Politico playbook A silly guide to generation gaps In a way, this whole conversation ties into — you guessed it — our Infomagical project. (Did you catch last week's boot camp?) How we consume media and our goals for reading the news can influence our ability to think and communicate. If you want to get in on the project, it's still around for a limited time. For more Note to Self, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

You haven't watched Lemonade all the way through yet, have you?  Oh, you didn't notice the extra twist of the knife in Sunday's Game of Thrones? Yes, Hillary just became the presumptive nominee. Yes, we know you haven't been paying that much attention. National Doughnut Day was last week. But you? You're eating one today, aren't you? In sum: There's a million things you haven't done – but just you wait! Just you wait!  It's time for Infomagical BOOTCAMP. Earlier this year, 30,000 of you participated in our Infomagical project, five days of challenges designed to fight information overload – that buzzy, anxious feeling of, there's way too much out there to consume, I am not getting anything done all the way through, and I still have no idea what people are talking about. This week, we've made an extra special, super-charged challenge that only lasts one day. A very, very, very productive day. Perhaps you participated in the first round, you've been very focused ever since and now you want to get something 100 percent DONE before you leave for a well-deserved summer vacation. Perhaps you participated, and you've fallen off the wagon. Perhaps you did not participate because you were overwhelmed by the idea of a week-long commitment. Perhaps you did not participate because you did not know about it. This is your chance. ATTENTION!  Listen to this week's Note to Self wherever you listen to your podcasts for your challenge and instructions. And if you want to do a full Infomagical week – or if you know anyone who could benefit from one – you can still sign up here for a few more weeks. If you're doing it? Or if you have big ideas for our next big project? Let us know @NoteToSelf (#infomagical) or Note to Self on Facebook.

Last week Brian Christian, co-author of the book "Algorithms to Live By," taught us how algorithms can optimize how we live. They can help explain that messy pile of papers on your desk, or why you sometimes have a brain fart. If you missed that episode, it's right here. This week we're raising the stakes (and steaks). We're putting such algorithms to the test to see if they can actually help solve some of our daily inconveniences, like picking a place to eat or finding a date. Here's what happened: The Name's Zomorodi, Gitta Zomorodi Meet Gitta. She's Manoush's sister. Usually when Gitta and Manoush get together for a meal, they feel a lot of pressure to pick the perfect spot. But instead of settling, they wander around until they're sufficiently hangry, and end up almost eating one another. But this time out, the two decided to give "optimal stopping" a shot — that's an algorithm that says if you evaluate 37 percent of your options and establish a baseline, the next option that comes along that is better than anything from the baseline, that is the one you should pick. Since it wasn't really practical for Manoush and Gitta to evaluate 37 percent of all the restaurants in New York, they pledged to make their decision 37 percent faster than they usually would, which, in this case, they calculated at about 11 minutes. They made their decision and, guess what — they had a great time. And they weren't even hangry, so their could enjoy each other's company. Algorithms: 1.  See Gitta (left) and Manoush (right) reveling in their new algorithmic lives: Coffee Meets Kagel Next, eligible bachelorette Jenna Kagel (who also happens to be one of the fine producers on this show) tried applying algorithms to online dating. She used the app Coffee Meets Bagel which, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated, is like Tinder — you swipe "pass" or "like" on a series of profiles, and hope the other person reciprocates — but in this case you only have 24 hours to choose. Jenna swiped away, but to no avail. She even connected with a bookstore owner in Brooklyn who didn't respond when she asked him out to drinks. (Brooklyn book man: If you're reading this, Jenna is out of your league and you don't deserve her.) Algorithms: 0. But that's the thing: even algorithms have a margin for error. Maybe if Jenna tried again a different week, she might get a date. If Manoush and Gitta decide on restaurants using an algorithm every time, eventually they're going to have a crappy meal. So, knowing that they're fallible, how much trust should we place in algorithms to help make decisions? Use the audio player above to hear move about Manoush, Gitta and Jenna's adventures with algorithms, plus a super nerdy love story. And tell us if you've tried using an algorithm in real life. How did it go? We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

There's been a lot of negative press lately about algorithms (Facebook, Snapchat, the prison system). But this week we're exploring ways that mathematical and scientific algorithms can actually help improve how we live. Brian Christian co-wrote the book "Algorithms to Live By" with his friend, Tom Griffiths, a psychology and cognitive science professor at UC Berkeley. Brian is all about the intersection of technology and humanity, and figuring out how to use data to help people optimize their lives. In their book, Brian and Tom offer really practical applications for scientific principles, which we'll get to in a minute. But first, here's the catch: There’s no formula for perfection. Even if you apply these algorithms to your life, things will go wrong. But by trying out these algorithms, you can statistically give it your best shot. In part one of this two-part series about practical applications for algorithms, Brian tells Manoush about six small changes anyone can try. 1. Temporal Locality This algorithm posits that the paper you're most likely to use next, is the last one you touched. So that pile of papers on your desk? You have a scientific reason to never organize them. The most relevant stuff will rise to the top. 2. The Search/Sort Trade-off If you tag and file your emails, you might be wasting your time. Weigh the amount of time you spend organizing against the amount of time it takes to use the good ol' search function. 3. Computational Kindness The next time you try to plan a meeting, skip the classic line, "I'm totally free." Brian calls this "Passing the computational buck." Instead, ask a binary question like "Are you free for dinner at 5 p.m. on Thursday?" It may go against the rules of etiquette, but setting a specific window for availability should be more efficient. 4. Cache Miss There's a fundamental trade-off between size and speed. The more we know — the more data we collect in our minds — the more likely we are to have a brain fart.  5. The Explore/Exploit Trade-off The more experiences you have, the less likely it is that something will blow your mind. That's why Manoush has such fond memories from a Squeeze concert she went to in ninth grade. It may not have actually been that incredible, but she had less to compare it to. 6. Radix Sort You might be compelled to sort your kid's Legos (or yours, this is a judgement-free zone) by color. But radix sort says efficiency trumps aesthetic. Try sorting by size instead. Click the "Listen" button above to hear Brian and Manoush talk all about how to use these algorithms to live a better life. And when you're done, check out part 2 of the series where Manoush tests some of them out. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Girls who grow up with the Internet hear a lot of messed up cultural messages. They're led to believe that if they post sexy pictures, and get a lot of 'likes,' that is empowerment, and that taking revealing pictures is owning their bodies and sexuality. There are also a lot of hilarious women in popular culture — Amy Schumer, Rachel Bloom, Lena Dunham, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson to name a few — who use their comedy to highlight the contradictions inherent in navigating this media saturated world, full of images that define feminine desirability and hotness. But which messages are getting through to adolescent girls? It's a grab bag, according to Peggy Orenstein who noticed these, and a lot of other troubling trends when she interviewed 70 college-age girls about their personal lives. She wrote a book about it called "Girls & Sex," and talked to us this week about some of the things she learned. If you listen to this show a lot, you'll hear fragments of ideas we've touched on before like sex, teens and interaction in this digital world. And if you're new to the show, welcome to it! This is the kind of stuff we love talking about, so we hope you'll get in on the conversation. And one more thing: We are working on a very special project for July and we need your voice. Tell us about an experience as a woman trying to achieve "Work-life balance." It can be minor, major, catastrophic... anything. We're here to listen. Record your voice memo and send it to [email protected]. We really appreciate it. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

We have a confession to make... Virtual Reality? Oculus Rift? HTC Vive? Haven’t really given any of them much thought. We’re fascinated enough by, you know, actual reality. But with Mark Zuckerberg recently calling VR the “next major computing and communication platform,” and Virtual Reality poised to be a $40 billion industry by 2020 (Wall Street Journal paywall), we decided it’s time to face the inevitable, and strap the inevitable to our face. Who? Max Read was our guide. He’s a senior editor at New York Magazine where he recently launched their new tech/culture vertical Select All. He's been reporting on virtual reality for a while. Where? The Tribeca Film Festival’s "Storyscapes" program. It was a big showroom filled with cutting edge technology related to storytelling. Basically, a temporary VR convention. No non-nerds allowed. Why? It’s time for us to get a handle on this new wave of technology, and figure out how it could impact our lives. We had some reservations — like the cringe-y idea of shining a screen a few inches away from a child’s eyes — but with every technological innovation come unwarranted fears. Remember how parents always told their kids not to sit right in from of the TV? Max Read: editor or VR model? In this episode we mention a few examples of VR technology: DEEP VR, developers Niki Smit and Owen Harris  Google Cardboard, boosted by the New York Times The Turning Forest, Chris Pike from BBC Research & Development Listen to the episode (player above) to hear what happened when Manoush and Max took VR off the lot for a tech drive (sorry). But minor spoiler: there's a lot of grey area. Instead of learning about the Great Wall of China, students could actually go there. But what if they become so invested in these immersive, virtual worlds, they withdraw from the real world? We weren't really thinking about VR before... but we are now. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Here's the thing about social media; it's supposed to be social. Right there in the name. And yet, across the Internet there are millions of public videos, photos and posts that almost no one has watched, clicked or shared. Which begs the question: If a person puts a video on YouTube, and no one watches, did it even happen? Joe Veix wrote for Fusion about what he calls the Lonely Web. "It lives in the murky space between the mainstream and the deep webs. The content is public and indexed by search engines, but broadcast to a tiny audience, algorithmically filtered out, and/or difficult to find using traditional search techniques." Just to focus on YouTube, the company reports that over 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute. Nobody can watch all this stuff. But it's there... waiting. Joe tells Manoush that watching these videos can give you a refreshingly honest look into someone's life, as opposed to the more edited and filtered versions that many of us share. "But is also emotionally exhausting," he says. "Because on some level you are maybe not supposed to be watching these videos. It’s a little voyeuristic." In many ways, the present-day Internet caters to our laziness. The people who work at media companies are pros at understanding our expectations, finding buzzy content, slapping on the perfect headline and setting it right in front of our eyes. The Lonely Web offers something different — its headline might just be a string of numbers, and it doesn't care about your expectations. It's up to you to go out and find it. But first, let Joe and Manoush be your guide by listening to this week's episode. Here are the painfully ordinary, yet somehow wonderful videos they discuss:         If you're looking for more Lonely Web videos, look no further: They're right here. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

There are two sides to every surveillance story. On one side, security; on the other, privacy. Ross McNutt is an innovator in the field. During the Iraq War in 2004, McNutt and his team developed technology to use a plane and a cluster of cameras to capture an entire city, all day. So when a roadside bomb detonated, McNutt's technology could zoom in and scroll back in time, and find out how it happened. In a way, McNutt had a superpower. So back to the debate. For people who believe that security should be our top priority, having an eye in the sky can save lives. But for those worried about privacy, without regulation, surveillance could limit our freedom. Cue the Orwellian fear, panic and "What Ifs."  That's the conversation that took place, and is still happening over McNutt's superpower. Like a lot of technology, it might be developed for one purpose (in this case, the military), but what happens when it's used in a different context? Like Dayton, Ohio — that's one of the many places where McNutt is trying to implement his surveillance technology to help fight crime, and save cities money. If only it could be that simple. This week, we see how McNutt's technology plays out in Juarez, Mexico vs. Dayton, and look at the Great Surveillance Debate from different angles. We tap into the how and why of using technology to live better as individuals and a society, which is exactly the kind of conversation that we think is important to have.  This episode originally aired last year as part of a partnership with Radiolab (Heard of it?). We also did our own episode about surveillance, but realized that we never actually shared this one with you. So we gave it a face lift — including an update from McNutt — and are presenting it to you in all its glory. Better than ever. Special thanks to Alex Goldmark, former Note to Self producer (now of Planet Money) who helped report this episode. Also, thanks to Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich, Andy Mills and the whole team at Radiolab. ***UPDATE: After our episode first aired, the Baltimore Police Department contracted Ross McNutt's company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, to conduct aerial surveillance over the city to help with criminal investigations. Read more about Baltimore's Eye in the Sky in Bloomberg Businessweek.   One last thing: For the past few weeks we've been compiling a list of female-hosted podcasts for you to check out and share with the Internet. [Insert whatever deity you do or don't believe in here] knows there aren't enough, but, as a show proudly hosted by a wonderful woman, we're doing our part to help spread the word. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter here to get a weekly update from us sent straight to your inbox. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Here are some things that we've had to come to terms with about the Internet: People watch us when we shop online; They collect data about our likes, dislikes, habits; They using that data to manipulate... err, guide us. This type of design research is called User Experience or UX. And to find out exactly what these designers are looking for, and why they do it, we went to the room where it happens: Manoush volunteered herself as a guinea pig in Etsy's Usability Testing Lab. But unlike most subjects in UX testing, Manoush got to step behind the curtain for a story about online seduction—how designers create an immersive experience that makes you relaxed or happy or excited, and makes you feel like spending time and money. Here she is in the top right hand corner, getting excited about a scarf: Etsy UX researchers watching Manoush shop "for a gift." (Jackie Snow) Here is that scarf in all its winged glory: For the record, she didn't buy it. Yet. (Shovava/Etsy.com) Listen to the full episode to find out what we learned about UX, and how businesses use it to shape our experiences. This episode is one of our favorites—it originally aired back in August 2015, but we liked it so much, we're sharing it again, better than ever. In this week's episode: Mark Hurst, Founder and CEO of UX consulting firm Creative Good Jill Fruchter, UX Research Manager at Etsy Alex Wright, Director of Research at Etsy More good background reading on UX: What a UX designer actually does. And some insight into all the acronyms that start with "U". And one last thing! If you heard last week's episode, you know that we're compiling a list of podcasts that are hosted by women. We asked and you gave us lots and lots of great recommendations. So now let's take things one step further. What's the best podcast episode that you've heard lately, hosted by a woman, or another underrepresented group? Send us your endorsements and we'll include some of your responses in next week's newsletter. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

We have a theory: Listening to female-hosted podcasts is a feminist act. You, right now, if you listen to this show, you are making a feminist statement. Need a little more explanation? When Note to Self started nearly three years ago, it was a little radio segment called New Tech City, and Manoush covered technology with the professional, authoritative, every-word-exists-for-a-reason gravitas that you can still hear on public radio. Also, she was working (almost exclusively) with men. But then, that radio segment became a podcast, and everything changed. Not right away—if you go back and listen to old shows in our archives, it's painfully obvious that it took a while to figure out how our show should sound. But a huge part of that process—that transformation—stemmed from Manoush realizing that it's OK to sound like herself. In fact, the show is better for it. She realized that she can be vulnerable and uncertain, and not always find answers. Because that's how the world works, and that's how people work. Over the years we've grown, and we're proud of our grown-up self. Best of all, you've come with us. You choose to download and listen to what we have to say. But ours isn't the only show that figured out that a podcast—that this digital medium—has a special kind of power. Participating in this format provides a special kind of platform to express different ideas and perspectives, and gives many different kinds of people a literal microphone. Take, for example, all the successful podcasts that have cropped up in the last few years: Serial, Another Round, Death Sex & Money, Only Human, Invisibilia and Call Your Girlfriend. And new amazing hosts are popping up all the time. Like Phoebe Robinson—a stand-up comedian and writer who now has something new to add to her multi-hyphenate title: podcast host. Along with her BFF, Jessica Williams, Phoebe is boldly entering the world of podcasts on WNYC's new show 2 Dope Queens. So this week seems like an opportune time to ask Phoebe about how she plans to use the medium. Where does her voice and her show fit into this digital space? If this episode suddenly compels you to listen to more of Phoebe, you should check out 2 Dope Queens. The first few episodes are live and ready for your ears. (It's not super appropriate for the little ones, but if you don't mind raunch and profanity, listen away.) Also, remember that list of lady-helmed podcasts? Well, we want to hear what's in your podcast feed right now. What podcasts do you listen to that feature people who don't usually get a platform on media outlets? Why do you like them? Email us at [email protected] or send us a note on Facebook or Twitter. We've started to compile your suggestions here and we'll add some of your answers to next week's newsletter too. So keep them coming! Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Welcome to Note to Self Cafe. Would you like cream and sugar with your coffee? How about... butter? We're on a mission to try and change our minds and bodies with data—first with fitness apps, then by strapping sh*t to our heads. Now we have arrived at act three: biohacking.  If you're not familiar with biohacking, there's this group of guys (yes, mostly dudes) who look at data and experiment to optimize their minds and bodies. Enter, biohacker Dave Asprey, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind Bulletproof Coffee—a blended drink with grass-fed unsalted butter, Brain Octane Oil and puppy tears (two of those are actual ingredients). At this point Bulletproof is a huge operation that includes Bulletproof Radio, the best-selling book The Bulletproof Diet: Lose up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Energy and Focus, Upgrade Your Life, and a blog. A lot of people who are part of this biohacking wave, frankly, seem ridiculous and self-centered. But in this case, we'll admit it, we really do want to live long and happy lives. And so does Asprey. "The goal is to die when I want," he tells host Manoush Zomorodi in this week's episode. "I'm planning to hit at least 180." A goal that Asprey says isn't so far-fetched. How does he plan on getting there? By reaching a high-performing, altered state through whatever means are necessary—as long as he can track it. "The only thing wrong that Lance Armstrong did is he didn't tell everyone he was doing it. As a matter of fact, from what I hear, he wasn't the only person in pro-cycling doing this, not by a long shot. And here's what pisses me off about this: Do you know how much precious knowledge we would have as a species had Lance published what he was doing? And all of the other people there? So I say if these athletes want to do experiments like that, they just need to publish the data. Why hide it?" If you like this episode (or just can't stop thinking about buttery coffee), you'll probably also enjoy a story from our friends at Only Human about a man who started a dieting trend before most present-day trendsters were even conceived. You can listen to that here. And one last thing: We have a request for an upcoming show we are working on about death. Sounds ominous, but we could really use your help. Do you have a story about how technology has changed or helped you deal with death? Record a voice memo on your phone or send us an email at [email protected]. We're also here to listen on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

If you could, would you boost that mushy thing inside your head? Seems like a no-brainer. (Get it?) Two weeks ago, Note to Self launched a potentially endless line of questioning about improving our bodies and lives with tech. We started with health trackers and the double-edged sword that is quantifying everything. But while there are a lot of tools out there that claim to train your brain, there are some now that their developers say will change it. That's right, Manoush plays lab rat just for you (and also to find out what happens when you combine a little bit of neuroscience with digital gadgetry). Warning: parts of this episode get weird. Like, didn't-we-leave-these-days-behind-in-college weird. But in a good way, we promise. via GIPHY People use tons of methods to stimulate and relax their brains. Yes, coffee counts, and so does a glass of wine or prescription drugs. There are also meditation apps and biofeedback devices. But what happens when such stimulants are considered "technology," with all the funding and testing and marketing that entails? Maybe you’ve heard about the military testing trans-cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), to increase target accuracy and focus. Or maybe you know someone who experiments with 9-volt batteries at home. Yes, people do this — including our friends at Radiolab who did a fun episode about this a little while back. But Thync, the gadget that Manoush uses in this week's episode, could be the first time tDCS goes mainstream (here's the study we referenced in the podcast). It's a little headset that wraps around your ear, and then you stick a white, potato chip-looking-thing to your forehead. You can buy it on Amazon right now.  Still, even though you theoretically could buy a Thync for yourself, there is an important question to be asked: should you? Come on, this thing is strapped to your head—we've seen enough science fiction movies to know that can be a horrible idea. via GIPHY The FDA isn't testing these things because they're technically considered "lifestyle products," but we got a medical assessment just to be safe. He said, sure, the brain is complex, and the device's methods are pretty crude, but there's no scientific evidence to suggest that something like Thync could have long-term adverse effects. The real question here: Could your longstanding date night with that tall glass of Cabernet be over? via GIPHY On this week's episode, you'll meet Isy Goldwasser, the co-founder and Chief Thyncing Officer of Thync. You'll also hear from Roy Hamilton, who directs the lab for cognition and neural stimulation at the University of Pennsylvania. And, as always, you'll get the scoop from Manoush, who has some really special reactions to Thync's technology. LISTEN: We try to boost our brains using wearable technology. Things get weird. https://t.co/u98JZuBqaDhttps://t.co/RP5eR1NzNi — Note to Self (@NoteToSelf) March 29, 2016 Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

The debate over whether the government can access your phone is here. Hello! You've probably been following along, but in case you need the tl;dr: The debate revved up last month when the FBI asked Apple to hack into a locked iPhone associated with one of the gunmen from the San Bernardino massacre last December. Since then, the conversation has evolved into a national debate over what the government should (and shouldn't) be allowed to access. The conversation has officially moved outside the realm of tech and the government. With 90 percent of American adults owning a cell phone, the issue is hitting a lot closer to home than even the Edward Snowden revelations. On this week's episode, you'll hear from Russell Banks, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and author of "The Sweet Hereafter," "Affliction," and "Cloudsplitter." Banks was one of several prolific writers, including Gay Talese and Sandra Cisneros, who signed a letter last month calling for the FBI to stand down in their attempt to hack Apple.  But why are authors so invested in the surveillance debate? Banks explains that when it comes to researching a taboo topic or writing about a sensitive matter, writers don't want to self-censor just because the government may be watching (or even flagging) language and/or behavior. And this is no small matter for the nonfiction and fiction scribes of the world. The advocacy group PEN found that 75 percent of writers living in democracies are concerned about their privacy.  In a California court, the FBI is temporarily placing their legal battle with Apple on hold since an outside party is assisting the government in their efforts to unlock the phone.  If this has you a little freaked out, you're not alone. Follow this up by listening to Walter Kirn explain if our phones are eavesdropping on us. via GIPHY If you're upset that this is isn't the "sh*t you can put on your head" episode, fret not. Next week, Manoush will put stuff on her head and it gets weird. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

One of the fastest-growing sectors of the tech industry involves turning all of the little details about our health into quantifiable data points. Millions of users have strapped heart-rate monitoring pieces of plastic to their wrists, scanned in the calories from their frozen dinner, and squinted at charts representing everything from the quality of a night's sleep to the regularity of their menstrual cycle. And, according to a recent editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, almost as many have stopped wearing them within the first six months. To the many, many people who have tried these tools – not to mention the people who want to sell them – this raises a big, open, lucrative question: What role should health trackers actually play in our lives? On this week's episode, you'll hear from Natasha Dow Schull, author of a forthcoming book called "Keeping Track," and technology writer/early self-tracker and writer Paul Ford. Schull's research has involved spending quite a bit of time in the aisles of Best Buy, listening in on the hopeful, aspirational purchases. However – as new research begins to bear out – respondents in the long run tend to fall in two camps: people who get turned off by the idea of self-tracking and need to be convinced of its value, or those who like the idea but want better technology. In both cases, the stalwarts of this billion-dollar industry are listening very, very closely to figure out what consumers really want from this trend. (Note to Self) We're curious too, though for different reasons. We've spent the last few months asking a whole lot of people to speak to their experiences of quantifying themselves using technology. We wanted the story you can't tell from the big tech conferences or even hanging out in the aisles of Best Buy. So we asked our audience to weigh in (figuratively, of course) on what makes for "useful" health technology – what different sorts of health hacking have really done to their health. The responses have been fascinating, inspiring, and heartbreaking – and we have a feeling it will be pretty insightful for the industry and everyone who studies it. Here are some of the major themes from the more than 100 voice memos, emails, and messages you've sent: Don't see an important point in here? Tell us on Facebook or Twitter! SEEING IT MAKES IT REAL  When they're tracking in the right direction, hard numbers and charts can feel like getting a good grade. For the good students out there, getting "keeping up the grades" is genuinely motivational for at least a little while. "Starting a little over a year ago, I purchased a Microsoft band because it had more sensors than anything else on the market... It tracks my sleep, it tracks my steps, it tracks my galvantic skin response, it tracks my UV exposure, it tracks pretty much everything except my calories, which I happily do through another app. I got a WiFi connected scale. All of this data together has surprisingly benefited me, and I’ve lost 20 pounds in the last year. Part of this has been through concerted efforts, but part of it is just being more aware of how active I am and all of these devices motivate me, really truly motivate me, to get up and walk, to make sure I get my 10K steps a day, to improve my lifestyle, to make a slightly better choice for dinner." – Christina in Virginia TELL ME A STORY Many of the people who love their trackers told us they try to combine data sets into a story about what they have been doing and how far they have come. This narrative gives them a sense of what should come next in their lives, prompting decisions that bear out the healthy arc. "I don’t know if it’s just the historian in me or what, but I love my data. From the morning to night I have a mood journal where I can track how I feel, what medications I’ve taken, how long I’ve slept... I track my food and points through Weight Watchers. There’s an app for everything, even for fun things, like Untapped to keep track of how many craft beers I’ve had." – Alison from Charlotte  I NEVER THOUGHT I CARED ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK, BUT... Not everyone wants a social experience, but some people who thought they'd hate giving friends a glimpse into their pedometers found themselves competing to great, surprising, motivational effect. "I never thought I’d be the person walking around my kitchen island or doing laps in my bedroom because my friend Brittany is 2,000 steps ahead of me at 11 o’clock at night, but it has happened on more than one occasion." – Jennifer Bertrand from Texas HELP ME MOTIVATE MYSELF!  For the non-fitness inclined, the most useful tech puts the promise of what, exactly, they're hoping to achieve front and center. Most of the products on the market dive harder into stats they don't already care about. "I’m slightly round, and I never wanna be a human stick insect. But my joints... not so much, they’re not so happy with the situation. I feel like I've got to do something about it.... I’m like in buoyancy training… if I’m on a boat in the North Sea and it sinks, I have a competitive advantage for, like, 3 minutes because it’s gonna take me longer to sink. I gotta watch my husband go down, I gotta watch the people I was just having drinks with on the Lido deck get circled by whatever’s in the water… plucking them like grapes out of a fruit bowl... those three minutes are not gonna be high value ones. [But] I’ve come to this conclusion that I don’t lose weight [and] I don’t make better decisions because I guess I just don’t want to... So I would really appreciate it if you could identify some sort of technology that would make me make better decisions... Both for exercise and for food intake. So if you could just wave your magic wand and make that happen that would be awesome." – Jennifer in Massachusetts  ONE STEP ON MY PEDOMETER, TWO STEPS TOWARD COMPULSIVE We heard from dozens of users who called themselves "addicted beyond the point of health," who said having so much information about their bodies at their disposal made them hyper-fixate on small changes. "As somebody recovering from an eating disorder it completely feeds into the obsessive habits and so there almost should be a warning sign that this can lead to triggering behaviors." – Lauren in Minneapolis TRY TO MATCH THE MESSAGE TO MY MOOD Quite a few people said blanket "notifications" work once they're already feeling inspired, but deepen guilt or frustrations when they come at a bad time.  "My fitness tracker vibrates to tell me I haven’t moved in a long time... I don’t even feel it any more. But I did notice something the other day that seems to help….always says the same thing but one day the app sent a notification at the random time during the day and it said 'we’ve noticed our reminders aren’t helping you...so we will stop them soon...no don’t stop them...I felt so guilty for letting the My Fitness people down... One app that I do use is the Headspace and I use it to establish a meditation habit. The app will send me a different mindfulness message a couple times a day and I do always pause to read and reflect on those and, I think it’s because there’s a variety of messages and that’s what helps." IF ONLY I DIDN'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY WEAR IT A number of people said they were embarrassed to be seen with the visible, not-all-that-glamourous-looking pieces of plastic on their wrists – a complaint all too familiar to "wearable" designers who hoped the Apple Watch would come along and answer that design question once and for all.  "Three years into [using] all of these trackers, I read the book 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up' by Marie Kondo. This book asks you to think about one specific question when you’re deciding to keep an item... “does this spark joy?” ... One day while putting on my FitBit, I thought ‘does this spark joy?’ and the answer was ‘no’. ... It’s not even a beautiful item that I’m putting on my body. I might as well wear a toaster on my arm.. So fast forward 6 months and I have no ugly device or screen on my wrist. I’ve got no lights, no buzzes, no numbers and then yesterday at the doctors, my doctor told me that my blood pressure was the lowest it’s ever been, my favorite jeans fit and I’m happier." – Allie Pilmer from Alameda Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Pocket Casts or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

You, friend, are productive. You work at all hours of the day and well into the night. Thank goodness for the email app on your phone that allows you to check in and schedule meetings and book conference rooms and passive-aggressively forward whenever you need to. Even Facebook has entered the "be social at work" vertical, for "companies who get things done." You and your friends and your teammates are building, building, building enterprises that must disrupt and must multiply and – most important of all – grow. It's exciting and it's exhausting. The catch: there might not be any more resources to exhaust. On this election-season edition of Note to Self, author Douglas Rushkoff ("Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus") joins Manoush to pose a big, hairy question: what does all of this new technology, wealth, and productivity have to do with serious income inequality? What are the larger social implications of an economy built on venture capital? Why has all of this "growth" made us feel less financially secure?  More information about some of the companies mentioned in this episode: Juno, a driver-owned competitor to Uber. (FastCompany) IndieBound, a community of independent bookstores. WinCo, an employee-owned grocery store often compared to Walmart. (Time) Kickstarter's CEO, Yancey Strickler, made the decision to become a public benefit corporation (PBC) to mitigate obligations to shareholders. (The Guardian) If you're still weighing your politics on this, our friends at Planet Money made this useful chart with economists' insights into each candidate's economic proposals. If you're interested in more of the mechanisms of tech-world economics, you might also enjoy our past episodes on the attention economy, the burgeoning field of user experience, and shaking up your social media-enabled echo chamber. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

We know, you use your phones everywhere. At work. When you're with your kids. Underneath the table. In the bathroom (admit it – and special thanks to listener Andrew Conkling for the warning on that one).  GraceAnn Bennett, the advertising executive turned tech entrepreneur behind a new app called PlsPlsMe, wants to give you an excuse to whip it out in the last sacred frontier: Bed. Well, sort of.  As a 20-something virgin Mormon newlywed, Bennett expected her new husband to just get it.  "I thought he was supposed to figure it out. Figure out sex... figure out how to unlock me in some kind of way without me giving any instructions. Because instructions, to me, were a turn off. I thought, 'OK, well, if I tell him then it kind of kills it.' Just like someone telling you, 'Buy me this!' and then wrapping it up for Christmas. Right? It’s like, OK, this is not, this isn’t sexy, this isn’t fun. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work." Nineteen years of marriage later, those primal instincts still hadn't kicked in. The couple ultimately got divorced – and, unable to shake the feeling that this just wasn't how sex was supposed to work, Bennett quit her job in advertising to focus on fixing sex lives. She asked the Kinsey Institute to help her answer the question: Is anyone out there really having good sex? If so, what does it take? The results weren't really that surprising: One out of three respondents in the 2,000 person sample said they wished it was easier for them to talk with partners about their sexual desires. For the past few months, the Note to Self team has been collaborating with Kaitlin Prest, host of The Heart – an audio art project and podcast about intimacy and humanity. Prest got two couples to test the app and the premise: can technology disrupt your sex life? In a good way? Listen above for some taboo, sometimes scary, and absolutely intimate stuff. In this episode: Kaitlin Prest, host of The Heart (with cameos from producer Mitra Kaboli) GraceAnn Bennett, founder of PlsPlsMe Katherine Frank, cultural anthropologist and sex researcher PlsPlsMe is available as of this week on iTunes. An Android version should be available later this year. If you try it – or something like it – let us know? Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

How much would it take for someone to hack your life? And really, how worried do you actually need to be? For most of us, this question stays in the realm of the hypothetical. For others, it only turns into a question after the worst has happened. For tech journalist Kevin Roose, co-host of Fusion's new documentary series Real Future, it was a chance to be the human embodiment of a Fortune 500 company. On this week's Note to Self, hear what happened when Roose asked some of the best hackers in the world to put him through a "penetration test," or a "pen test."  As he explains it: "Basically Coca Cola will bring in a hacker and say 'I want you to spend a month trying as hard as you can  to get into our systems, exploit vulnerabilities, take advantage of weaknesses and report back to us what you found so we could fix it.' And I thought, 'What if I could do the personal version of that?'" Using tactics from fake programs to remote desktop takeovers, to a simple YouTube video of some crying babies... Roose figured out exactly how much damage it's possible to do. Spoiler: This episode will make you want to put a PIN on your phone provider account. It'll possibly make you want to download a security program like Little Snitch. At very least, it will probably make you want to cover up the camera on your computer. Traditional 'white hat hacker" Dan Tentler got a lot farther than Roose thought he would. (Note To Self)  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

On this week's episode of Note to Self, host Manoush Zomorodi and executive producer Jen Poyant team up with The Sporkful's Dan Pashman to try to cut back on sugar, by using technology that promises to make them healthier. You might remember Dan Pashman from the time he and Manoush cooked avocado at the instruction of IBM's Chef Watson. That experiment was a success. Spoiler: This one really wasn't.  By some estimates, health and fitness technology is a $200 billion industry. That includes the oh-so-romantic FitBit you got for Valentine's Day, the dieting app you paid a dollar for on your phone, and even the sugar detox kit you may or may not have ordered online. But as we've heard from many of you, the promise of these magic wellness panaceas doesn't always play out the way you expect when you put them in the real world. Many of our listeners tell us their health apps and hacks have been a mixed bag. Early studies bear these experiences out. Inspired by the burbling questions we're hearing, we're working on a show that will look more closely into the claims various "we’re going to make you healthy!" apps and services and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs promise will fix us. Help us take the story deeper. Tell us about the different ways you've tried to "quantify" or "bio-hack" yourselves. What happened? Are you still doing it? Why or why not? Has your employer asked you to buy a sleep tracker? Did you make your own optimized protein sludge? Did you lose a ton of weight calculating calories, or did you just lose your mind? Send a voice memo to [email protected] with your experience. Put "self hack" in the subject line. Help us out by forwarding to anyone you know with a story. The more the better!  Don't miss it! Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Let's start with a quick recap: More than 25,000 people signed up for Infomagical, our project designed to make information overload disappear. Using either email or text messages, we issued five challenges to participants over five days – single-tasking, tidying our phones, avoiding meaningless memes, delving deeper into conversations, and setting a larger "rule" or "mantra" for information consumption. Texters got reminders through the day and check-ins at night. (Note To Self) Emailers took a follow-up survey each morning.  This week, we're taking a look at how well this experiment actually worked. Here is a quick look at some of the crazy – yes, let's go ahead and call them crazy – stats: We sent 300,000 messages via text. We received over 1,100 voice messages. Taken all together, that's over 15 hours of recorded audio. We saw at least 300 Kondo'd phones. We heard from people in all 50 American states and at least 10 different countries. On this week's show, we've invited Professors Gloria Mark of the University of California-Irvine (you might remember her from the first day of challenges and the infamous 23 minutes + 15 seconds to refocus rule) and Calvin Newport (author of "Deep Work")  to help us put your Infomagical responses into a larger context of academic and industry studies. We've also asked WNYC's Data News wizards to help us explain the key takeaways about what happened over the course of the week in the podcast and below: The first thing we asked people to do when they signed up was pick an “information goal” – one of 5 – to keep them on track all week. The number one goal (31 percent of participants) was: "be more in tune with yourself." "Be more up to date on news and current events" came in a solid last. (Alan Palazzolo/WNYC) Every day, we asked participants to rate how well they stuck to their goal on a scale of one to five, with five as "awesome." Over the course of the week, people's responses indicated that they were in fact sticking more closely to their chosen goal. For the participants who did the project by text message, we'd then follow up with "and how overwhelmed do you feel now?" According to senior editor John Keefe, scores went up steadily among the people who responded. "Early on in the week, about 40 percent of the people said that they felt less overloaded, less overwhelmed with information [at the end of the evening]. Which is pretty good, but it’s still less than half. By the time we got to Day 5 on Friday, 71 percent of the folks who responded said that they felt less overloaded. So we went from 40 percent on Monday to 71 percent on Friday." Of the five goals, those who chose "be more in tune with self" felt the most significant effects from the project. (Alan Palazzolo/WNYC) There are definitely caveats here – it's hard to keep a 25,000-volunteer sample group consistent, and we can only work with the data from people who responded. That said, our response rate stayed relatively high (around 50 percent) through all five challenges. To that end, we also paid special attention to the reams of qualitative data participants sent our way. We've got a huge range of voices in the podcast this week. Some honestly made us choke up a little. (Note To Self) We also asked people to choose an emoji most representative of their 7-minute conversation. Talk about data: We're really hoping the "heart eyes" emoji mean someone fell in love. We will totally come if you invite us to an Infomagical-inspired wedding. (Alan Palazzolo/WNYC) A few more emoji response favorites: [1:04 🍃 this may turn over a new leaf 🏊 it went swimmingly 🔩  I screwed up and forgot to converse by mouth If you want to try the project by text or email, sign up for the series starting next Monday at wnyc.org/infomagical. In the meantime... you can always turn off all of your devices, stop, and just take a few minutes listen to the original musical scoring from our colleague Hannis Brown. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is Challenge Four of Note to Self's Infomagical project. To learn more and sign up, visit wnyc.org/infomagical. If you want to hear how it's going for the thousands of other people participating, our hashtag is #infomagical. Yes, we do see the irony.  Here's a link to our custom emoji. Longtime listeners know Sherry Turkle – the social psychologist who studies what technology does to our relationships. If you heard our interview from a few months back, you'll also be familiar with the seven minute conversation theory she discovered in the course of her most recent research. It goes like this: in a real, verbal, human conversation, it takes at least seven minutes to see whether or not a conversation will be interesting or not.  Today, we're going to test this theory. Your instructions: Do something with all that wonderful goal-oriented information you’ve been consuming. Discuss something you’ve heard/read/watched with someone by phone or in person for at least seven minutes.   Need some more ideas to start your conversation? We've asked the team behind the scenes here – a diverse group of artists, developers, editors, audio wizards, and more – to put together a collection of prompts they think can sustain seven minutes. We've included their Twitter handles in case you'd like to report back! Fix Something "What are three products that you use? If you had to add one feature to them, what would it be and why?"  – Marine Boudeau, Director of Design, @marineboudeau Fix Something Edible "Have you ever made something (or wanted to) you first tried at a restaurant? I just spent three, count ‘em, three! days recreating chef David Chang’s kimchi stew. It was a really fun experience that took a lot of focus and creativity. (I couldn’t find chicken backs so I had to get creative!) Many of my capable friends have recreated cocktails from favorite bars, and I’ve had a few fabulous versions of the Neiman Marcus cookies from talented home bakers." –   Mandy Naglich, Manager of Marketing and Audience Development, @MandyKN Elephant Tears "We read novels, watch movies and TV, gossip with friends, and follow politics all with the help of an assumed understanding of other people's inner lives. Do you ever think about the inner lives of animals? What is their inner monologue? This is a clip from a longer documentary. You can hear Solomon articulate his feelings about Shirley. What might the animals be thinking/feeling/experiencing?" –   Amy Pearl, Senior Producer, @sugarpond The Demands of On Demand   "What effect will on-demand content (Netflix, podcasts, etc.) have on the future of traditional broadcast media?"  –   Joe Plourde, Sound Designer A Conversation About Conversation "Say someone you know travels somewhere interesting. What's a better question to ask than 'How was it?'"  –   John Asante, Associate Producer, WNYC Newsroom, @jkbasante When Was the Last Time You Discussed a Poem? A poem from the collection "Here". (Wisława Anna Szymborska, Translated by Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak) –  Jen Poyant, Executive Producer of Note to Self, @jpoyant A Short Story "Short Stories: Are they as satisfying to read as novels are?"  –  Paula Szuchman, Vice President of On Demand Content, @Paula Szuchman Salute the Superbowl Queen "Ahead of Coldplay’s Superbowl half-time show this Sunday, reflect on the best: Beyoncé’s 2013 performance is 14 minutes long, so exactly double the length of a seven minute conversation. Beyond the clear value of talking Beyoncé, this feels like a sign."  – David Cotrone, Publicist, @DavidCotrone Be Honest "What was the last article you read to completion and thought about after the fact? Explain it to each other, and discuss!" – Miranda Katz, former Note to Self intern-turned-Gothamist-writer-extraordinaire, @MirandaKatz Be Critical "Star Wars Episode VII: Plot too much like the original, or did it need to be nostalgic? And who is Rey's father??? Oh, and are you on team R2D2 or BB8 on the cuteness factor?" Additional reading: "The Nostalgia Debate Around The Force Awakens" – Valentina Powers, Director of Digital Operations, @valentinapowers Yes/No/Why "Remember Lisa Frank?" A recent post to the Lisa Frank Facebook page. (Lisa Frank)  – inspired by Sahar Baharloo, graphic designer, @saharloo Once you've had your conversation, we would love to know what you talked about. Tell us how it went on Facebook or Twitter? 

This is Challenge Three of Note to Self's Infomagical project. To learn more and sign up, visit wnyc.org/infomagical. If you want to hear how it's going for the thousands of other people participating, our hashtag is #infomagical. Yes, we do see the irony.  Here's a link to our custom emoji. No, you didn't read it. No, you haven't seen it. No, you somehow managed to miss that one.Let's practice: "I was spending my time doing something else." Your instructions: Today, you will avoid clicking on something "everyone is talking about" unless it contributes to your information goal. This might be trending topic or a "must read" or whichever article or video or .GIF everyone in your world is sharing. You've got a strict rule in place: "If this does not make me [insert your Infomagical week goal here], I won't click." Even the woman who discovered the most memorable meme of all time (argue the point, we dare you) knows that she needs to take a break sometimes.   (Just in case you'd found a really comfortable rock to hide under.)  BuzzFeed "I definitely feel information overload," says Cates Holderness, BuzzFeed's Tumblr editor. "It's both emotionally draining and psychologically stimulating in a really unsettling combination." However, today's challenge extends beyond memes. It's also an excuse to purge your reading list, rewatch a classic instead of an Oscar nominee, and just skip opening all of those tabs. You don’t need to read every think piece, or follow every Trump hashtag, or share every Bernie factoid – if your information goal isn't "be 100 percent up to date on the election," maybe you can be content with knowing the results and brushing up on the issues that matter to you. If it starts to feel itchy, remember: Endless information does not make you better informed. According to historian Ann Blair, author of "Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age," this is a lesson literate people have struggled to learn since the advent of the printed word. Blair says our ambivalence would sound familiar to scholars in the thirteenth century. People felt both grateful for the new wealth of information at their fingertips, and so overwhelmed that they started creating cheat-sheets, "best of lists," and signing their letters "in haste."  The settled-upon solution hundreds of years ago was to exercise a faculty called "judgment." Back then, it meant the best Latin scholars didn't copy everything out of Aristotle, they only chose the bits that meant the most for what they were working on. Today, Blair thinks the trick might be exactly the same: decide what you're doing, commit to it, and make choices. Listen above for more. And judge away! Adapted from Ammi Philips' Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog. (Note to Self/Wikimedia Commons)   May the force be with you. (Note to Self/Memeful.com) Really. (Note To Self)    P.S. The Lenny Letter Manoush mentions about endometriosis is divided up into articles here. Open only if reading 9,000 words about an under-diagnosed women's health issue fits into your goal for the week. OK, back to judging! For more Note to Self, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is Challenge Two of Note to Self's Infomagical project. To learn more, sign up, or catch up on Challenge One, visit wnyc.org/infomagical. If you want to hear how it's going for the tens of thousands of people participating, our hashtag is #infomagical. No, the irony does not escape us.  Apple has said that the average iPhone user has somewhere around 80 apps per device. Today, we are going to arrange them into a joyful, tidy, information overload crushing bulldozer.  Your instructions: Today, you will rearrange the apps on your phone. You do not necessarily need to delete anything. You just need to weigh the value of each one, delete the ones that you a) do not use or b) do not bring you joy. Pull all of your remaining apps into folders – ideally, just one folder. When you've finished, set your phone's background wallpaper to an image that reminds you of your Infomagical week goal. Pick something meaningful to you. Or, allow us to suggest one of these (click to download): For anyone feeling even more ambitious today, tackle your desktop browser too. Or de-clutter your photos. Or, you know, your actual house.  If this "brings you joy" language sounds suspiciously like "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" to you... well, that's because author and organizational guru Marie Kondo herself is on this episode issuing your challenge instructions. She's joined by Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims, whose article "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Digitally" inspired this exercise.  "By putting all of [your] apps into folders, you can search for them by name. What happens is your device becomes task-oriented, instead of the place [where] you go to be like, 'OK, what do I need to do next?'" Here's what his phone looks like: Christopher Mims' Kondo'd phone. (Manoush Zomorodi/Note to Self) And here's how you can do it to yours (we're modeling on an iPhone but this should work on almost any smartphone): 1) Hold down one of your apps until they all start to jiggle. If the app doesn't bring you joy (however you define it), delete it. If it does, choose one and drag it over another app to create a folder.  via GIPHY 2)  Do this with all of the apps on your phone. Put them all in folders. Ideally, put them all in one folder. via GIPHY 3) Turn off notification badges – the little red dots with numbers inside of them. Go to "Settings" ---> "Notifications." and flip "Allow notifications" to the off position. via GIPHY 4) To find your apps, open the spotlight search feature (touch and swipe down anywhere in the center of your phone or use your OK Google search field). Every time you want to use an app, search for it. via GIPHY We'd love to see yours when it's done. Tweet or Instagram with the hashtag #Infomagical or post to our Facebook page here. The whole Note to Self team wishes you a magical day. Jen thinks this challenge is the greatest thing to ever happen to her phone. (Jen Poyant/Note to Self)   Manoush – a folder person – decided this was far enough, thank you very much. (Manoush Zomorodi/Note to Self)  Ariana doesn't really know how to explain this bird gourd to anyone outside of her family, but she hopes it brings you joy. (Ariana Tobin/Note to Self)   For more Note to Self, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is challenge one of Note to Self's Infomagical project. To learn more and sign up, visit wnyc.org/infomagical. If you want to hear how it's going for the thousands of other people participating, our hashtag is #infomagical. Yes, we do see the irony.  Here's a link to our custom emoji. Today we are focusing on our ability... to focus. Because we are nothing if not meta. Mind blown yet? OK, let's go:  Your instructions: All day long, do just one thing at a time. If you catch yourself doing two things, switch your focus back to one. Don't read an article and Tweet about it – read it, then Tweet. Write an email until you've finished it and hit "send." Perhaps even take a moment to just drink your coffee. Use your Infomagical week goal to prioritize which thing to do when.  Why is this challenge number one? Because humans are incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Study after study has shown that "multi-tasking" is a myth. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin explains that when we think we're multi-tasking, we're really only fooling ourselves. "You're not actually doing four or five things at once, because the brain doesn't work that way. Instead, you're rapidly shifting from one thing to the next, depleting neural resources as you go." Rapid switching back and forth comes at a cost: it eats away at your glucose levels. Which, in turn, might make you want candy. Or... Candy Crush. Low glucose levels = sluggishness, possible candy cravings, and more frequent self-interruptions. (Note to Self/Memeful.com) Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at the University of California-Irvine, says that this rapid switching isn’t a new affliction, but it is an intensifying one. "About ten years ago, we found that people shifted their attention between online and offline activities about every three minutes on average. But now we're looking at more recent data, and we're finding that people are shifting every 45 seconds when they work online." Her lab has found a pretty clear relationship: The more that people switch their attention, the higher their stress level. That is especially concerning, she says, because the modern workplace feeds on interruptions. She calls the group of workers most affected "information workers." "'Information workers'... have to respond to the demands of the workplace.They might have every intention of doing monochronic work, but if their boss sends them an email or they feel social pressure to keep up with their emails, they have to keep responding to their emails and being interrupted," Mark said. "I think that if people were given the ability to signal to colleagues or just even to signal online 'Hey I'm working on this task, don't bother me, I'll let you know when I'm ready to be interrupted.'” We can't change your boss, but we can make a suggestion. Tell your colleagues you are doing the Infomagical challenge. Post on Facebook or Slack or wherever to signal that you are trying to single-task all day. Ask people to schedule conversations with you. You can even use your custom emoji for a visual cue.  Here's the thing, however: You can't blame your coworkers or your children or your gchat buddy for everything. Because the person who actually interrupts you the most? Yourself. Mark's lab has a term for this – the “pattern of self-interruption." "From an observer's perspective you're watching a person [and] they're typing in a word document. And then, for no apparent reason, they suddenly stop what they're doing and they shift and look at email or check Facebook. These kinds of self-interruptions happen almost as frequently as people are interrupted from external sources," Mark said. "So we find that when external interruptions are pretty high in any particular hour, then even if the level of external interruptions wane [in the next hour], then people self-interrupt." In other words, if you’ve had a hectic morning dealing with lots of email and people stopping by your desk, you are more likely to start interrupting yourself. Interruptions are self-perpetuating. That's why the most important signals are really the personal ones – remind yourself of your goal.  If you signed up for Infomagical via text, we’ll be checking in with you today. If you are doing Infomagical by email, check your inbox! You'll get another one tomorrow morning. That’s all for now. Single task, friends. Close this tab, decide what you are doing next, and THEN DO IT UNTIL IT’S DONE. The whole Note to Self team wishes you a magical day. For more Note to Self, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Here at Note to Self, we endorse using technology mindfully, thoughtfully, and not necessarily all the time. That said, we’re more concerned with another sentiment you probably know all too well: the "yeah, putting down my phone is nice and all, but I have a life to live. A job to do. A conversation to hold. A cat video to send to my mother."  With that in mind, today is the day we launch Infomagical, a collective FOMO course correction. This time it’s not about your gadgets per se, it’s about all the stuff on them, and all the stuff coming out of them. Our plan is to turn all of your information portals into overload-fighting machines. Starting with this introductory episode (listen above), we're going to make your devices more useful through a big follow-up to Bored and Brilliant – our 2015 project inviting people to rethink their relationships with their phone and become more creative in the process. Why? Because you've told us how much you need this. In a survey of nearly 2,000 Note to Self listeners: 60 percent said they feel like the amount of effort they must exert to stay up-to-date on a daily basis is "taxing." Another 15 percent said it's downright "impossible." 4 out of 5 said information overload affects their ability to learn. 1 out of 3 said information overload was affecting their close relationships. We've talked with neuroscientists, social psychologists, business professors, anthropologists, software designers, and many, many listeners as we've designed this project. We’re going to give you the tools you’ll need to do this right.  Including custom emoji! (Right click to "save as image" on desktop; tap and hold on mobile). (Kevin McCauley) (Kevin McCauley) (Kevin McCauley) (Kevin McCauley) (Kevin McCauley) Each emoji correlates with one of the five "goals" you can choose at sign up. Why? To cut to the root of information overload, scientists say it is important to set one priority (also called a “schema,” “theme,” or “filter”) that you use to gauge how much something really matters to you. For example, if your goal is to learn more about the upcoming election, does that panda video really help you achieve it? No, but if your goal is to be “more connected with friends and family,” perhaps it does. These goals are meant to remind you of what you really want for the week. You can put the emoji (or any other kind of note to self) up wherever you consume information. We've got bigger badge versions on Facebook, Flickr, and below. To get you as pumped for Infomagical as we are, we lay out all of the research behind what we’re doing here in the episode above. Manoush even got her brain scanned in the process. In this episode: Daphna Shohamy, Professor and Principal Investigator, Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute Raphael Gerraty, PhD candidate, Columbia University  Gloria Mark, Professor, the University of California-Irvine's Department of Informatics Dimitrios Tsivrikos, Consumer and Business Psychologist, the University College of London Genevieve Bell, Intel’s in-house anthropologist Note to Self listeners Mark Malizia, Kristian Gendron, and Kelsey Lekowske (Emoji designed by Kevin McCauley.) Posted by Note to Self Radio on Sunday, January 24, 2016 Sign up to participate at wnyc.org/infomagical. Challenge week starts February 1 and runs through February 5. Want to tell us why you're taking part in Infomagical? Talk to us here. Got more questions? See if we've answered yours here. For more Note to Self, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, Overcast, Pocket Casts, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

If you haven't heard of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) by now... well, no fear. There are cartoons to get you up to speed. There is a definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are diagnostic quizzes. There is a heavily-annotated Wikipedia entry.  There is also a meaningful counter-term: JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out). And yes, the person behind FOMO and the person behind JOMO know each other - they are, in fact, old friends. Technologists Caterina Fake and Anil Dash – popularizers of FOMO and JOMO respectively – say they wish more had changed since they published their now-famous blog posts five years ago. On this week's episode of Note to Self, the two talk about the utility of acronyms, the importance of thoughtful software design, and the recent history of the Internet as we know it.  "I don't think Silicon valley today, the technologists coming of age today who have always had access to the Internet and were born into it, understand that there are ethical choices to be reckoned with in the way that we build our apps and the way we build technology," Dash says. Fake agrees. She says that sense of "oh there is something I should be paying attention to" has been built into the platforms we use – our attention is the currency by which social networks are considered successful. "It's a lot of work to tilt the meters more towards the JOMO end of the spectrum,"  she says. "Software is good at exploiting those tendencies that we are unaware of or subject to. I think that a very conscious approach – media literacy, and ethics classes –are really where we need to be. As a culture, as a society, we know the software isn't going to go away. All of this is going to be with us and we should take it for granted that it will remain." It's a sentiment we know a little too well. Especially the certifiable digital junkies among us. (Note To Self)   Read Caterina Fake's 2011 post about FOMO here. Read Anil Dash's 2012 post about JOMO here. For more conversations like this one, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Looking for our information overload survey? Take it here – and stay tuned for our big project launch on January 25! David Hohusen, game director on the popular smartphone app Two Dots, is – at very least – brave. As longtime listeners will remember, Hohusen joined us on the show last year for a conversation about the addictive game you see people playing on the subway. Note to Self host Manoush Zomorodi was once a Two Dots player, and an especially enthusiastic one at that. But after talking with behavioral engineer expert Nir Eyal and neuroscientist Zachary Hambrick, she had to admit something huge: She wasn't paying Two Dots any money, but she was giving the game a whole lot of valuable time. She deleted the app. We turned it into an episode.  Hohusen was ambushed. And yet... he came back. On this episode of Note to Self, Hohusen talks about the responsibility technologists have to their users. In his words: "I think as game designers, we're incredibly mindful of the sort of tactics we use because we know... if we make a game that's a little too underhanded, we're not going to feel great. Because did we really make a great game, or did we just use the dirtiest strategies to trick people into playing?" If you're in the 49 percent of Americans who play games – even if you're not one of the 10 percent who considers yourself a gamer – you'll want to listen to this. Actually, you'll want to listen either way: It's a really great example of what can happen when we give thoughtful feedback to technologists about how their products affect our lives. Hohusen spent a year thinking about the role his game plays in peope's mental health. David Hohusen: Most people think of 'addiction' and 'addicting' as sort of a negative adjective. But, in the mobile game space, they show it off, they tout it. Candy Crush will say something about addiction or addictive as a positive. Manoush Zomorodi: And what do you think about that? DH: I think it is and it isn't. Like for me, I'm really conflicted about it. Because I think that it's a very accurate description and I think it's... it's true to Two Dots and it's true to Candy Crush. We're building experiences that really hook users and create this sense and this desire to play all the time. MZ: Which I had. DH: Absolutely. And you made the wise decision to delete the app, which I think was the right decision. For more conversations like this one, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

If you had to guess, how many facts have you taken in today? How many factoids, dates, times, sale alerts, tweet-sized factoids, and other factual-or-at-least-pretending-to-be-factual pieces of information have passed across your screen? At this rate, how many more do you expect to take in by midnight?  Let us present you with one more: According to Dr. Daniel Levitin, author of "The Organized Mind," your brain can only fully absorb four. Four. "[More] will compete for neural resources with what you're really doing at the moment, what's in front of you. Your brain will be narrating... all of this undone stuff," Levitin says on this week's show. We’ll be hearing more from him later this month when we dig very, very deep into the phenomenon of “information overload” – and to get there, we need your help. Click here to take our quick survey on what information overload looks like for you. Your responses will help us build a project that actually matters to you. In the meantime, you can hear Dr. Levitin's explanation of where our neurological limits lie, either in the player above or on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, and anywhere else using our RSS feed. He also gave us some tips on setting limits. Here's a cheat sheet (in numerical order as he suggests!): 1. Write down everything you need to do. Everything! Then make sure you prioritize what really needs to be first. Basically: brain dump with bullet points, then go through and number in order of importance. "You look at your list of things to do and there's one that you've put there on top, you sit down to do that, and you really become immersed in it. Instead of wondering, like so many of us do, 'Is there something else I should be doing? Is this really the thing I should be doing? Let me check my email, maybe there's something more important...'" 2. Find a way of making all your digital stuff look different. You could create different email accounts for different parts of your life, or amp up your Gmail to do some real filtering for you. "During the day when information comes in you're not quite sure how important it is, or how important it's going to be. [If] you have no system for it, you can't attach it to anything on your priorities list. And so you put it in your brain and you kind of toss it and turn it around, and because it doesn't attach to anything, it takes up neuro-resources." 3. If paring down isn't an option, communicate.  Need to keep up with everything at your demanding job? Then your challenge is one of communication: explain to those around you what's on your plate in terms of priorities – i.e., "yes, I will read that, but after I put the finishing touches on this. It's due at 3 p.m. See my list of priorities I wrote out right here? I can make changes if need be, but..."  Levitin says these are conversations best handled in person. 4. Don’t beat yourself up about it. When you start to feel overwhelmed, that is the exact moment when you need to make your list of prioriites. "Cortisol is released whenever we're trying to do more than we can handle. Its part of the fight or flight response, which made a whole lot of sense in hunter-gatherer times but now it's just toxic, it makes your stomach ache, it shuts down your immune system, you're more likely to get sick when you're stressed. All because of cortisol." Stay tuned for more from Dr. Levitin, and don't forget to take our survey here!

To close out 2015, we want to leave you the way we started it: with one of our favorite Gizmodo stories from writer Leslie Horn (she's now at Deadspin). It starts out like this: "My mother is untrainable. At least, as far as voicemail is concerned. We'd repeat the same song and dance over and over. Me: Stop leaving me voicemails.Her: I don't understand. This went on for years, until I figured out she was right all along." Listen above to hear a story of mourning, family, and a piece of technology that – love it or hate it – still has the capacity to connect us in ways texts, emails, and all the rest just can't. It's a podcast ode the humble voice recording. After we aired this episode the first time, many of you said that you, too, have voicemails you'd like to save. Here's an updated (and admittedly not comprehensive) guide on how to do that: A really easy way: Play your voicemail on speakerphone in front of a tape recorder, or recording software on your computer (Audacity is free to download), phone or tablet. Listen to make sure you can understand it. There. Done. (Pro: simple. Con: not the best quality.) Some pretty easy way(s): If you have a newer iPhone, you can save your voicemail as a voice memo or note. (Pro: easy, good sound quality. Con: takes up space on your phone.) Treat your computer like a set of headphones for your phone. You'll need a male-to-male cord auxiliary cable (available at most electronics stores). Plug that into your phone's headphone jack on one end, and put the other end into the "line-in" outlet on your computer. Use whichever recording software you like (again, Audacity is free), hit play on the phone, and press "record" on the computer. (Pro: good sound quality. Con: you have to buy a cable.) Use an app. There are several third-party apps (you can try iMazing, PhoneView, ecamm, or, straight to the point, Voicemails Forever or Everlasting Voice). They let you look at the device's data on your computer desktop, then you can save whichever files you'd like. (Pro: Best sound quality possible. Cons: they cost money, it can be hard to find the exact file you want.) For the future: Set up a voicemail-to-email service like Google Voice or YouMail and sync it with your phone. Have all of your voicemails emailed to you as mp3s.  We always want you to leave us a voicemail or a voice memo! Our number is (917) 924-2964. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed to make sure you know when we're back with new stuff.

This week, we're re-airing an episode that might make you think twice before buying that LEGO kit gift for the kid in your life. As we learned, sticking with the classic big bins of non-themed bricks can help kids' creativity, as well as adults'. According to research by business professors Page Moreau and Marit Gundersen Engset, "free-building" from a pile of mismatched LEGO enhances creativity, while working from a pre-designed kit hinders it. That's not to say working with a kit is necessarily a bad thing – it just prompts your brain to work more methodically, rather than imaginatively.That's why the free-building vs. kit-based approaches to LEGO and beyond are important: Whether you're making a wild creation out of little toy bricks or making a meal from a ready-to-cook kit, following a set of step-by-step directions will affect your thought processes.  We got tons of feedback from listeners last time around. But perhaps the most enthusiastic response came from Robin Corry in St. Paul, Minnesota, who has a dedicated "LEGO Room" in his house where his two sons can play. Robin stores the LEGO in a bag and dumps them all out on the ground when it's time to get building. Rather than buy his sons pre-made LEGO kits, Robin makes his own, sorting bricks by color or shape into Ziploc bags and instructing them to make something with them. The LEGO bag, or, as Robin calls it, "LEGO jail." (Robin Corry) We could all use a little bit more creativity in our lives. via GIPHY Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed to make sure you know when we're back with new stuff.

Note: Want to see the list of newsletters we like that Manoush mentions in this week's podcast? Find it in the Note to Self newsletter here. Spending just one day offline can make you feel like you missed 100 important stories. As you're trying to stay abreast of the 100 even newer, as-important stories/memes/investigations/cute animal videos... well, it starts to feel like this: Or, you know, this: Luckily, there's someone who devotes hours every day to helping us with that quandary. Caitlin Dewey is the Digital Culture Critic at the Washington Post. In addition to her regular column she also sends out a daily newsletter called "Links I would GChat you if we were friends." It's exactly what it sounds like: a couple dozen hand-picked links of the day's top online stories, curated by someone whose job it is to have her finger on the pulse of the Internet world at all times.  In this week's episode, Manoush sits down with Caitlin to talk about the top five digital culture stories from the past year, so that you can end 2015 feeling up to date without having to sift through thousands of old links.  5. The Zola Story A 150-tweet story by Aziah "Zola" Wells trended for two straight days on Twitter (longer than the Paris attacks). If you missed it (or gave up on it), you weren't alone. It was long and twisted – an account of a wild weekend in Florida involving sex work, suicide attempts, and murder. Then, in the following months, both Caitlin and a reporter at Rolling Stone produced reported pieces looking into which aspects of the story were true, why people responded the way they did, and why it all matters. You can check out the original tweets – which have since been deleted – here.  4. The Dress Back in February, it seemed for a moment like a civil war might break out between pretty much everyone on the Internet. In question "The Dress" as blue and black and those who saw it as white and gold. BuzzFeed writer Cate Holderness discovered the meme on Tumblr, and her initial post was so wildly popular that BuzzFeed put two editorial teams on The Dress beat, producing dozens of stories on the topic and garnering tens of millions of page views. (For the record, it was actually blue and black. Supposedly.) Just in case you'd found a really comfortable rock to hide under. (BuzzFeed) 3. This Novel-length Article About Code We know, we know. You heard about Paul Ford's 38,000-word magnum opus on code from this June and you totally had every intention of reading it... except that finding time for a book-length essay on a tricky topic isn't always easy. It's OK – this one is an evergreen. Consider this another opportunity to dig deep into a serious demystification of coding and the tech world that we all interact with every day, but don't always know all that much about. On a plane home for the holidays six months later. 2. The Reddit Revolt Known as the "front page of the internet," Reddit has long been an incredible source of information and evolving news stories – but it's also unfortunately been a place where harassment campaigns take root. That started to change this summer, when Reddit started cracking down on hate speech and harassment. Things really came to a head when the site fired Victoria Taylor, who ran the AMA ("Ask Me Anything") section. Following her termination, Reddit's moderators – unpaid individuals who help run the site's various communities – organized a strike against the site for an entire week. The controversy and its fallout has fueled an ongoing debate about free speech, as well as the question of who benefits when users on sites like Reddit and Facebook effectively donate their labor.  1. The Ashley Madison Hack Online leaks are nothing new. But the Ashley Madison hack was the first high-profile privacy breach that threatened to destroy the relationships, personal lives, and careers of the 37 million people with accounts – most of whom never actually engaged in an extramarital affair, given that there were barely any women using the site at all. Caitlin describes this #1 tech story of the year as a watershed moment for digital privacy – listen to the podcast to hear why.  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Artist Marina Abramović – the woman famous for staring into a record-breaking number of people's eyes at the MOMA, letting an audience point a gun at her head, and convincing the public to take performance art seriously – has some opinions about our phones. Namely: They are distracting us, and we need to stop pretending like they aren't.  Her latest project is called "Goldberg," and it is a collaboration with celebrated pianist Igor Levit and the Park Avenue Armory. The team says it's designed to help audiences remember what full attention actually feels, looks, and sounds like. Through a performance of J.S. Bach's notoriously difficult Goldberg Variations, they are attempting "a reimagining of the traditional concert experience," in which attendees first trade their tickets for a key. Each key has a corresponding locker, in which they are instructed to put their phone, watch, computer, and any other personal belongings that tell time or receive a signal from outside. Guests arriving at the Armory, putting their distractions behind lock and key. (James Ewing) Once they've locked the doors, they're given a pair of noise-canceling headphones. For the first thirty minutes of the performance, that's it. The entire audience – and also Levit, the performer – will sit together in complete silence.  The audience sitting in total silence. Yes, mandatory total silence. (James Ewing) Levit then breaks the silence by starting to play his version of the Goldberg Variations.  Legend has it that Bach originally wrote the Goldberg variations to soothe an insomniac Austrian Count through the night. (James Ewing) On this week's show, Abramović explains her "method" for really, truly listening: Marina Abramović: You're taking a taxi, you’re concerned you’re on time, you’re answering [a] last phone call and so on. And you’re arriving, and you sit down, and you hear the concert... but you’re not ready to hear anything. You’re just too busy. So I’m giving this time and space to the public to actually prepare themselves. Manoush Zomorodi: But surely, I mean, we’re grown ups right? I’m coming to the concert. Can’t we just turn off our phone? Why does it have to be so heavy-handed? Abramović: ...If Igor has enormous discipline to learn by heart the Goldberg variations with 86 minutes, and play [them] in the most incredible magic way, we can have discipline to to honor this. And to just see, to have [a] new experience... the moment you don’t have your phone and you don’t have the watch to check if you’re sitting there for five minutes or ten, it just gives you a completely different state of mind. Zomorodi: I’m concerned that my state of mind won’t be one of calm but rather one of agitation. That it’s going to be very difficult for me. Abramović: Well this is where you have the real problem then. That you have to address the problem in your life. That is why it is good for you. Listen above or anywhere you get your podcasts. Bonus points if you sit in total silence for 30 minutes first. In this week's episode: "Goldberg" runs from December 7-19 at the Park Avenue Armory. Tickets are available here. Igor Levit, pianist and performer. His newest album is "Bach, Beethoven, Rzewski," and it features the Goldberg Variations you'll hear on today's show. You can purchase on Amazon or iTunes. Alex Poots, Artistic Director of the Park Avenue Armory.  Marina Abramović, visual and performance artist. Marina Abramovic on Rhythm 0 (1974) from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

In a world where it is considered appropriate to leave your phone face up at the dinner table, where one can find private text messages from an ex screen-captured and posted on Instagram for all to see, and where even Mary-Kate Olsen forces her wedding guests to forfeit their phones into a bowl... sometimes we just need a little bit of advice.  Enter Mallory Ortberg, best known for writings such as an imagined dialogue with baby Foucault to unsolicited advice for Henry VIII's wives to fan fic about Kristen Stewart-as-a-girlfriend. Her "Texts From..." series on The Toast, where she imagined text message conversations between historical and literary figures, became a book last year called Texts From Jane Eyre. And as of November, she's becoming the newest Dear Prudence advice columnist at Slate.  On this week's episode of Note to Self, we asked Mallory to put on her Prudence hat to help us answer just a few of questions we've received from listeners desperately seeking tech advice. We're also taking this opportunity to test out a new app called Focus from our friend Kevin Holesh (the developer behind the Moment app, which tracks how much time you spend on your phone). It yells at you for walking and texting. Or, as we prefer to call it, "wexting." Listen in to hear what she has to say on these questions, and to learn what, exactly, "wexting" is*: Why Won't Anyone Respond to my Emails? "I have noticed that it is often impossible to get people to respond to emails. Even to emails containing a direct question, even to work emails.  People may read them, but often don’t respond to them.  Do they forget to, or just not feel the need to respond? Should I be paranoid or is this an issue for other people as well?" – Dulcie Arnold in New York How Can I Avoid Social Media FOMO? "I am constantly using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., and I do enjoy using them, so I don't want to just flat out stop. However, I do often get bad cases of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I am constantly feeling left out (even if I wouldn't even want to go if invited). I never feel content with what I'm doing myself. Even though I know most of these posts are taken to make it look like a really good time (even when it's not), I still fall for it."  – Kynan in Australia Is the "Wexting" Zombie Apocalypse Upon Us? "I’d like to ask about... a phenomenon I call 'cell phone zombies.' It’s the people I have to be on the alert to avoid hitting because they’re walking the streets with their hands outstretched completely looking intently at their cell phones oblivious of their surroundings." – Liel Biran in Israel In this episode: Mallory Ortberg, Slate's newest Dear Prudence Kevin Holesh, the developer behind the anti-driving/walking and texting app Focus Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

A few weeks ago, we did an episode on how to get a better range of perspectives in your digital life. BuzzFeed's Tracy Clayton and Katie Notopoulos said the metric for success is to build a feed that's "10 percent infuriating." A lot of you had really strong reactions, and there was a theme: you wanted to know what to do when the opinions you're seeing online are so different from your own that they border on offensive or even bigoted.  At this tense moment of protests on college campuses, shootings in the Midwest and beyond, and violence in cities across the world, we've decided that the time is ripe to revisit our episode from last December called “Your Facebook Friend Said Something Racist. Now What?”  It will help you navigate a particularly infuriating Facebook feed – or maybe just the Thanksgiving table:   "LARA" is a system promoted by the National Council for Community Justice (Note to Self/Piktochart)  

European officials believe encryption software was instrumental in allowing the Paris attackers to coordinate their actions in secret. Manoush talked with WNYC's Brian Lehrer about the challenges of encrypted technology and national security. We thought this would be useful as the terms swirl around, so we wanted to share it with the rest of you. We'll be back with our usual Note to Self podcast tomorrow. 

Last week, Cañon City, Colorado discovered that dozens of students at the local high school had been taking and trading nude photographs "like baseball cards," shaking up the parents, police, and schools. In a town best-known for one of the tallest suspension bridges in the world, this was – to put it mildly – big news.  According to local reporter Sarah Rose, residents of the town have been pretty much unable to talk about anything else since. And the rest of the world has come knocking as well – media outlets from New York to Japan have shown up to chronicle the unfolding drama. It's a whole lot of anxiety and it's a compelling story: Through an anonymous tip, authorities discovered a system of nude photos hidden away in secret "vault" apps on students' phones. The apps – disguised as calculators or media players – hid more than 400 revealing photos. According to Fremont County District Attorney Thom LeDoux, even some of the teens involved could face charges related to the production, possession and distribution of sexual exploitive material. Yeah. It's a dramatic story... but it's also not the only one like it. In this story from Long Island, two teens were arrested and more were suspended from school over sharing a sexually explicit video involving two minors. And a 17-year-old in South Carolina is being charged as an adult for exchanging nude photos with his girlfriend.  We've decided we need to talk about it. So this is where we'll start: What do you think we really need to worry about when it comes to teens and sexts? Email us or send a voice memo to [email protected] with your thoughts. In this week's episode: George Welsh, superintendent of Cañon City Schools Susannah Stern, Professor of Communications at the University of San Diego Julie Turkewitz, staff reporter at The New York Times Sarah Rose, reporter at the Cañon City Daily Record Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person (or people) to answer it. See them all here as we go along. This week, we're talking with the one and only Walter Kirn. He covers privacy, tech and surveillance, and – unrelated – he wrote the book behind "Up in the Air" with George Clooney. His most recent work lives in this month's Atlantic Magazine, and it's called "If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy." He's here to give his personal answer to a question you've sent en masse: Do we need to be worried about our phones tracking our every move? Because it sure seems like they are. Here's a sampling from our inbox alone: Hey, Apple? "This weekend I bought the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson at a yard sale for a steal at only 50 cents. I was pretty thrilled with my purchase and spent the next day at the beach diving into the first several chapters of the book. A few hours later, back at home, I was scrolling through Facebook on my iPhone when something weird happened. There on my screen was a sponsored ad in my feed for the upcoming Steve Jobs movie... WHAT?! How could this be?! ...I hadn't Googled the book or Steve Jobs (I checked my search history) and yet somehow Facebook had collected enough information about me to know to serve me up an ad at that moment. Am I just being paranoid or are they really eavesdropping on us?"– Mike Kaiser These Lizards are Ripped"...a couple days ago, I was sitting outside and watching three or four lizards dart around, taking in the heat. A couple of them kept doing push-ups.... I asked myself out loud, 'Why in the world are the lizards doing push-ups?' And then I realized I could just ask Google, so I started entering the question into the Google app... I got as far as 'Why do lizards' and it completed my sentence for me…with 'Why do lizards do push-ups?' ...It popped up as the 'personalized' suggestion, right at the top in a different color. Did Google hear me ask my question? Or are there really so many people in the world asking about why lizards do push-ups?" – Rachel WatsonThings Come in Cycles "First, I should say that I'm not a cyclist and I've never researched bicycles on the Internet.... Several months ago, I was strolling around town with a friend who is an avid cyclist and we stopped in front of a high-end bike shop (it was closed, we just looked at the window display). I noticed an odd-looking tire that had no tread at all. My friend explained that it was some sort of performance tire... In any case, when I went on the Internet the next day, the targeted advertising was for one of these tires. I hadn't looked it up anywhere, I hadn't even thought about it after we'd left the shop window.” – Heather KelleyThat Was a Private Moment Between Me and My Dog"So, I get out of the shower and I’m getting dressed and of course my dog is over there on his chaise and I’m looking at him and I’m feeling all sad that I’m about to go to work for a couple hours. I’m humming to myself a song... my poor dog is tortured by this, but I start singing,“Every time we say goodbye I cry a little, I die a little,” you know... that song. I get in the car, I put on the iPhone music. I have 6157 songs. I hit shuffle randomly, and the first song to play is the song that I was just humming... I haven’t heard this song in forever... So anyway, that's my question... and make sure you sing to your dog whenever you can because they love it, they absolutely love it." – Michael Grant So... should we be paranoid? Do we know whether our gadgets are passively listening to us? No. We don’t know for sure, beyond what they tell us in their privacy policies. But we do know that voice recognition is what many major companies are trying to get us to start using. Google has OK Google, Apple has Siri, and Amazon has Echo, a home appliance that listens to you all the time. We know that many third party apps use location data services, and we know that personalization – especially personalized ads – rely on tracking.   We also know that there is a report out this week from the New America Foundation called "Ranking Digital Rights." Their team read all of the user agreements, privacy policies, and terms of service at major telecom and Internet companies, and then gave them scores on privacy and censorship. The best-scoring company was Google, with a 65 percent – a "D." Facebook scored 41 percent –an F-. Walter Kirn's "this is a little bit too much of a coincidence" moment came in the kitchen, as he searched for a bag of walnuts. Listen to the show and read "If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy" for more.  And re-listen to celebrity cryptologist Bruce Schneier. Note to Self listener Michael Grant wrote in with a strange story about a private moment talking to his dog, which may or may not have been overheard by his phone. This is that dog. (Courtesy of Michael Grant and Bodhi the dog)  

A few months ago, we sent out a survey on a topic that appears to be the bane of many listeners' existence: digital clutter. Over one third of respondents told us that the thing that drives them MOST crazy – the biggest, worst, most frustrating clutter quagmire in their lives – is photos. We promised you a podcast and a plan of attack, and our word was good (if a little bit, um, enthusiastic – listen above). With the help of organizational guru Alan Henry, Deputy Editor of Lifehacker, we've put together a customized step-by-step system to help you back up, sort, and organize your digital photo collection for the long haul. By then end of this process, you're going to be scrolling through your pictures and contemplating the role photos really play in our lives. But first, the time has come to get your photos in shape. Seriously. Now. It'll be more fun than you think. Mostly. The Note to Self System For Decluttering Your Photos and Coming to Terms With Your Mortality I. The Basic ToolsII. Decide How Deep You Want to Go Steps for the Casual Snapshooter Steps for the Moderate Snapshooter Steps for the Enthusiastic Snapshooter Find Your Photos: A List of Places to Look III. Tell Us What You Found (Part Two!) The Basic Tools According to Alan, these are the terms, tools, and basic tricks you'll need to get started – though how far you go with them is up to you. See: Deciding How Deep to Go. Back-up services: This is a centralized place on the cloud where you can get to the raw files of your photos if you need to. Alan recommends Dropbox, but iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive or the like could serve a similar function, so long as you’re willing to pay for extra storage. One work-around: sign up for an extra account just for photo storage purposes. Auto-upload: You have two options with your back-up service. The first is turning on the auto-upload feature, which means you’ll be syncing the full-sized files to your computer. If you want to get these photos printed, use another service like Apple Photos or Picasa or Aperture, or plan to edit your photos with software such as Photoshop, this is a good idea. The other, more space-friendly option: leave that setting off, and instead be really judicious about how many of your photos you sync to your computer, or commit to going in and taking the ones you don’t want down. This is going to take some introspection, some cutting-of-your-losses, and also maybe some back-up hardware. Back-up hardware: An external hard drive that can hold all of the files you don’t want taking up space on your devices. It’s the digital version of flossing your teeth. In this case, pick whatever works for you – if you’ve got less than 64 gigabytes of files you care about, a solid USB could work. If you’ve got a lot more than that (or if you just want to keep your options open), you should spring for an external hard drive. Photo management services: This is the service you’ll use to help you categorize and sort through your pictures, whether that’s by date, location, or content. Alan’s favorite is Google Photos, which gives you unlimited space as long as your photos fall below a certain resolution (16 megapixels or 1080p HD video). You can set it so that Google will automatically reduce anything above that size to lower quality as well – for most people this should be just fine for organizing and digital-viewing purposes. From there, Google’s photo categorization technology will help you label and organize the photos into albums and galleries. You could also choose a social media platform like Facebook or Instagram, you just have to commit to making them more or less public. Facial recognition: A type of deep learning used by such services as Google Photos to categorize and organize your photos. This comes with some very real caveats. Scanner: The best way to collect all your old physical photos and store them with your digitla photos. Alan says you can go high tech and buy a picture scanner (he recommends the Doxie or the Doxie Go WiFi) to scan them at home, or send them out to get scanned. Or – if you’re OK with really low fidelity– you can just take a picture of the picture. Meta! Privacy/sharing settings: Be sure to double check that you’re only sharing what you want to share, no matter which services you choose. That said, Alan Henry says his rule is to only upload the images he is OK with his friends and family seeing. The only way to absolutely ensure privacy (well, as much as we can possibly absolutely ensure privacy), is to avoid using the cloud altogether. In Alan's words: "As for what to snap and what not to snap - well, I’m not of the mindset that 'if you don’t want it public you shouldn’t take it or store it on the Internet' – that blames *people* for problems with *technology.* However, it’s important to be mindful when you snap, and maybe take it into your own hands to choose what to upload and what not to, then back up or encrypt anything you want to save but don’t want out of your reach to delete at any time. :)" via GIPHY Decide How Deep You Want to Go Alan thinks we all fit into one of three photo-taking categories: casual snapshooters, moderate snapshooters, and enthusiastic snapshooters. Figuring out which category you belong to will help you decide how far you really need to go in your personal photo-decluttering process.  You've been sorted! (Kristeli Zappa M./Note to Self) BUCKET 1: THE CASUAL SNAP SHOOTER Characteristics: You have a bunch of photos all over the place, but you're not as concerned about organizing the past as you are setting up a solid system for the future. You primarily take photos with your phone. Your goal is to go from disorganized to organized, not necessarily to group all of your photos in the same place. Your steps: Pick a system for automatic back-up. Download the app if you don’t have it already. Turn on auto-upload. On Dropbox – Alan’s pick – this is called “camera upload.” On Google Drive, this is “back-up and sync." On iOS, this is "iCloud photos." That’s it! Save your password somewhere safe. Invest in an external hard drive if you’re feeling really responsible. Digital hygiene, everybody. Be sure to tell us what you've found. BUCKET 2: THE MODERATE SNAP SHOOTER Characteristics:  For the most part, your photos are already digital – just in a billion different places. You may have a few old phones, some SD cards from a DSLR or other high-end digital camera, but you're not terribly concerned with really old physical photos. You probably have hundreds (or maybe a couple thousand but no more than that) of photos you care about, and want them to be organized, both past and present. Your Steps:  Turn on auto upload for your back-up system of choice (i.e., Dropbox). On Dropbox – Alan’s pick – this is called “camera upload.” On Google Drive, this is “back-up and sync." On iOS, this is "iCloud photos." Choose your photo management service, and transfer the photos you care about the most into it (i.e. Google Photos.). Start hunting down the rest of the digital photos you really care about and pull them into your photo management service. Be judicious: What's really worth    migrating off of, say, that Flickr account you started and never went back to? Which Facebook Photos do you want to make sure you're saving in higher quality? Did you have a SmugMug account you need to check? Once you've uploaded the photos you care about most into this central service, look through the albums it has created for you. See where the system has sorted it correctly, and where it has gotten details wrong. Take over as the human here, and start adjusting into a system that will be meaningful to you. This can be as intense of a process as you choose, just be sure to label with names that will be memorable. (I.e., not “August 2015,” but “Trip to Paris With Family.”) This system should recognize dates and location at the very least. If they’re wonky – and older photos probably will be – pick and choose which ones you care about correcting. Starting to sort through your photos will also help you jog your memory about any meaningful pictures you may have forgotten. Track them down, rinse, repeat. BUCKET 3: THE ENTHUSIASTIC SNAP SHOOTER Characteristics:  You have thousands of photos — probably more than Dropbox or Google Photos' drag-and-drop interfaces can handle in one go. You use multiple devices, including cameras with SD cards and phones. You’re looking for all of your memories to be organized, both past and present. You might even want to organize all of the photos from the whole family’s set of gadgets, like phones or tablets everyone uses. Your Steps: Pick a back-up system. Turn on auto-upload for your current and future photos. Let the current batch upload. This could take a few minutes. On Dropbox – Alan’s pick – this is called “camera upload.” On Google Drive, this is “back-up and sync." On iOS, this is "iCloud photos." Once you’re done uploading, drag and drop as many of your already-digital but easily-accessible photos from your back-up system to your photo management system. For now, draw the line at your primary devices—the laptops or computers you already use, the phone you already use, and the SD card currently in your favorite camera you’ve been meaning to back up. Aim to get the majority of your current and most recent photos centralized. Once the bulk of your current photos are on your two services, spend some time getting in touch with your memories again, building galleries and doing searches through your most recent upload. Look through the albums your photo management service has created for you, and see where the system has sorted it correctly, and where it has gotten details wrong. Start sorting into albums that will be meaningful to you. This can be as intense of a process as you choose, just be sure to label with names that will be memorable. You’re also teaching the system which details actually matter to you. From here, start hunting down old photos to add to the collection. Then, batch by batch, pull in old folders. Then, as you have the time, energy, or desire to centralize those old photos, you can power up that old laptop and upload them, or dump them to an external hard drive and upload them in batches (all of your old 2003 trip photos at once, for example.) This way you’re making continual progress without committing yourself to a week-long wrestling match with the tendrils of Google and Dropbox every time you want to back-up your memories.  When you're as far as you're going to get for the moment... tell us what you've found! Where to Look For Old Photos If you're like most people, you've probably stored your photos in all kinds of different places over the years. Here's a not-at-allcomprehensive-but-hopefully-inspirational list of places to look: Your phone's built-in photos app Your old phone's built-in photos app Photo apps on your laptop/PC Drive/ Desktop Folders on your laptop/PC  External harddrive CDs/DVDs USBs Old cameras Email Text messages (these can take up a surprising amount of space!) Facebook Instagram Picasa PhotoBucket SnapFish ShutterFly Flickr DropBox Google Drive Google + Box Google Photo iCloud  Microsoft OneDrive Image Shack SmugMug EverNote ShoeBox Imgur  Got more? Comment here, tell us on Twitter or Facebook, or email to [email protected].  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person (or people) to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how to record one.  Some people call it the "echo chamber effect." Others worry about filter bubbles or homophily. Every once in awhile you'll hear hands wringing over birds of a feather. Or you could just say it like listener Anid Chan in Portland: "I have a concern about personalized feeds. There is so much information out there, but I know that most of what I see are opinions and voices like my own. I worry this makes us more judgmental about other people, because most of what we believe gets emphasized by people who think the same way. How do we break out of the bubble?" Anid is right. We are more likely to have friends who are similar to us in age, education, occupation, and location. Channel that truth through the ever-present intersections of race, gender, nationality, ability, sex, and class, and, yes, it can get vulnerable and uncomfortable and even ugly. Cocoons form – comfortable and multi-platform cocoons, because we are also most likely to click on, like, or comment on things we already agree with. Then, because they want us to have positive experiences with their products, many of the social networks we use assume we want to see more of whatever it is we've chosen to click. The algorithms learn to reward opinions or people they think we’ll like. In a company-sponsored study of 10.1 million of the most partisan American users on Facebook, researchers found that people’s networks of friends and the stories they see are skewed toward their ideological preferences, though there are different interpretations as to why. Twitter too: an NYU political scientist found that about two-thirds of the people followed by the median Twitter user in the United States share the user’s political leanings.  Happy almost-election season, right? Which brings us back to Anid’s question. What does it really take to put more diversity - however you define it - into your news feeds? We asked two people working to do this for BuzzFeed - yes, the news website known for cat video and listicles. But the reason you know about them is because Buzzfeed spends a ton of energy figuring out what gets shared, why, and in which communities.  Katie Notopoulos is co-host of BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer podcast. She was the force behind #UnfollowAMan (which is exactly what it sounds like). Tracy Clayton is co-host of the BuzzFeed podcast Another Round, and one of the driving forces behind the CocoaButterBF initiative, designed to make BuzzFeed a little bit less monochromatic. They joined Manoush to talk about their work digging into the deepest corners of the Internet, thinking about their audiences, and figuring out what to elevate on one of the biggest platforms out there.  And for the average Internet reader? Here are some tips from Tracy and Katie: 1. Try. Acknowledge that there is a problem. To quote: "I... often come across the person who is like 'hey, you know, can you help me find a black writer to write about this, or an Asian writer to write about this, like I just don't know where to start,' and in addition to just sort of general cluelessness, [it also suggests] just, like, laziness. You know this is something that you have to try to do. You don't necessarily have to try really hard, but you do have to try. So start with trying, and then graduate to Google, and then see where you end up." 2. Keep your not-quite-friends on your friends list. Look them up occasionally. Facebook says your "weak ties" are a good way to get range. According to the company, 23 percent of users’ friends are of an opposing political affiliation. If you look them up every once in awhile, the algorithm is more likely to filter a wider range of posts and updates into your feed. So go ahead and stalk your high school ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend's mother you friended on a whim. It'll be good for your worldview. And on a more serious note? If they say something offensive, don't necessarily unfriend. We made a flowchart for you here. 3. Click on one link you're only semi-interested in once a week (or more). Katie says a good feed should be "10 percent infuriating." But this doesn't have to be a hate click. Just a conscious effort to convince the Facebook or Google algorithms into thinking your interests are broader than they perhaps even are. Make a game of it. See what happens. Report back. 4. Unfollow one person whose perspective you know a little too well. Follow someone else instead. Take Katie's lead and #UnfollowAMan. Or a white person, or a Democrat, or a Republican, or a 30-something, or a New Yorker... whatever applies. The key is to replace him thoughtfully.  Here are some of Katie and Tracy's suggestions in a Twitter list.  And here are a few more solid curation feeds we've been into these days. This is obviously not a comprehensive list and suggestions are always welcome: Global Voices Online (@globalvoices) reported.ly (@reportedly) Across Women's Lives (@womenslives) Microaggressions (@microaggressive) 5. When you sign up for a new service, choose broad categories. There's always a new "it thing." When you try them out, treat them all a little differently. Katie uses the example of Apple News: "When you first sign up, it asks you 'what categories of news do you want?' And that's a really daunting question, but it's funny because I'm so used to like, 'I follow these outlets already and these people,' and so this was, 'here's a totally new app that's going give me a totally different experience.' Immediately I was seeing articles by outlets that I don't normally read." Basically, this tip boils down to "when you try something new, really try something new. Even if you don't stick with the service, you can discover new people in the process. 6. Join a public group. New perspectives on politics and the world don't necessarily come from political websites or world commentary. Sometimes, joining a public group about a lighter, more social topic is the best way to see what people are really talking about, and to teach your social networks that your interests can encompass more types of people. Katie recommends Dogspotting. Which is also exactly what it sounds like. You'll see new names, new people, new communities, and new languages. And dogs. A dog in Canberry, Australia. (Danielle Griffiths/Dogspotting) 7. Embrace your inner fly on the wall. Sometimes, the metric of success here is finding conversations that allow you to just listen, and not say anything at all. Tracy says one of the takeaways from hosting Another Round – a podcast in which she and her co-host Heben Nigatu talk about race pretty frequently – has been the reaction of white listeners: "We get a lot of emails white listeners, that say, 'you know what I'm just so glad to be able to sit in on these conversations... I've never had access to them before.' And I think that Twitter allows you the same sort of distance from really intimate conversations. I feel like people on Twitter are more likely to talk more candidly [about things] that concern them and their lives and their own personal experiences with people who have a shared reality." Special thanks this week to Julia Furlan, Eleanor Kagan, and the rest of the team at BuzzFeed audio. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

We know text messages can be crazy. We know they can be cruel. We know they can be hilarious. And as at least 21 percent of Americans know, they can make us feel closer together.  This week, we’re going to examine those moments of closeness — when texting encourages intimacy between us, and when those messages really just create the illusion of deeper connection.  Case in point: We're going to take a deeper look at a company called Invisible Girlfriend, fodder for countless Internet jokes. Users sign up for the service, create a bio for their "partner," and buy a package of 100 texts, ten voicemails, and one handwritten note for $25. It was conceived as a means of "proving" a fake relationship status to nagging family members or sleazy coworkers who just won't get the hint, and it runs off of a rotating workforce of actual humans behind the scenes, stepping in and out of different girlfriend and boyfriend characters. However, even its founders have been surprised by the way people have started to use it: as a safe, anonymous, always-reliable sympathetic ear to confide in at any time of day. Take a look at their FAQ: (Invisible Industries FAQ) Sure, it's the premise of the movie "Her." But 80,000 people have signed up for an invisible partner - and it's not the only sign that there is hunger for this kind of service. In China, millions of people are sending messages back and forth with Xiaoice, a "sympathetic ear" texting service powered by artificial intelligence.  According to the experts, it's a social phenomenon that matters for anyone who wields a phone.  The people you'll meet in this episode: Kashmir Hill, editor of Fusion's Real Future, who got a job as an Invisible Girlfriend for a month. She wrote a story about her experience, and followed up on it through some pretty eye-opening conversations with a user.  "Quentin," a 30-something former customer of Invisible Girlfriend. He named his invisible partner Margo Roth Spiegelman, after the character in John Green's novel "Paper Towns." Kyle Tabor, CEO of Invisible Industries, who co-founded the company at a hackathon in St. Louis. Sherry Turkle, author of "Reclaiming Conversation." She says the desire for a sympathetic ear is growing, even though there are more and more places to "talk." EDITOR'S NOTE, 10/22/15: A number of listeners wrote in to say that our depiction of one of the main characters in this story – a man who uses a wheelchair – was not person first. They are all absolutely right. We are going to record a new version of the audio. Everyone should feel well-represented on our podcast. If you ever have a comment on one of our shows, please write to us. We’re [email protected].  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Sherry Turkle has spent the past 30 years studying the psychology of the relationship between people and technology — how giant technological advances change our communities, our relationships, and even our inner selves.   Her 2011 book "Alone Together" topped the charts for months, and created all kinds of conversations about the more isolating, more problematic side of being glued to a screen. But as she remembers it: "It was like I was messing up the party... a lot of people were, like, angry with me. It was like I was destroying this [technological] love affair." Five years later, her new book "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age" explores similar themes about intimacy, relationships, and the difference between texting and talking. This time around however, she says the reception has been much warmer.  "I think that there's a lot in the culture that's saying, 'You know, we're ready to think about what we're like with our phones, and we're ready to be purposeful and to use our technology with greater intention. My message now is still 'Use the technology with greater intention.' And I think that 5 years ago, it was like, 'No!'" When she stopped by to talk with us for our episode "Can You Have a Whole Relationship Through Texts?" we fell into a larger conversation about our partnerships, our phones, and this particular moment in history. So in this special bonus edition of Note to Self, we've decided to share a few more of her takeaways on the issues and feelings our listeners so often describe to us. Listen above (or anywhere else you get your podcasts) to hear what she has to say to these questions and more: There's a Phone in the Middle of My Marriage “For me, my phone is just a toolbox... for my wife, I think her phone is much much more than a tool - so much more that it is changing our marriage. Many days I feel that I am now an unwilling polygamist married to my wife of nearly 20 years and, more recently, her phone. I wonder how other couples are dealing with this transition to the smartphone age.” — Luther Light How Can Social Media Managers Socialize? “What is the best way for social media managers to navigate their life at work and at home? I have a young son, and I’ve been a social media manager now for two years. And I think if you’re a young 20-something year old you can devote 24 hours a day to your social media and checking… but now with a young son, I find it difficult... How do social media managers navigate their notifications and that life balance? Because their job is to always be connected. How do we disconnect? What types of life hacks could really help the job?”  — John Oles  Do The Kids Even Know What They're Missing? “We honestly believe that children are missing out on the physical experiences of playing, wandering, and learning in these very developmental stages. Will [our children] feel the same way?” — Brian Emerson   Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how to record one.  Between our cell phones, wireless Internet networks, and all of the set-ups that let our devices communicate with one another wirelessly, we're pretty much constantly bathing in low-level radiation. This worries Martha, a listener in Santa Fe, whose mother asked her for a set of wireless headphones: "I’ve been listening to your podcast for a few months and am glad to hear so many other people are concerned with the tech issues that bother me too. Right now I’m concerned about wireless (RF) and bluetooth radiation. Wireless devices have so quickly become a part of our lives, but it is looking more and more likely that they could also have potentially serious health effects. My mom has trouble hearing, and wants me to get her a set of wireless headphones to watch TV without blasting the whole house. That sounds good, but the more research I do, the less I am happy about her having wireless (or wired) headphones next to her skull for hours each day. She just sees the convenience, and writes off the list of potential side effects (brain tumors, cancer, cataracts, headaches, skin problems, etc). I’d love to hear your take on this issue." To delve deeper into the question, we spoke with Mary Harris, host of WNYC's new health podcast "Only Human."  Mary says the fact of the matter is that scientists haven't yet found any conclusive evidence that suggests WiFi is dangerous. The waves involved in letting you use your cell phone, browse the web, or listen to the radio are much, much lower energy than X-rays or gamma rays — the kind that can actually break down DNA strands and cause mutations, which is why you have to protect yourself with a lead blanket when the dentist takes images of your teeth. Scientists have yet to prove that WiFi could lead to cancer. When it comes to cell phones, there's some evidence that suggests a link between cell phone usage and a slightly elevated rate of cancer — but because these weren't experimental studies, there's no way of knowing whether cell phones are the culprit, or whether that rate has gone up because diagnostic techniques have improved. Mary spoke about this with David Brenner, a professor of radiation biophysics at Columbia, who pointed out that there are much bigger things to be worried about when it comes to cancer-causing radiation: Yup. (Mary Harris/Only Human) Even the most diligent consumer would have a hard — if not impossible — time avoiding every potential cancer-causing agent. "If you tried to eliminate every possible carcinogen, you wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t breathe, wouldn’t go out in the sunshine — we have to be pragmatic about how to interpret these things," Brenner says. However, cancer isn't the only concern with WiFi. In recent years, a number of people have reported suffering from what's known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity, with symptoms like nausea, dizziness, and heart palpitations. In Massachusetts, a family is suing their son's boarding school for causing him to experience this syndrome after the school boosted its WiFi signal in 2013; meanwhile, in France, a court recently ruled that a woman suffering from symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity could receive disability payments — and this comes on the heels of France banning WiFi in its nursery schools. Still, the science is hazy here, as well: though these people's symptoms are real, there's no proof that electromagnetic fields like WiFi are the cause.  One thing we do know for sure, thanks to David Brenner: Those wireless headphones Martha's mom wants? They're perfectly safe. They don't actually emit a wireless signal; they just receive it — so wearing them on her head for hours each day won't expose her to much at all.  As for the rest of us, we can rest assured that our WiFi probably isn't giving us cancer, and we'd be better served by sticking to the basics: remembering to wear some SPF, laying off the cigarettes, and getting our heart rates up once and a while. But if it makes you feel better to use headphones with your cell phone or keep the WiFi away from your baby's room, go for it — you certainly won't be hurting anyone. UPDATE: A lot of listeners were curious about the source of our statistic on the risk of developing cancer. That stat comes from the National Cancer Institute, which tells us that "approximately 39.6 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with all cancer sites at some point during their lifetime, based on 2010-2012 data."  Hear the first episode of Only Human here. It will make you cry. In a meaningful way.  And as always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.    

This is a story about an incident that happened to 22-year-old freelance web developer Jacky Alciné, the racist slur that caught him off-guard, and the machines behind it. You may have heard about it earlier this summer: On Sunday, June 28, Jacky sat relaxing, half-watching the BET awards and messing around on his computer. It was just a normal evening, until a selfie from his friend popped up in the Google photo app. As Jacky scrolled through his photos, he realized that Google has rolled out “photo categorization" – his pictures had automatically been labelled and organized based on what was in them. His brother’s graduation? No problem, Google's software totally figured it out. But as he kept scrolling, he came upon a series of photos of himself and a friend at a concert.   But the label didn’t say “people” or "concert." The label Jacky saw on all of the pictures he had taken with this particular friend. (Jacky Alciné/Twitter) "It says 'gorilla,' and I’m like 'nah,'" Jacky says. "[It's] a term that’s been used historically to describe black people in general. Like, 'Oh, you look like an ape,' or 'you’ve been classified as a creature,'" Jacky said. "[B]ecause the closer they looked to a chimp... the more black, the more pure the blackness was supposed to be, so they were probably better for cropping, going back to the days of slavery and cattle selling... [and] of all terms, of all derogatory terms to use, that one came up." He tweeted at the company and they resolved it within 14 hours.  @jackyalcine Can we have your permission to examine the data in your account in order to figure out how this happened? — Yonatan Zunger (@yonatanzunger) June 29, 2015 But this isn't the only example of a machine making a problematically human mistake. Flickr has been fielding complaints for auto-tagging people in photos as "animals," and concentration camps as "jungle gyms." According to computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, these stories are just going to keep making headlines. Because to prevent a machine from drawing a offensive conclusion? You have to teach a machine how complex society is – and it just may be impossible to code around all of the deeply human social pitfalls. As he tells Manoush Zomorodi on this week's Note to Self: Yoshua Bengio: "We would have to have people tell the machine why it makes specific mistakes," Bengio said. "But you would need not just like two or three examples, you would need thousands or millions of examples for the machine to catch all of the different types of errors that we think exists." Manoush Zomorodi: So should companies like Google be even using deep learning like this if there is the possibility that these really offensive mistakes can happen? Bengio: Well, that’s a choice that they have to make. The system can make mistakes and you have to deal with the fact that there will be mistakes. Google Photo uses a type of artificial intelligence called "machine learning." Scientists give the machine millions of examples and teach it to start recognizing objects or words. Then, through an even more specific approach called "deep learning," it trains machines to start seeing patterns in the data, to draw their own conclusions, and to, in a way, think for itself. This enables them to process huge reams of previously unmanageable data. In many ways, it's one of the most exciting advances in Artificial Intelligence to date. On this week's show, however, we're taking a closer look at how AI could get it so wrong in practice, and why mistakes like this one matter for big tech companies and those of us who use their products. Manoush and Jacky Alciné take a Note to Self(ie). (Manoush Zomorodi/Note to Self) Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

The Internet runs on advertising. Everyone from huge tech companies to scrappy start-up websites rely on ads. There's just one problem: People hate advertising and the tracking that comes with it – and droves of us have started blocking them. I might have raised my voice a little when I learned she was adblocking our own. site. https://t.co/5sZVJ4ft4a — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 21, 2015 A report from Adobe and PageFair last month found that there are now 198 million active ad-block users worldwide, costing publishers nearly $22 billion. With the advent of iOS 9, app developers can now create ad blocking software for Safari’s mobile browser, giving the huge market of iPhone and iPad users the power to block ads on mobile. Within hours of iOS 9's launch, ad blockers topped the App Store charts. And within hours of that, even the app's creators started having second thoughts. It's the ethical quandary at the heart of the Internet as we know it. If we're not paying for content, how does it generate a salary for the people producing it? On this episode of Note to Self, Casey Johnston of WireCutter and The Awl helps us delve into the catch-22 of loving the scrappy start-up websites, and hating the way they're funded. Here's some parting advice: If you decide to take the ad-blocking plunge? If you use Android or Apple, you have options. The most popular app for iOS right now is Crystal. Once you’ve chosen the right app (list here), install it, go into "Settings" for Safari, and select that app as your content blocker. This way, content is blocked across all implementations of Safari, including the Safari app itself and within apps that use the Safari API. Do the same on your desktop web browser. If you want to use an ad-blocker, but really, really don't want to hurt your favorite content creators? Try "white-listing" that site under settings – you can pick and choose which sites show you ads. In fact, you might not always have a choice. The Washington Post refuses to show content to people who use ad blockers. The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Mother Jones all show ad blocking users requests to disable or donate in place of ads. Ad blocker users are themselves becoming the new target of ads http://t.co/UQZ2ltRczC — Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) September 22, 2015 And if you want to outsource this ethical quandary to an app? Developer Darius Kazemi has been working on "The Ethical Ad Blocker," a Chrome extension/ad blocker that will not let you see a website if it runs on advertising. Basically, you have to make the choice every single time.  Let us know what you decide!  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

"You go, 'Damn, just it’s not my crazy person... it’s everyone’s crazy person!'" – Elan Gale, creator of Texts From Your Ex, Tinder Nightmares, Unspirational and more If you're not one of Text From Your Ex's 1.5 million followers already, here's what you need to know: Elan Gale's brainchild is an Instagram account with pages and pages of awkwardness captured in screenshots. They're submitted by email, and, as he told producer Jen Poyant on this week's show, he has a backlog of 40,000 "just sitting around." Turns out, reading through hundreds of thousands of other people's emotionally loaded conversations gives you some pretty profound insight into relationships, technology, and privacy (or rather... the utter lack thereof). "You’ve never had an interesting text conversation that hasn’t been sent to ten people. That’s just what people do," Gale says. "Even though we treat relationships more casually because of text messages and the way we communicate, you have to actually trust people more to be open and honest with them because you have your entire personal life on their phone, or their watch, or their unguarded computer. And they're irresponsible dicks... and at any moment anyone could just have a lapse of judgement for 45 seconds and leave their phone on a table without a passcode and your entire life is visible. So why pretend that it’s not?" Seems like a fair trade A photo posted by Unspirational (@textsfromyourex) on Sep 9, 2015 at 2:06pm PDT Gale started Texts From Your Ex about a year ago with some ex-girlfriends who were all in on the joke. Once other people saw them, however, he realized he had stumbled onto something bigger. In the year since, he's hired an assistant and signed a book deal. He says the conversations tend to fall into three categories: calling out the receiver for ignoring them, calling out the receiver for dating someone else (which they've often discovered through social media), or "telling you to go f**ck yourself." Oh, and: MORE LIKE KEA-NO A photo posted by Unspirational (@textsfromyourex) on Jul 30, 2015 at 3:48pm PDT "What else is there, those are the conversations you have," Gale says. "It’s really, really hard to have a relationship with a human being in a room with you. That’s it, that’s hard enough... it took us billions of years to get to a point where we had a common language and now we’ve developed all these new methods of communication but no one has learned how to do it yet. which is why everyone’s almost really bad at it." This is the subtext of EVERY text from your ex A photo posted by Unspirational (@textsfromyourex) on Sep 8, 2015 at 9:52am PDT   Elan Gale's "Texts From Your Ex" book will be released in the U.S. on October 13.   Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how to record one.  Listener Aaron Oesting, who describes himself as a "digital nomad," moves around a lot. And in the process, he read a few articles (like these in LifeHacker and the Wall Street Journal) on a phenomenon that has him worried: “I read a magazine article about how online retailers vary pricing based on the location of your IP address, so if you live in a more expensive community you might get more expensive pricing. And my question is: Is that practice right? And then second, am I really getting the best deal when I comparison shop online?"  To answer Aaron's question, we brought in Bob Phillips, a professor of business at Columbia University's Business School. So the answer to his Aaron's question? Yes, online retailers will set their prices based on how much they believe you're willing to pay, and the technology keeps getting more sophisticated. Amazon changes prices all the time based on time of day. Most large retailers experiment with different prices and adjust accordingly minute by minute. Dynamic pricing isn't a new practice. In fact, haggling and adjusting price has been around much longer than the "fixed" prices we're used to in most brick and mortar stores. But for the most part, consumers today really, really, really don't like the idea that prices are going to shift on them, unless they're thinking about airfares (though that didn't go over so well at first either). Take the pushback against Coca-Cola's proposed summertime price hike. However, according to Phillips, it's price discrimination that can present an actual problem: People being charged different prices based on a certain demographic factor, including location and/or socioeconomics. "Price discrimination differentiation is simply put trying to charge different people, different prices for the same item, based on their willingness to pay." Robert J. Hunter, Director of Insurance at the Consumer Federation of America, has spent quite a bit of time over the past few years digging into what he calls insidious price discrimination in the insurance industry. Insurance companies have always set rates based on risk, including assumptions based on gender and age. That said, the heavily-regulated industry does not allow consumers with the same agreed-upon risk to pay substantially different rates. And that, he says, is exactly what he found happening. The people least likely to comparison shop -- including, The Brookings Institute says, many lower-income consumers -- actually found themselves paying higher rates than their contemporaries.  Consumer Reports calls this the 'Schmo Tax." Thus, thanks to Aaron, we're bringing you a story that was until recently buried in actuarial literature meant for insurance brokers.  Hey, we do what we can. Want to see whether you're paying different prices for the same goods and services? Try setting up a proxy server or VPN to obfuscate your IP address.  And if you want to get the best deal online? Shop around. Big Data will see you doing it and adjust your rates accordingly. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Classrooms in 2015 are full of gadgets, apps and devices that their teachers (let alone parents), did not grow up using themselves. Kids learning on these tools will most likely be using different technology when they're grown up. In the meantime, every click, swipe, grade, and decision feeds into a giant pool of data that will end up... yeah, who knows where. So adults have a steep learning curve when it comes to kids in the digital age. The best way to start understanding what's happening? Talk with them. To that end, we're revisiting a conversation from earlier this year that kicked off a series on education and technology. Meet 16-year-old Grace, who shared nine lessons about being a teenager with a smartphone.  If you've ever known — or been! — a teenager, you should take a listen. More Resources for a Critical, Thoughtful School Year For Talking to Teens Tweens and Tech Guide: Getting Them to Open Up Middle school teacher Dierdre Shetler took the conversation with Grace and adapted it for her own classrooms in Phoenix. She helped us write a curriculum you can use too, which we call: A Classroom Activity for Tweens and Teens Everywhere. For Talking to Schools A Parent's Guide to All That 'Ed Tech' In Your Kid's Classroom A checklist of questions you should ask of your school as they introduce new technology into the classroom. A Glossary of Useful Ed Tech Terms Some help cutting through the buzzwords. ClassDojo: Do I Want it in My Kid's Class? A very, very popular app raises questions about student data and privacy. For Philosophical Debates Is Braille Obsolete? Visually impaired students raise some important questions about reading, technology, and what it means to rely on a smartphone for literacy. Judging Your Originality in a Cut and Paste World Anti-plagiarism software lets us test whether it's even possible to have a unique thought. For Those of You Who Listened to Grace Growing Up Digital: 3 Truths for the Adults We hear teenagers, tweens, and the adults compare their experience to Grace's in diverse classrooms around the country.

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how to record one.  There is no better way to put this: Filling out online profiles — OKCupid, LinkedIn, Ashley Madison(...) — is terrible. For the vast majority of self-conscious humans, translating yourself into date-able, hire-able, searchable form really, really, really sucks. As listener Katie Shepherd in Oakland, California says:  “I feel like I have filled out so many online profiles – LinkedIn, OKCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel – and I really struggle with how much information to share about myself. On the one hand, I want to stand out. On the other, I don’t want to freak anyone out! How do you figure out the balance? Has anyone figured out any actual rules that can help?” Turns out, the answer is... yes. And your 7th grade English teacher gave you a preview. This week, we talk with Lisa Hoehn, founder of Profile Polish and author of the forthcoming "You Probably Shouldn't Write That: Tips and Tricks for Creating an Online Dating Profile That Doesn't Suck." She has built a lucrative business on the premise of writing profiles for other people.  "Pretty much everyone says a variation of the same thing: 'I'm a really nice guy, I'm a really nice girl,but I can't get myself to come across that way online.' And then people will say things like 'I'll try to edit it and the more that I edit my profile, the more self-conscious I get,'" Hoehn says. "They'll say 'I just sit there for hours and can't type a single word.'" If you can't afford to hire a professional ghost writer (or if you'd rather not), we got her to write some rules for the rest of us. How to Write a Better Profile 1. Assume people will skim. Hoehn says 400-600 words total is a good ballpark estimate on length — any more, people won't bother; any less, they'll think you didn't care enough to try.  2. Show, don't tell. Make your creative writing teachers proud. Instead of saying "I love my phone but it exhausts me," try "I make a conscious effort to leave my phone in my pocket as I'm walking down the street." Same point, but the reader gets to draw the conclusion for him-or-herself. This is where you should invest the majority of your writing energy.  3. Don't treat your profile like a biography. The chronology of your life is not inherently interesting until the reader knows you. So unless your move from New Jersey to Delaware to Connecticut was particularly formative to your character ("I taught myself to speak Klingon with a French accent on the drive between Hartford and Dover,") save the specifics of where and when and why you moved until you meet in person.  4. Stay positive. Obviously, you should tell the truth about yourself online. That said, you're not under any obligation to share your deepest character flaws at first interaction. In fact, Hoehn tells her clients to stay positive "pretty much always." People assume you're showing them the best version of yourself. Therefore, negativity carries disproportionate weight on an online profile.  5. Keep your expectations in check. An extension of rule five: People are not showing you their darker side, so it is up to you to remember that they have one. Don't go in expecting perfection. The IRL version of your date (or job candidate, or partner in crime) will be a full-fledged, flawed human. Hopefully. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

Should you take web development classes? Or poetry writing? Is it more important to think like an engineer, or an artist? Turns out the answer may be be found... in a pile of LEGO. The view from today: pic.twitter.com/9KF7Qi8WdC — Note to Self (@NoteToSelf) August 18, 2015 Some people use LEGO to build creations of their wildest imaginations. Others meticulously recreate the picture on the back of the box. According to new research by business professors Page Moreau and Marit Gundersen Engset, there is a serious, meaningful, and potentially long-term difference between those who "free build," meaning they put the bricks together without a guide, and those who follow the instructions. In the lab, those who put together kits were less creative when they completed follow-up tasks. Researchers say instruction-following and free-building are two different "mindsets."  The way we use LEGO provides the perfect window into a growing challenge we face: how to encourage creative thinking not just for children, but employees and businesses who always have to come up with the next big thing.  So the kit vs. pile debate matters even for adults whose feet have never been wounded by a stray brick. You can prime yourself to think more creatively or more methodically by consciously choosing to create a meal from a kit, or free-styling with the spices in your kitchen. Or, you know, kicking a ball around with your kid instead of taking him to a two-hour practice. In this week's episode: Page Moreau, Professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Business Naomi Clark, Game Designer Stephan Turnipseed, President Emeritus and Director of Strategic Parterships for LEGO Education Jenn Choi, Blogger at Toys are Tools A few kind families outside of the LEGO Store in New York City Kai Robin, Manoush's resident 8-year-old expert And finally: fun facts! Since the Danish toymaker patented the blocks in 1958, the growth has been, in a word, explosive: the company estimates that on average, every person on Earth owns 86 blocks, and a computer says just six of those could be combined in 915,103,765 ways. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. LEGO Brain! (Ariana Tobin/Note to Self)

This is the latest installment of "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person (or in this case... people) to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how to record one.  There is a child among us who will live to be 150 years old. When this kid celebrates his centennial and a half, how is he going to feel about the picture you just posted of today's playground disaster?  This week's question comes from a father whose social media profiles are covered in photos of his kid: "I was wondering if it's right of me to just blindly post pic after pic of my 3-year-old's entire life all over social media. Should I start deleting every pic until he's old enough to give consent? Or is this just what it's like to grow up in a digital world?" — Judd Wachstein, Atlanta, Georgia According to the Pew Research Center, 92 percent of children in the U.S. have a digital presence by the time they turn two. But a University of Michigan poll earlier this year found that three-fourths of parents think that another parent has shared too much information about their child online. So no matter what we do, there are some very strong opinions out there. We put three people with very different philosophies together for a conversation about ethics, photography, and the struggle of weighing future consequences in a world just can't picture yet (no pun intended). Take a listen and see who you agree with the most: Note to Self Host Manoush Zomorodi, who posts nothing. Note to Self Executive Producer Jen Poyant who posts every day on Instagram. Longest Shortest Time Host Hillary Frank, who posts drawings and side-angles but no faces. Oh, and take our poll? You can listen to Hillary's excellent show, The Longest Shortest Time, anywhere you get your podcasts on through their spiffy new app (which is also where many of the listener voices on this show came from). We're also pretty in love with the Longest Shortest Time Mamas group, a Facebook community and safe space for mothers to share their *real* experience of promulgating the human race. There's one for Papas too. And as always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. Hillary's daughter Sasha drew this picture of a birthday cake with 38 candles (really, she counted) (Courtesy of Hillary Frank)

Look at the headline on this page. See the little square above it that says "Note to Self," with the words "published in" on top? That, according to our in-house User Experience (UX) team, was the product of a whole lot of surveys, interviews, research, and testing. They realized that people who made it to the story page (like you!) couldn't tell it was part of a podcast. They added those words, and boom — you are now fully aware of what you're looking at.   Or at least... more aware.* Because UX research — one of the most explosive areas of growth over the past decade, and one of the most sought-after new tech industry jobs — is still in its infancy, and it's based on herding a really frustrating, ever-shifting, not at all generalize-able data set: People. To learn what's going through these mind-analyzers' minds, Manoush volunteered herself as a guinea pig in Etsy's Usability Testing Lab for a story about online seduction — how designers create an immersive experience that makes you relaxed or happy or excited, and makes you feel like spending your time and money. Here she is in the top right hand corner, getting excited about a scarf: Etsy UX researchers watching Manoush shop "for a gift." (Jackie Snow) Techies know that it can get emotional, frustrating, and personal when an app crashes, or you can’t figure out where to pay your damn credit card balance online, or you’re shopping and the links on the website don’t take you to where you think that they’re going to take you. They know they have a lot to lose and a lot to gain from your feelings about their products, and they are turning to people with degrees in the social sciences to help them analyze what's going through our collective minds. Basically: there are more and more jobs for "feelings specialists" that have (almost) nothing to do with therapy. For the record, she didn't buy it. Yet. (Shovava/Etsy.com)   So this week, we're taking a look at the people who tell the developers that a confused user might need an extra text bubble to guide them through a frustrating moment...  (Note to Self)   ...make sure every icon makes sense... (Note to Self) ...and decide how many menus, exactly, their users can handle at once... (Note to Self)   Here's what some of the big — and often opaque — tech companies say about their own UX research: Apple, Facebook, Twitter. We're curious to hear about your experience as users of these sites. Let's go meta? *Marine Boudeau and Fiona Carswell, our UX specialists at WNYC, are actually in the process of redesigning the site right now -- and they would love your input on your, er, user experience here. Meta, right? In this week's episode: Mark Hurst, Founder and CEO of UX Consulting firm Creative Good Jill Fruchter, UX Research Manager at Etsy Alex Wright, Director of Research at Etsy For more good background reading on UX/UI, Marine suggests: The pure definition.  What a UX designer actually does. And some insight into all the acronyms that start with "U". Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Welcome to week three of our new segment "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Here for our Clutter survey? No? Want to help shape Note to Self's next project? Find it here. This week's Question of Note is a "what if." It comes from Manoush herself, and it all started with a reflection from various luminaries of western thought: Follow the money.  Or, alternatively, "your time is money, and technology companies want to lay claim to as much of it as possible."  The reason so many of us feel like our devices monopolize our attention comes down to one fact, says techie and design entrepreneur Tristan Harris: The people behind our technologies need to make a living (or, you know, billions of dollars). And the money-making mechanism of Silicon Valley? They have to be able to say "we kept this person's attention on our site/app/brand for a really long time." It works for advertisers, but there's a cost to us. According to research from the University of California-Irvine, every time we get interrupted by something external, it takes us about 23 minutes to refocus after the interruption. Notifications are a huge hindrance to productivity. So Manoush's question: What if there was another metric of success for technology companies? What would that look like? Harris wants to turn this into a conversation for technologists everywhere. It's going to be a massive project. But he has some ideas. / Create a hierarchy of distractions. Harris uses the example of chat: What if, he says, every time you sent a chat, you had to assign it a level of importance? So "hey, I was thinking about this project that's due in two weeks and I wanted to tell you before I forgot" wasn't processed as an interruption, but "hey, I'm ordering lunch RIGHT now and I need to know what you want!" is. In his words: let it be "a conscious choice as opposed to an accidental or mindless interruption." Build new metrics of success. As it stands, tech companies measure their success by the amount of time people spend using their services. Harris says that's not the only option. He uses the example of Couchsurfing, a marketplace where people who had extra space could lend a couch to travelers who needed a place to crash. Back in 2007, they tried a system that rewarded the people who spent the least amount of time on their site. Harris explains: "If I was going to Paris and I was staying there for four days, they would estimate how many hours would happen in those four days between me and the person who hosts me in Paris. And then they would ask both people, 'How positive were those hours? Did you have a good time together?' So they're getting kind of a count of the number of positive hours. And then what they do is subtract all of the time that both people spent on Couchsurfing's website. They take that as a cost to people's lives. 'Cause having people search and send messages and look at profiles, they don't view that as a contribution that's positive to people's lives. And what you're left with is just these new net positive hours that would have never existed if Couchsurfing didn't exist." Increase public pressure on tech investors. If the people who invest in start-ups believe users are sick of notifications, they will rethink what they choose to fund. That, says Harris, is the key: Getting people to put their money behind those new metrics of success. Listen above for more. (Note to Self) As always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Want to help shape Note to Self's next big project? We need to know what's driving you absolutely nuts right now. Take our short survey here. We're going to get right to the point: No more sacrificing our precious vacation time to our phones! Earlier this year, tens of thousands of you took part in our Bored and Brilliant Project, a week of challenges that pushed us to rethink our relationship with our phones and jumpstart our creativity. Now that it's July, we've adapted the idea into a short, condensed bootcamp version with three very do-able, modifiable challenges for those of you on a beach (or stuck at the office wishing you were on a beach). If you took part, consider this a seasonal tune-up (ahem those of you who deleted Candy Crush Soda but kept Candy Crush). If you missed it the first time around, welcome to the club. If you heard about it in January and, ah, chickened out, take a few deep breaths and consider this our belated gift to you. This is not a digital detox. This is not an edict to lock your phone away in a drawer. This is not an ode to mindfulness. It is a way to apply what we know about constant notifications, neuroscience, and productivity to our lives. Right now. Listen above for the boot camp! And if you want to do the full week's worth of challenges, sign up here for a new one in your inbox every day:   If you're interested in seeing how much time you really spend on your phone, you can download an app that will run in the background of your phone, calculating how much time you spend on it. We recommend Moment, BreakFree, or Checky. We've got more information here. And for those of you who want all of the challenges at once, here's the full, extended series. The Case for Boredom What 95 Minutes of Phone Time a Day Does To Us Challenge 1: In Your Pocket Challenge 2: Photo Free Challenge 3: Delete That App Challenge 4: Fauxcation Challenge 5: Small Observation Challenge 6: Dream House The Winning Dream Houses The Results The Personal Stories    As always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Welcome to week two of our new segment "Question of Note," in which we take a listener's question — your question! — and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how.  A few weeks ago, we aired “There’s Something About Paper," about how reading on paper is different than reading on a screen. Since then, we've gotten lots of emails, hand-written letters(!) and questions about writing. Like this one: "How are we writing differently? If we know that people are only going to be skimming something because it’s appearing online, how are we writing? I think we still have to write with such a great degree of attention, because... you can’t skim write, right?" — Marisa Goudy, New Paltz, New York In answer to the question of whether the digital age has changed her process, novelist Margaret Atwood simply said, “Do chickens have beaks?” But there's plenty of (metaphorical) ink to be spilled on the subject of why writing has changed. To answer this question, we've decided to talk to a guy who wrote a pretty big deal book on the subject. Joshua Cohen's "Book of Numbers" has been heralded by The New York Times as "more impressive than all but a few novels published so far this decade."  And the whole thing is about the written word in the digital age.  In short, we found you a writer who wrote a book about a writer writing. Meta. (Note to Self) Read the book?  Post on our Facebook or send us a tweet! Want more suggestions for your summer reading list? Check out our Note to Self better beach reads here. As always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

This week, we're checking back in with two pioneers in space travel: super successful businesswoman Anousheh Ansari, the first woman space tourist, and longtime space-enthusiast Lina Borozdina, who holds one of the first tickets for one of the first sub-orbital commercial flights.  We're returning to their stories because commercial space travel is a high stakes proposition — one that has become even riskier and more expensive in the months since we originally spoke with them. Just two days after our emotional conference call last year, Sir Richard Branson's space travel company Virgin Galactic suffered a pretty huge setback. The SpaceShipTwo was doing a routine test flight when the aircraft dropped, falling back to Earth over the Mojave Desert and breaking into pieces. Only one pilot made it out alive. The NTSB report into exactly what happened is expected later this summer. Then, last week, Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 unmanned rocket loaded with supplies for the International Space Station exploded back down to Earth. Few doubt that there will be more failures and tragedies. In the meantime, the rest of us — these two women especially — have to evaluate how we feel about the costs of venturing into outer space for leisure travel. In this episode, hear them explain the powerful lure of space. And hear Anousheh explain the life-altering joy of seeing earth from above, tears of joy floating past the window. It's pretty powerful stuff.  Knowing what we know, would you do it? If you're in their camp... the big name space travel companies are: Virgin Galactic: You can still apply for a ticket. It'll cost you $250,000. Space Adventures: Eventually, they say customers will be able to go into sub-orbit, fly around the moon, and even visit the International Space Station. Blue Origin: Jeff Bezos's company isn't taking reservations yet, but they're planning on taking six or seven land-lubbing tourists up "past the internationally recognized edge of space" at a time. XCOR: The first set of tourists traveling with XCOR pay $100,000 to go 100+ kilometers up. Smaller ones popping up all the time, from those still in their Kickstarter days, to those presenting at the big SpaceCom in Houston this fall. Special thanks this week to producer Jackie Snow. Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.   Sign up for our newsletter here.

This week, we're debuting a new segment called Question of Note. Every other week, we'll take a listener's question -- your question! -- and find just the right the person to answer it. See them all here as we go along. Got a Question of Note you'd like answered? Email [email protected] with a voice memo. Here's how.  "On a recent weekend, I took a complete digital sabbatical, as in I locked my iPhone, iPad and MacBook in a drawer and completely disconnected. It was glorious.  I’m constantly torn between the speed and efficiency of digital tools and the quiet and relaxation of analog ones. So as a quiet person, how do you find quiet space to work and think in the digital era?" — James Bedell, New York James isn't the only one asking this question. We get dozens of emails from people who feel drained by constant pressure to socialize online, and estimates say one half to one third of the population leans toward introverted. So, we took it to introvert advocate extraordinaire Susan Cain, author of the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking" and founder of Quiet Revolution. "We live in a society that is telling everyone to be an extrovert," Cain says on this week's episode. "What that leads to is a colossal waste of energy, and talent, and ultimately, happiness." The digital version of our society is no exception. Listen above for Cain's advice on recharging your batteries, proverbial and otherwise. Here are three of her tips to feed your inner introvert: 1. Pick a number. If interacting with people on Facebook is important to you, do it. If networking matters for your job, do it. But put a cap on the amount of time you're going to spend on that network and stick to it.  2. No FOMO. There is too much information out there to process it all. This is a fact. So when you do set aside time for yourself, take it without guilt. In Cain's words: "It's basically setting boundaries and letting go of that fear of missing out on that stuff you're not going to do." 3. Explain to the extroverts among us. Sometimes, setting visible hard boundaries can help, even on a smaller scale than James' full-weekend detox. Put an appointment on your Outlook calendar for time to think. Wear headphones at your desk so coworkers don't interrupt you (<--old radio trick). Go on a Fauxcation for a few hours.  And you have to fight for it. (Note to Self)   What else would you tell James? How do you find quiet space in the world? Post on our Facebook or send us a tweet! And, as always, subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

When two people get married, the story can usually write itself: vows, a commitment, the promise of forever. January 15, 1954 (New York Daily News) And then for not quite half of those married couples: Divorce. It sets off another set of plot points we know all too well — anger, bitterness, and scarring-of-the-children. January 12, 1962 (ullstein bild / Contributor) But according to Michelle Crosby, CEO of a start-up called Wevorce, divorce doesn't have to end in tears, and many of Silicon Valley's big tech investors believe she has the algorithm to prove it.  Trained as a traditional family lawyer, Crosby couldn't shake the sense that her work — stoking emotional legal disputes between divorcing parties — was frustrating and out of date. Why, she wondered, were separated parents fighting over their children's haircuts through lawyers' offices? What was the point of haggling over a birthday party in legalese? Why did the process have to be so expensive? Hadn't the past 30 years of custody battles taught the profession anything? It was a very techie way of thinking… and it appealed to the techie world. Crosby pitched investors at the prestigious tech incubator Y Combinator in 2013 on a system that works by attracting couples to the service, collecting data on them through an initial survey, and using their results to classify each person as a particular divorce "archetype." There are 18 archetypes in all. (Courtesy of Wevorce) Then, the Wevorce team of counselors, family planners, and lawyers steps in. They use their research, data, and training to mediate at predictable moments of tension — a processing system kind of like TurboTax or H&R Block.  Crosby is adamant that Wevorce isn't about about filing divorce papers on Facebook (though that's also a thing) or downloading the latest custody planning apps. It's about using tech to upend a system. This is an argument, according to historian Stephanie Coontz, rooted in the idea that divorce is an institution as embedded in history and culture as Gwyneth Paltrow's latest tuxedo jumpsuit, and thus within society's power to change.  Plus, it should be said: divorce is a $30 billion market with very little competition.  So, on this week's show, we're testing out the premise: Can tech solve this very emotional crossroads for people? Do cold-hearted data and algorithms have the power to make the human break-up less painful...and maybe even help us better understand love and commitment? In this week's episode: Michelle Crosby, CEO and co-founder of Wevorce Stephanie Coontz, Author and Professor of History and Family Studies at Evergreen State University Andrew Olson, divorced father of 3 Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Update: It's live! Listen here or absolutely anywhere you get your podcasts (iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio,RSS feed). Then, head over to Radiolab for a related and also eye-opening episode with Manoush and Alex. THEN, send us ([email protected]) a voice memo with your thoughts about surveillance, safety, and the vulnerability at the heart of these questions. At this point, most Americans have acknowledged — and many have de facto accepted — that the government can access our personal data. And sometimes it takes a personal case to understand just how intimate that snooping can get.  What we haven't known — and couldn't quite tell from the 2013 Snowden leak — are the technological details of that surveillance. Nor have we understand how pervasive that technology had become, at even the most local of levels. Today, we understand quite a bit more thanks to one man in particular. His name is Daniel Rigmaiden, and while he's not exactly the knight-in-shining-armor type (he's a convicted felon who spent years building an almost-air-tight tax fraud scheme), he is the one who figured out how the government tracks us using our cell phones, despite their best efforts to keep it hidden: the Stingray. This week, we'll tell his story on our show. It's the first full telling since the drama went down. Daniel Rigmaiden served more than five years in jail for tax fraud. He spent of that time figuring how, exactly, the government figured out it was him. (Courtesy of Daniel Rigmaiden) On a partner episode with Radiolab, we're telling another, related story from a very different angle: the sky. We think these podcasts will change the way you look at your phone, whether you're an incredibly savvy tax fraudster or someone who just happens to notice when your phone mysteriously drops to the 2G network in the middle of a big city. Tell us what you think: on Facebook, on Twitter, or by email at [email protected], . There is very little Fidel Castro in this episode. (Note to Self) And if you burn through those, we'd also suggest listening to: This interview with celebrity cryptologist (yes, there is such a thing) Bruce Schneier, in which we learn that reading the fine print makes basically no difference whatsoever. This conversation between Bill Binney and Ladar Levison, two privacy and security whistleblowers who have a philosophy of paranoia we haven't been able to stop thinking about since. Our recent episode on an app called Crystal and the personalization trend behind it, which translates your personal data into a writing coach service. It is a pretty good illustration of exactly how much the Internet knows about you.  Or (and!) sign up for our newsletter here. Special thanks this week to Nate Wessler at the ACLU, Buzz Bruner at ESD America, and ace reporter Jennifer Valentino-DeVries. Here's a link to Daniel Rigmaiden's website.

Reading on a screen is different from reading a book, and your brain can tell. This week, we've got an update on one of our most popular episodes to date, about what all that skimming does to our ability to read deeply.  Dozens of you have written in with similar frustrations: you feel like you can't get through a novel, or even that excellent long article you meant to read a week ago. You've also commented on the difference between writing on paper and on a screen... and, yep, turns out there's a disconnect there as well: researchers at Princeton and UCLA say taking notes by hand is actually better for retaining information. In three studies, they found that students who took notes on laptops had more trouble answering conceptual questions than those who took notes longhand in a class. Laptop note takers, it turns out, tend to transcribe lectures rather than processing the facts and reframing them in their own words. It's another example of a phenomenon we see over and over again: If you feel like a device or any technology has messed with you, you might be onto something... way before any researcher can prove it.  In this episode: Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University Maria Popova, founder of Brainpickings.org Mike Rosenwald, Washington Post staff writer Laura Norén is an adjunct professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University (originally on The Takeaway) Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And sign up for our (admittedly screen-based) newsletter here.  

Welcome to the only site on the whole World Wide Web with the words: “They were friends forever and lived happily ever after." At least, the only one as far as a giant database of student papers, online texts, and a Google search can tell.  Full credit for originality goes to author Note to Self Producer Alex Goldmark, who spent the past few weeks on a quest to outsmart anti-plagiarism software Turnitin. Turnitin and programs like it are used in a third of high schools and half of colleges nationwide. A student submits their paper through the software, and then it's compared against an ever-growing database of writing (400 million submitted essays to date!), and evaluated with an "originality report." Teachers can see which sections set off warning bells, and a flashing red light goes off if big ideas clearly came from someone else. It's a pretty air-tight defense against copying and pasting culture, but young adults and their grade-wielding teachers have also learned a lesson of another sort in the process: Phrasing an idea in a completely new way? It's pretty rare, especially when the assignments haven't changed. Basically, plagiarism detection software confirms that sneaking suspicion in the back of your favorite English lit student's mind: You're working through ideas that have been thoroughly worked through, many times before. It has become just about impossible to have a truly new idea.  So, on this week's show, we'll admit, we're not the first to ask it: How important is originality, anyway?  In this episode: Sophie Oberfield, teacher at Stuyvesant High School Jason Chu, Education Director at Turnitin* Jack Howard, writing tutor and student at the University of Missouri There's a line of thought called "infinite monkey theorem," which says "Given an infinite length of time, a chimp punching at random on a typewriter would almost surely type out all of Shakespeare." (Wikimedia Commons) *An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Jason Chu's first name. The text has been corrected.  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And sign up for our delightful newsletter here.  

To introduce our new name — Note to Self — we've decided to bring you an episode that is about exactly that: the self. We found a service that takes the "personalization trend" — think uncanny Facebook ads, targeted email campaigns, and that pair of shoes you Googled once that follows you from sidebar to sidebar — up a notch. Crystal Knows claims that it can use such knowledge to improve that dreaded time suck: email. Here's how it works: The app creates a digital profile on you through data it scrapes about you from the web, then filters what it finds through an algorithm. That algorithm sorts you into one of 64 personality types. Then, for anyone signed up for the service, it will act like an email writing coach and therapist rolled into one, from big picture advice ("Be interesting!") to smaller-seeming details ("Say 'Hi' instead of 'Hello'), giving tips based on what it knows about you.  Some advice on how to email Manoush. (CrystalKnows.com) We were intrigued. To be quite honest, we were also a little freaked out about how much it can divine from public data alone. So, this week, we did some digging into how these kinds of profiles are made — listen above for that — and some testing on a few of our favorite public radio... personalities. In this episode of Note to Self: Drew D'Agostino, founder and CEO of Crystal Knows: Drew D'Agostino's Crystal profile. (CrystalKnows.com) Sara Watson, fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center: Sara M. Watson's Crystal profile. (CrystalKnows.com) Erin Curry, executive assistant at Sacco Carpet: Erin Curry's Crystal Knows profile. (CrystalKnows.com) Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Hello friends, Consider this a big cyber squeeze and thank you! After reading through all of your thoughtful suggestions and feedback, we’re ready to announce our new name. To recap: We have been on the hunt for a title that better aligns with our mission of exploring the human side of technology. We asked you to weigh in, and we got over 700 suggestions from listeners... including, but not limited to: "Radio Manoush" and "Summer Roadie" were among the contenders submitted by listeners. (Listeners)   As I went through all the suggestions, a theme emerged: we’re on a search for balance in the digital age. In no uncertain terms, you told me you listen to our show because you're interested in "purposeful use of technology." According to our survey, the shows that seem to have resonated with you include: Nine things we Learned about phones from 16-year-old Grace, A history of how technology has messed up our sleep through the ages.  And, of course, the Bored and Brilliant project, when we took a week to rethink our gadget habits and jumpstart our creativity. And so: We're renaming this podcast "Note to Self." Let me explain: It’s not only this podcast’s new name. It’s something I do every day, as I think about my life, my responsibilities, and the sorts of stories I want to cover for all of you. For example: ...for when things don't look perfect... (Manoush Zomorodi)   ...for when I'm being lazy... (Manoush Zomorodi)   ...for when I'm trying to  remember what I read...  (Manoush Zomorodi) This show is a place where we find solutions together, both high and low tech (see above!). We're not just talking literal notes. We're here to do more experiments, stories, and reminders about how we can live and think better in an era of information overload. Listen above for more about our new name. Soon you’ll be able to find us at notetoselfpodcast.org. If you're already a subscriber or a regular listener, you don't have to do anything at all -- you’ll just see a new logo and hear a new intro each week. We'll be updating all of our social media profiles, and you shouldn't have to do a thing. If you don't already, subscribe to our newsletter.   And in the spirit of note-writing, you can email us any time at [email protected]. Please do! If you’ve got a “note to self” you’d like to share that fits in with the show (digital freak outs! tough questions you need answered! things you've noticed that set you on edge!), record a voice memo and email it to us, or call from a landline and leave us a voicemail at 917-924-2964. We’d love to hear what you think. You could find yourself in an upcoming episode. For now, a big thank you for listening and for coming along on this ride. Yours, Manoush

Last fall, we ventured into a dark corner of the Internet where people bond over unhealthy behavior, trading tips on starving themselves. This is where sufferers of anorexia and bulimia share so-called "thinspiration" photos, framing eating disorders not as an illness, but as a lifestyle. This pro-eating disorder community has morphed and grown with the Internet, traveling from websites to Tumblrs to Pinterest. Joanna Kay, a 26-year-old who says she's "grown up" with these sites, tells us what they're like — and what makes them so hard to quit. We're re-airing this episode with an update from Joanna, who has since gotten married and started blogging under her real name at Middle Ground Musings. She's now in grad school training to become a mental health counselor. At the same time, she says, she has relapsed, and returned to intensive outpatient treatment program. Listen to the full episode for more. "I lost my voice for 12 years to this illness, and this is really the first time I'm actually getting to revive my voice and to talk back to my eating disorder, in a way."  — Joanna Kay In the months since we first aired this show, we've heard from many of you that it changed the way you think about your life and the Internet. If you need help in real life, there are people out there. Here are some resources we've collected (and let us know if you have more suggestions): National Eating Disorder Association. You can call them at1–800–931–2237 or chat with them online. National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Sharon Hodgson's recovery site, We Bite Back. 7 Cups offers trained active listeners who you can speak with anonymously. If you are in a crisis, there are trained volunteers waiting to counsel you at www.imalive.org. If you have an experience you'd like to share — whether it's about eating disorders or another online community we should know about or that you'd like to hear about on our podcast — please do get in touch.  Joanna and her new husband, Matt, on their wedding day. (Carol Macdonald)   Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

You pick up your phone to send an email. You see a notification for a text message. All of a sudden, you're on Instagram debating whether or not to like an old high school classmate's engagement picture, Pinterest-ing the photographer (aww, PUPPY!), and contemplating the ice cream options within range. An hour later, you realize you forgot to send your email. You pick up your phone again. Rinse, repeat. For most of us, it's normal. For some of us — including Cynan Clucas, whom we spoke with for this week's episode — it's a sign of adult onset ADHD, and it's a problem that's only exacerbated by tech. In this week's episode, we talk with Michael Pietrus, a psychologist who specializes in ADHD and the technological distractions all around us. We also hear from two digital marketing professionals — Lizz Pietrus (yes, related) and Clucas himself — debating the role that tech plays in their lives and how to master it. That's right: we talked with two different people who work in the digital marketing worlds, who are worried about the consequences of their attention-grabbing tactics. Give it a listen. See if you relate to either of them. And be in touch. Because now we're curious: Are there more of you ambivalent techies out there making tech that is just a little too addictive sometimes? How do you feel about it? What do you do when you feel knocked sideways by the very tools and content you create? Drop us a line! You might end up on a future episode of the show.  

This week, we bring you a story of video games and gender. Turns out, despite all of the angst, they can be be an inviting place for a very vulnerable and overlooked subset of young people to explore their gender identities.  Playing Normal We'll start in Woodstock, Illinois: a small, rural town most famous for its ordinariness. In 1992, Woodstock played the role of wholesome, unchanging hamlet as the backdrop in "Groundhog Day." Rachel grew up there. She never felt quite ordinary enough for Woodstock. She didn't want to wear dresses. She didn't want to play fairy princess. She was bullied and picked on. Elementary school and middle school were, to put it lightly, kind of a nightmare. Like countless solace-seeking children in countless ordinary towns, Rachel turned to some invisible friends. The difference, of course, was that her invisible friends really did exist — just far away, on the other side of a microphone. First came World of Warcraft, then League of Legends; she took up online games in which players see the same thing happening on screen and talk through headsets as they take down magical enemies. Just about every night throughout high school, Rachel would get online and play. She was pretty good at it — and she got even better. Eventually, she was invited to joined a team of guys from all over the English-speaking world.  At first it was a little weird having a girl on the team, Rachel says, but she was a good player, disciplined and hardworking. And after a while, her teammates saw her for who she was: a character on screen and a voice in the team voice chat. They actually forgot she was a girl at times, referring to her as “he”. That was just fine by Rachel — who was, by then, referring to herself as "Razur," a childhood nickname-turned-gaming-handle. "I’m like 'you know, it's OK guys if you want to call me 'he.' That's OK! You can absolutely do that,'" Rachel says in this week's show. One day, she decided to bring it up explicitly: "I’m like, 'alright, so, I was playing with the idea that maybe I was transgender because, uh, I don’t like girly things." It was cathartic — and surprising to Razur, because some of her teammates even admitted to questioning their own certainties about their respective genders. Here was a community willing to let her literally play with a new identity online.  Logging on to Another Self Cross-gender play is an accessible, low-barrier way to dip a toe in the waters of identity exploration. Not everyone, however, finds the gaming world quite so welcoming, a problem dramatically encapsulated in the "GamerGate" debates last fall, centered around the treatment of women and minorities in gaming culture. On this week's show, we asked Colleen Macklin, game designer and professor at Parsons School of Design, what this kind of controversy might mean for the Razurs of the gaming world, the people using games to figure out who they are. We also spoke with game designer and professor at New York University's Game Center Naomi Clark, someone who not only designs and studies games, but used them decades ago to explore and establish her own gender identity. You can listen to the full podcast above to hear what they have to say. And if you're on a gaming kick, listen to the rest of New Tech City's gamers and culture series here: "Video Games Meet Middle Age Emotions" "Varsity Video Gamers" Razur, at least, is feeling out her possibilities now. She writes: "I still feel unsure about whether or not I’d like to transition in the future but that’s OK! I’m really happy and comfortable being who I am right now. I want to work toward better representing women in video games, and I know I don’t need to be 'girly' to do that. I need to be the best at who I am and that path should lay itself."   Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

Note from the New Tech City team: Hello! As you'll hear above, we're renaming our show, and we want your help! OK, on with the regularly scheduled podcasting...  In 2014, only 30 percent of all Google employees were women. Break the numbers down farther, and only 21 percent of Google executives were female; in technical jobs, only 15 percent.   The numbers are even worse for African Americans and Hispanics — and not just at Google, but all over the tech industry. Diversity is a big gaping hole for the companies who claim to be solving the world's problems, and it affects user experience of their products for at least half of the planet's population. So we wanted to go beyond those pretty charts and mea culpas to find out: What are the people ingenious enough to optimize plate size in their company cafeterias actually doing to address the problem baked into our culture? Laszlo Bock, head of Google's People Operations (aka HR), and author of a new book called "Work Rules," gave us three examples of tactics they've have been trying to shrink the gender gap. We're very curious to see how well the new numbers bear them out.  1. Unconscious Bias Training.  Googlers have to go through a training about diversity that starts with optical illusions — two things that look the same, but measured separately, really aren't — and moves on to more concrete workplace scenarios. The idea is, everyone has errors in their judgment. It's not pointing fingers.  "If you go to somebody and talk about diversity or gender issues, the typical reaction is 'Well, I don't have a problem,' or 'Well, I just disagree.' And then there are a bunch of people in the middle who are like 'Oh my God diversity training? Do I really have to spend time on this?'" Bock says, "If you talk about 'we all have these biases,' it totally short circuits this."  2. “The nudge.”  Engineers at Google usually nominate themselves for promotion. Women — surprise, surprise — weren't nominating themselves as often as the men around them. So Alan Eustace, the person who was in charge of engineering at that point, decided to send a little email saying simply, "We've noticed that women aren't nominating themselves and, hey, you should be!" It worked, Bock says, and way more women got promotions. "We did that for about three six month periods and then Alan forgot to send the email. And the rates went back down," Bock says. Just call it nudging, not nagging. 3. Extend family leave. Women were dropping out of Google at a much higher rate than men were after having a kid. So, Google extended its family leave policy from three months to five months.  "This is one where we stumbled into it because it's the right thing to do, and we were fortunate to find the data supported us afterward," Bock says... and women who had been leaving at twice the rate of men before the change, started leaving at the same rate as men. The rate dropped by 50 percent." Another surprise? Paying more for maternity leave saves money. The cost of finding and replacing a good-to-average employee is much, much higher than two extra months of leave for a new parent, Bock says. Google is, of course, the kind of company that can afford to run tests on happiness at the office. So we want to know: For those of you who work with fewer free snacks, what do you think needs to happen to solve gender issues at the office? Let us know in the comments below.  Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

Can wearable technology solve a problem technology created? Apple just had the best quarter yet — not just for Apple, but for any company ever. Sales of the iPhone 6 topped all expectations. A huge chunk of the world is walking around with a smartphone at the ready.  And, as the company knows, a lot of those people are somewhat ambivalent about being that connected all the time. As David Pierce at Wired magazine writes: "It came down to this: Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us, [Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan] Ive, [Vice President of Technology Kevin] Lynch, [Creative Director Alan] Dye, and everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz—the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications." The world's biggest smartphone makers were fed up with their own smartphones. Kind of seems like they need a little Bored and Brilliant, right? 'We’re so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now,” Lynch says. 'People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much.” They’ve glared down their noses at those who bury themselves in their phones at the dinner table and then absentmindedly thrust hands into their own pockets at every ding or buzz." So the story goes, they designed a device to help make that dinging and buzzing less intrusive: A watch that, counter-intuitive as it may seem, is meant to help wearers check their phones less frequently. This Watch. On our show this week, we talk with the New York Times' Farhad Manjoo — a self-described addict —  about his first few weeks with the Apple Watch, and whether more technology can solve dilemmas created by the devices we already have. "In a weird way, having an 'everything's OK!' alarm on your wrist... it's comforting," Manjoo says.  For the most part, he's sold. But will wearable tech solve the underlying issues of technology and distraction? Perhaps not. Listen to this week's New Tech City for more. (New Tech City)   Our listeners are also skeptical. Seventy-seven percent of you told us you do not believe that the Apple Watch could make technology less intrusive in our daily lives. Words that came up frequently in your responses included "notifications," "interruptions," "convenience," "addiction," "escape," "Tweets," and "wrist." (New Tech City/Survey Monkey)   Of course, we'll be here watching (Watch-ing?). Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

Special thanks this week to The Sporkful's Dan Pashman and Anne Noyes Saini. Check out their version of events here. This is a show where we look at how technology is changing our lives, right? Well, on this week’s episode: please, technology... feed us. IBM's Watson computing system beat two human Jeopardy champions in 2011, introducing the concept of "cognitive computing" to the game show watching masses. Since then, Watson has grown thousands of times smarter, and much, much smaller. IBM has also grown increasingly ambitious (see: some big news in the New York Times) — and the company is now on a PR mission to make this giant computer brain palatable to you and me. Literally. So-called "Chef Watson" now lives as a cookbook and a cooking app meant to get humans thinking creatively about cooking. Developers built a system fluent in food chemistry, "hedonic psychophysics" (or "what we think tastes good"), and international cooking styles, then uploaded 9,000 recipes from the archives of Bon Appetit. They taught Watson to incorporate human feedback into its process, and worked with chefs from the International Culinary Institute to turn it into a viable product with a pretty strange set of recipes to its name.  Basically, Watson takes everything scientists know about flavor and taste, and turns that knowledge into a recipe generator beyond the scope of human creativity. It's built to consider the maximum number of possibilities available at a given time — and on this week's show, Manoush and the Sporkful's Dan Pashman test it out in her kitchen. Even if you're the type who prefers to order in (like, er, someone we know), Watson's kitchen adventures make for a pretty good illustration of what can happen when we let a giant computer brain think for us. Listen to the results in the podcast above. And if you're as intrigued by the concept of cooked avocado as they were, well, here's Watson's advice: Chef Watson's Spicy Avocado Brussels Sprouts Also Called: "Irish Jalapeno Pepper Ginger Avocado Banana Sauté, Minus the Banana" Adapted by Manoush Zomorodi and Dan Pashman Ingredients: 1 cup lima beans 3 cups Brussels sprouts, cut in half Jalapeno, chopped (to taste) 1 avocado, quartered 1 tablespoon candied ginger 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 tablespoon salt, plus more to taste Crushed red pepper (to taste) Cheese mix (to taste) Directions: Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add Brussels sprouts and avocado and season with salt. Cook for 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add ginger, jalapeno pepper, and garlic. Cook until brown, stirring occasionally. Stir in lima beans and red pepper. Remove Brussels sprouts from the pan. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. Prepare ingredients ahead of time. (Dan Pashman/The Sporkful) Cook avocadoes into avocado mush. (Dan Pashman/The Sporkful)    Avocado mush tastes a lot better than it sounds. (Dan Pashman/The Sporkful)     It won't look mushy on the finished product. (Dan Pashman/The Sporkful)   This didn't last long. (Anne Noyes Saini/The Sporkful)   Subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

From the mouths of babes: "You should only put limits on the amount of useless stuff you do on the Internet. If you're doing something useful... keep going by all means. If you want to spend your time on Instagram, go outside." — Jake Lang, 12-year-old student at Quest to Learn School in New York We're at the end of our education and technology series, and we've talked with a whole lot of people: parents, special needs counselors, teachers, privacy advocates, and even an app maker.  By now, we know a few things about kids and tech. For one, screen time is on the rise. Kids aged 5 to 16 spend an average of six and a half hours in front of a screen per day. That is a huge jump from 20 years ago when the average was three hours. We know 95 percent of teenagers use the Internet, and we know that as of summer 2014, 78 percent of teens have cell phones, and half of them are smartphones. We know suburban kids are most likely to have computers and phones. And we know even the most income-strapped families are starting to rely on mobile devices. But we still don't know how this massive change affects our kids' futures. In fact, without yet-to-be-invented-crystal-ball-technology, we can't.   So what do we do with all of the uncertainty? The best answer we could come up with: Actually talk to kids.  This week, that's exactly what we did. We share some takeaways from our New Tech City classroom survey with a guide to parenting, teaching, and anyone who's going to come in contact with inhabitants of that new digital world. Here are the big ones: 1. Don't be alarmist. Cyberbullying and sexting and all of that are real, but not universal, and it's impossible to gauge the scope of the problems without doing some real, open-minded, first-person research. That's what we believe in. That, and having their backs, technologically or otherwise.  2. Kids and adults are in a new partnership. Embrace it. Gone are the days of authoritarian "Father Knows Best." Setting rules on Facebook or curtailing YikYak or banning Instagram can work, but chances are, the ones actually using those platforms will be able to get around it if they want to.  But you also can’t think “oh, well they’re digital natives,” they’ll figure it out. The mere presence of a smartphone or laptop doesn't mean a kid knows how to research, write, or communicate, or protect themselves on it. Don't assume. 3. Remember, kids are seeing a different world than you did at this age. This has surfaced in every story in our series (Braille! Data! Blended learning!). So it's not just fun to talk to kids about their phones and their games, it's important. We can't decide what's best for them without their input.   Dozens of listeners have opened the conversation, and hey, you can too. Let us know how it goes! And finally, in case you missed it:  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This story is part of New Tech City's series on education and technology. Do you remember how many gold stars you got in second grade? Can you recall how many times you were sent to the principal's office, how many times you handed in your homework late, how many days passed between getting called out for talking in class?  Today, one out of every two U.S. schools has a teacher tracking that kind of data with one extremely popular app, ClassDojo, the company says. It's got points, demerits, and cute avatars at least one seven-year-old we know can't get enough of: Manoush's son Kai had a good day, according to ClassDojo. (Screenshot/Manoush Zomorodi) It's really, really popular — so popular that a late 2014 article by Natasha Singer in the New York Times took a whole lot of people aback: She reported that school districts were facing data breaches, and privacy policies were all over the place. The article specifically quoted critics of ClassDojo who had problems with the carrot-and stick approach to digital discipline and the idea of a behavior database being created without parental permission. Then, there were the unknowns: What happens when future employers find out little Johnny was flagged as a difficult kid? How might that sort of digital-paper-trail change the college application process? As a free service, what were the app developers receiving in return? ClassDojo has since been thrust to the front of a conversation about student data and privacy stretching far beyond their little monster avatars. They've rewritten their privacy policies, started deleting data after a year passes, and even created a special "privacy center" for parents. Is it enough? And what about the thousands of other apps in our kids' classrooms, measuring and documenting everything from their heart rate during gym class to academic performance to what they choose to eat for lunch? On this week's episode, Sam Chaudhary, co-founder of ClassDojo, tells us flatly "we are not a data company." He explains how he plans to grow a tech company without harnessing user data. We also hear from Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, and a community of parents and teachers about the obligations — legal and otherwise — techies have to today's kids.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

This story is part of New Tech City's series on education and technology. Today's show has a lot to do with audio and sound, so we encourage you to listen to the full episode! Hear it in the player above and anywhere you get your podcasts (iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or RSS feed). The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired has been stocked with all kinds of gadgets: singing calculators, talking typewriters, even video games that you navigate using only sound. Most are specialized and expensive — the school can afford them, but a lot of families can’t. There is one piece of tech, however, that almost every student has, and, according to 14-year-old student Demetria Ober, absolutely every student wants. It’s a status symbol, it’s a social media machine, it’s... yes, you know exactly what it is: the iPhone. On this week's New Tech City, reporter Ryan Kailath introduces us to Demetria, and poses the question gaining importance in both her life and broader society: Are iPads and iPhones rendering Braille obsolete? And if so, should advocates for the visually impaired be worried? Demetria, who started losing her vision at an older age, has had a tough time with Braille class — it's tied with algebra for her least favorite. Fluent Braille readers usually start around the age of 3 or 4, and catching up is an involved, often somewhat tedious process. So she prefers to read by enlarging the print or turning up the contrast on a screen. She can still see a little out of the corner of her eye. For the totally blind kids, smartphones will read text out loud. No raised dots involved.  They're reading through their ears — a skill unto itself. Here's what it's like to read this post through Apple's VoiceOver product: How fast can you go?  Starting slow: A "standard" rate for beginners: Picking up a little speed: This voice is named "Alex." iOS can use multiple voices, languages, and accents. But once someone gets the hang of it, they can fly at rate 75.... The faster the setting, the quicker the "reader." That said, there's at least one skill set advocates worry kids will lose with this method: spelling. "If you rely too much on technology instead of braille, then you get people who are functionally illiterate," says Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. "I have personally seen people with advanced degrees that are very bad at spelling, punctuation, structuring proper grammatical syntax... simply because they've never really read anything. They've never had to put their hands on words and sentences and find out how they’re spelled and constructed." Not everyone agrees. We've got all the sides — and more from the students — on our show this week (click "play "in the media player above). And you can test the accessibility options using your own Apple products... To set up VoiceOver on an iOS phone, go to "General" --> "Accessibility" --> "VoiceOver" (New Tech City) Other apps mentioned in this episode: LookTel Money Identifier Recognizes currency and speaks the denomination, to help people recognize bills.  KNFB Reader App Reads text from a digital photograph. Tap Tap See Photographs objects and identifies them out loud for the user.

This story is part of New Tech City's series on education and technology. A challenge for you: Ask a 4-year-old about their day in school. Ask what they did, who they played with, what they learned. When you're done with your little interview, see what you've learned — and whether you have any idea why they were doing what they were doing.  Quick case in point: Most parents are sending their kids into classrooms that function radically differently from the ones they attended themselves, and many of you have told us you're overwhelmed. So, to that end, we brought Anya Kamenetz, NPR’s lead education blogger and author of "The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing — But You Don’t Have to Be," and Adriene Hill, senior reporter for Marketplace’s LearningCurve project on education and technology, together to tell us what, exactly, happens in the schools of our 21st century children — and they gave us some good questions designed to cut through the buzzwords popping up everywhere: Want an old-fashioned paper print out? We've got one for you here. If your school says...  "We're raising money so we can put a tablet in the hands of every kid." What training and development resources are you providing to teachers so they can use the devices effectively? What percentage of the money you're raising will go toward evaluating the outcomes of the new systems? Where are you getting the curriculum?  What do we know about how successful this curriculum has been in the past? Who's reading the privacy policies on the apps my kids will be using? What percentage of the money you're raising will go toward evaluating the outcomes of the new systems? "We’re moving toward a blended learning model." Walk me through what my kid’s day will look like. How will expectations of my child change? How will expectations of me as a parent change? How will I be able to know what’s going on? How will you use information collected outside of the classroom? "We want to experiment with a flipped classroom." How are you going to use your in class time if you use video lectures as homework? What are you going to assign out of class?  What software and/or connectivity do I need at home to make sure my kids can complete assignments? "We think games are the way forward. We’re going to be using lots of games." What kind of games? What’s the actual engagement for kids?  What concepts are the games trying to evoke? What are the higher-order skills involved (memorization, delivering content, higher order skills)? What if my kid doesn't like games? "We’re partnering with Google to get coding into our schools so kids can make, and not just use, tech." Which teachers will be working on this? What’s their background? Why are they interested? Why is this right for my kid and this school? What will coding classes do in terms of critical thinking skills that, say, a cooking class wouldn't? If you want a vocabulary lesson to get started, we've made a glossary of useful ed tech terms. Let us know if you have more suggestions on Twitter or Facebook. Subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

This story is part of New Tech City's series on education and technology. In this episode of our podcast: We kick off a month of podcasts on kids and technology! Exciting! We talk with listener Dierdre Shetler, a middle school tech teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. Hear how she approaches technology with more than 800 kids in a lower-income, immigrant-heavy district. ...and... best for last... We've launched a little classroom activity for schools around the country. We're pretty thrilled about it. If you're a teacher, join us! If you know any teachers, pass it along! Actually, if you know anyone with a flock of kids on hand, send it their way!  Resources we mention (and a few more we just like): Here's the lesson plan and survey for teachers we mention in the podcast.  Researcher and author danah boyd writes about teenagers and technology. We've talked with her before. The ISTE — formerly known as NETS — standards are a standardized curriculum for teaching tech skills. Common Sense Media has media literacy materials for students of all ages. A YouTube video on Internet safety for the younger (K-3) set. The "To This Day" project on cyberbullying. Join Our Conversation We're going to be talking about kids, education and technology for the next few weeks of the podcast. Do you have specific questions? Thoughts? Comment below, or send them our way with a voice memo at newtechcity[at]wnyc[dot]org. And don't forget to pass our classroom activity onto the teachers in your life! Post it on Facebook and tag a few parents, Little League coaches, or Girl Scout troop leaders, won't you? Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  A look at 12-year-old Ayelle's phone. You'll meet her over the next few weeks. (Ariana Tobin/New Tech City)

Reading this right now?  Congratulations. You're winning. Yes, all of the usual corporate and government entities know you're here. Google remembers everything you've ever searched, BuzzFeed knows how you've scored on all their quizzes, and your cell phone provider knows who you talk to and who you sleep with. Terms of Service agreements are an exercise in futility, encrypted email often takes more trouble than it's worth, and yeah, sure, go ahead and give Facebook a fake name, but don't think you're fooling anyone. Companies are collecting your data from just about everywhere, storing it through time unknown, and using it however they want. Oh, and that's where the FBI-and-friends find it. But Bruce Schneier, security technologist, cryptographer, and author of a new book called “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World,” says the fact that you've taken the time to read this far means you've got the one reliable protection available to us in year 2015: awareness. "A lot of this happens because we’re not paying attention," Schneier says on New Tech City. "If we understand what’s happening, we’ll see it and we’ll learn to object, to fight, to talk about it. Just the act of seeing the surveillance and pointing it out to others can help." Schneier named his book after David and Goliath. He sees the size of the problem.  “It’s time to think about these things. Whether it’s OK. Whether it should be allowed. What are the limits of persuasion and manipulation?” Without further ado, that's what we're here for. Here are things to think about every time you are in front of a piece of technology: It’s not just your digital life that’s being tracked. Signed up for health insurance over the phone? Your data is out there, and people are using it. Gave a store clerk your address at the check-out counter? That's in your data dossier too. Boarded a subway?  "[That's] probably tied to your credit card," Schneier says. "So there’s a record of when you enter the subways, what day, what time, what station. If you want to use a metro card, this is what you have to do. Now, you could put cash into a machine and buy an anonymous card. But that’s going to be harder and more annoying. For some systems, you can’t even do that." And your digital life? Um, yes, and all of it. You know the flashlight app on your phone? "Even something [that] innocuous... would collect location data and sell that to advertisers." Mind the metadata. We interact with hundreds of computers every day, and all of them produce metadata. Even if the meat of your text messages isn't being broadcast somewhere, interested parties can absolutely tell where, when, and to whom they were sent.  Everything you do online gets tracked, not just what you actually post or buy. Facebook saves the posts you write, delete and don’t post. Amazon notes where you stopped reading a book. Innovations in surveillance come from really good marketing departments (a.k.a. "follow the money"). Companies make money off advertising online... which makes surveillance the business model of the Internet. And the marketing industry is eager to capitalize on the very, very effective model of "personalized ads." "Experiments have been done where researchers took a picture of your face and morphed it with another face, and turned it into a new face that you don’t recognize. It looks like you but you don’t realize it.... Your face is out there. Facebook has a picture of you they could morph it with another face to be a third face, and you’re more susceptible to that advertising [because it looks like you]. It’s manipulative, but is that OK? There’s no law against it." Government tracking piggybacks off of corporate tracking. Most of the data collected on us can be requested by the government. "You'll remember the fact that we're collecting cell phone metadata on every American. That was not the NSA… that was an FBI order to Verizon to turn data over to the NSA." Most of the data collected on you isn't used by the government. The issue is that it could be. "We’re not at the point where there’s wholesale surveillance against speech and organization, like there is in a country like China... But it will be used for people on the fringes of society. It is used against Muslim-Americans. It is used against black Americans. It is used in the drug war. It is used in other areas of crime... I worry about crises. If the data exists, it begs to be used." No one wants you to read the fine print. Your iPhone comes with a 45-or-so page Terms of Service agreement in part because they don't actually want you to read them. "They’re designed to be long, they’re designed to be impenetrable… they can change at any moment without our knowledge or consent. The odds are really stacked against us here. This isn’t really an area where we can be an informed consumer." Opting out can't be the answer. The social problems at stake here can't be fixed by deleting your Facebook account, because, well, not enough people want to do that. And Schneier says there has to be a place for Facebook (or whatever the teenagers are using these days) in our lives. "Yes, you can choose to opt out. You could not use Facebook, you could not use Google, you could live in a tree and eat nuts and make your own power. But it’s really not the way we live. It’s hard for me to recommend that we unplug that way. It is so drastic. It is an answer. It can’t be the answer. If that’s the best answer we've got we’re not doing that." The NSA's address is 9800 Savage Rd., Columbia Maryland. Just in case you need a fake to give to a store clerk. Subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

Watching TV — especially when it isn’t, strictly speaking, on TV — has gotten complicated. It’s not just “should I be staring at a screen for this many hours of the day?” or "I am having 'House of Cards' nightmares." It’s that there are so many choices, content-related and otherwise. Sometimes it’s hard to sort through them.  We want to help you watch online TV better: better shows to watch, better ways to watch, and, to offer up a little guidance on the thorny questions of what to pay for. Hopefully, this week's podcast lightens the conscience of your inner couch potato.  Our conversation with Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, the creators of "High Maintenance," points the way. They've chosen to put their show exclusively online in a bargain that bestows artistic freedom but leaves them kinda broke. We also talk to our friend, Arwa Gunja, otherwise known as "The Streamstress."   One of the questions that came up: Is it OK to share log-in information with people outside of your household?If you're like 46 percent of HBO Go/Netflix/Hulu Plus/WatchESPN/Amazon Prime Instant Video watchers, you have too. The CEO of HBO Go may or may not care. There's a shaky, complicated, really, really big debate out there.  After we wrapped the taping of our show craving even more certainty, we posed the question to a whole bunch of people who think about the bright lines of acceptable behavior — a priest, an imam, a Supreme Court justice (she very politely declined), and more... Matt Kilmer, Music Coordinator and composer for ‘Louie’: "...If you live with two roommates, it's fine to have one account between you all, and likewise with family living under one roof. However, if you are sharing a password with your old best friend from high school who lives on the opposite coast as you, then that's crossing the line IMO...$7.99/mo isn't breaking the bank for anyone who owns a device capable of streaming from any of these services." Marci Auld Glass, pastor of Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho: "I personally share my Netflix and HBO account with my son who is at college. If any other family asked me, I would likely share with them too. I haven’t had friends ask me, but I would be less likely to do that, I think... I am not sure I have an objection to sharing digital media. I purchase my digital music and video, and am happy to do so. I understand why companies would put limits on how many “devices” can be used by one account. They need to make money."  Mitra Kaboli, senior producer of 'The Heart': "For the last few years, honestly more than I can remember, I've been using an old lover of mine's Netflix account... Ethically, I have no problem with this. It's such a small sum of money and I feel like Netflix acknowledges that accounts are shared so I don't feel any moral qualms. The larger issue was if he got a new credit card, so I could no longer continue my 'Orange is the New Black' binge... Sometimes I got paranoid that these were passive aggressive messages aimed at me. Although, I'm certain they are not. He shared that account with seven or so people." Mustafa Umar, Director of Education and Outreach at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, California: "Sharing a password to copyrighted material is a gray area because it violates the intellectual property and copyright laws which you agreed to in the terms of service when signing up for the service. However, at the same time, it is not always directly harming anyone since that property is not transferred from one owner to the next. Given this circumstance, it comes down to the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. I would only share a password if the person wanted to view the movie with the intention of buying it or renting it, since there would be potential benefit for the copyright holder."  We're collecting more. What do you think? Where do you draw your moral lines in the digital sand? Subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, or via RSS feed. 

Last week, we gave you some numbers. But numbers don't tell the whole story — or, in fact, any of your 19,100 stories.By asking you to put some thought into the ways you use your phones, we stumbled upon a fact that is, perhaps, obvious: No two phones (or phone users) are alike. Turns out, teenagers in Florida get kind of excited when you ask them to turn their cameras off for the day. Slovakians over 35 aren't smartphone crazy, but the younger set? At least one Bratislavan says she's struggling. And so on. We were fascinated, and we were surprised.To learn more, Manoush made some phone (well, Skype) calls. Listen in the audio player above, or anywhere you like to listen to podcasts (iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or RSS feed).    

We made it through a week of Bored and Brilliant challenges. We've struggled through withdrawal and reveled in release. We've learned about ourselves and our reflexes. And here, we crunch some numbers and start to figure out what we learned.  After this project, it's pretty clear: A subset of our society craves better harmony with technology. Unless we rethink how we make tech and how we use it, this subset will grow. We have pressure on tech companies into building apps and devices that fit into our lives, rather than taking them over. On today's New Tech City, we've called in the experts to talk about why over 18,000 people signed up for a project designed to rediscover quiet, reflective time undisturbed by the constant flash of gadgets. Manoush presented our findings (see below for more) to Malia Mason, a cognitive psychologist and Associate Professor at Columbia University, and Golden Krishna, a user experience designer with Samsung and Zappos on his resume, and author of "The Best Interface is No Interface." We gave them the data from our partner apps (Moment and BreakFree), your survey responses, and played them some audio testimonials from you. Listen to the podcast for more, of course, but here are some of our most intriguing findings: A general note that these are all, of course, correlations and not necessarily causation – we don’t know what motivated each individual person’s stats, whether it was the Bored and Brilliant challenges, app reminders or something else. Total stats: The average decrease was 6 fewer minutes of phone use each day down from our baseline of two hours. The average decrease in phone checking was 1 fewer pickup per day. (See chart here). People felt like they made improvements: Over 90% of people who filled out our post-challenge survey felt they had cut down on their phone use, either "somewhat" or "a lot."  Confidence went up: People also felt more certain that they could change their phone habits. Nothing to sniff at here! Ninety percent of our post-challenge survey respondents felt "somewhat" or "very" confident that they could change, compared to 80 percent in a survey before the challenge week. Gamers made the biggest strides: People who said gaming was one of the top three activities they did on their phones managed to drop the most minutes. They cut down 20 minutes every day. Possibly because of the "Delete That App" challenge. Parents made big changes: Before the challenge week, parents logged more phone time on average than participants who do not have children. During challenge week, however, parents dropped more minutes compared to non-parents (10 fewer minutes for parents compared to 4 for non-parents). The challenge most people said they plan to continue is keeping their phones in their pocket (88%). People also thought “In Your Pocket” was the most useful challenge (45%). The second most popular challenge respondents plan to continue (50%) was "Delete That App" (or, presumably, keeping that app deleted). Most people said that this was the most difficult challenge (32%).  This isn't over. We're brainstorming lots of Bored and Brilliant next steps, so please do stay tuned. And the beauty of this? Challenge week can happen any time. Keep talking about your personal dilemmas, your smartphone tips, and your somehow-riveting boredom reads on our newly created Bored and Brilliant-specific Facebook group.  And for now, hit play on the audio above and dive in.  To hear New Tech City every week, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

Welcome to the sixth and final day of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, Challenge 3, Challenge 4, and Challenge 5.  You've spent the week picking up your phone purposefully. You've kept it in your pocket, you've abstained from photo-taking, you've considered life beyond the screen. To take our project to its logical — and admittedly weird — conclusion, boredom artist Nina Katchadourian has assigned us a group project. We want you to get really bored, and then make something creative, introspective, and personal. Your instructions today are multi-part:  Put away your phone. Put a generous pot of water on the stove and watch it come to a boil.  If you don't have a stove or a pot, find a small piece of paper and write "1,0,1,0" as small as you can until it’s full. Either way, you should get bored. Keep it up as long as it takes to daydream.  Next, take out your wallet and empty it of all its contents. Use them to construct your dream house. It could be the place you wish you lived in all the time or a getaway. Take as long as you need to build. Give your house a descriptive name. When you're finished — and only when you're finished — go get your phone. Take a picture of the house. (Careful with your credit card numbers.) Email your picture to [email protected], and tell us about your creation (put its name and location in the subject line, and tell us why it's your dream house in the body).  Then, high five a friend. Check out the submissions here. Share your favorites. They'll be uploaded over the weekend.

Welcome to day five of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, Challenge 3, and Challenge 4.  Social networks help us stay connected. We love social media. But how often do we swipe past strangers' selfies, baby pictures, and career updates in lieu of the actual humans around us?   For our second-to-last challenge (yes, there's a weekend project coming!), we want you to flex the creative muscles we've been freeing up all week. The first step is noticing.  Your instructions: Today, go somewhere public. It could be a park, a mall, the gas station, the hallway at work or school. You pick. Once you get there, hang out. Watch people, or objects, or anything that strikes you. Try not to be (too) creepy. Imagine what a single person is thinking, or zoom in on an uninventable detail. Just make one small observation you might have missed if your nose were glued to a screen. If you feel inclined, and we hope you do, record that detail using a voice memo app on your phone (yes, yes, we know, but we think this is worth a pick-up). Two good ones are the built in voice memo app for iPhone or an Android one called Easy Voice Recorder. Then, email it to us at [email protected]. We always love to hear from you. We'll add it to our observation playlist below, and we might use it in an upcoming show.  Or you can tell us about your observation in the comments below. What'd ya see? How'd it feel?  Today's hashtag is #NTCNotice.  

Hello! Welcome to day three of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge 1, Challenge 2, and Challenge 3.    Today, you’re getting a break from email, texting, social media, or whatever means of digital communication interrupts you all day long. It's a fauxcation (or "fake-cation" if you prefer). Your instructions: Set an email auto-reply just as you would if you were out for a real vacation, send an "I'll be back later" text out on group chat, or put up an away message status on social media. Come up with your own. Or if you are feeling like a Bored and Brilliant Booster, use one of these badges we made for you. Whatever it'll take to give you peace of mind while you focus. Click through to download! (New Tech City) Worried about being away from work? On our podcast today, that's exactly what we take on: the role of boredom, downtime, and unplugging at the office. Matthew Krentz is a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Krentz and his company let the Harvard Business School take a small team of consultants to use as time management guinea pigs. They discovered that perpetual connectivity was good in the short term — not so much in the long term. Studies say we actually perform better when we have a chance to think.  Click through to download! (New Tech City)   Look, we're in media. We get it. Maybe there’s no way your boss will let you be off the grid for an hour today, and maybe not until the bigger, broader system changes. But perhaps you can make an hour for yourself tonight? That's when more of you told us you want to reclaim time from your phone anyway.  When you check back in, we'd love to hear how it went. Scroll through our gallery of away messages below, and let us know what you decided to go with! Our hashtag for the day is #NTCFauxcation.

Hello! Welcome to day three of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom, Challenge Number 1: Keep your phone in your pocket, and Challenge Number 2: Photo Free Day. Flurry Analytics defines a “mobile addict” as someone who launches apps more than 60 times a day.  The average consumer launches apps 10 times a day, so to qualify as having an app dependency, you have to be pretty app crazy. And the people most likely to be addicted? According to Flurry, teens, college students (skewing female) and middle-aged parents. Even if you aren’t at 60 times a day, just about everyone has that one app — that one damn app — that steals away too much time.  Your instructions for today: delete it. Delete that app. Think about which app you use too much, one that is the bad kind of phone time. You pick what that means. Delete said time-wasting, bad habit app. Uninstall it. This will be difficult, because app designers are pretty smart. And they are pretty good at building things we want to just keep on using, over and over and over. In this episode, Manoush breaks her cycle. She deletes the seriously addictive game Two Dots. It wasn't easy and it followed a pretty, er, dramatic confrontation with the game designer. It might be cathartic for you.  If you need a little push to take the plunge, Dr. Zach Hambrick, professor of cognitive psychology at Michigan State University, says cell phone games do just about... nothing for your brain. You don't get better at anything but playing the game, he says. And only that game. "If you play Ms. PacMan a lot, you’ll get better at Mr. PacMan, and video games where you have to move through a maze. But you won’t get better at Space Invaders or some real task like filling out your tax forms," Hambrick said. Listen for more. And seriously... delete that app. Today's hashtag is: #NTCDelete. 

Hello! Welcome to day two of our Bored and Brilliant challenge! If you're here for the first time, you'll want to catch up on The Case for Boredom and then challenge number one: Keep your phone in your pocket. Your instructions: See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures today. Not of your lunch, not of your children, not of your cubicle mate, not of the beautiful sunset. No picture messages. No cat pics.  We want you to start actually seeing that phone-free world around you. A recent study found Americans take more than 10 billion photos every month, and mostly on our phones. The thing is, each time we snap a quick pic of something, it could be harming our memory of it. This podcast is about psychology, creativity, and perception.    Meet the man who inspired it here:   "They’re not even looking at the painting sometimes, they’re scrolling; they’re just scrolling away, looking at their phones... They’ll say I was checking and you can tell when they’re taking photos." — Greg Colon, security guard at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City

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. While you're boarding the train, walking down the sidewalk, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car, we're asking you to look at your phone only when you have reached your destination. You can do it. And when you do pick up your phone today: Here are five basic phone hygiene tips to make that screen time really count. They come from the mind of Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of "The Distraction Addiction." To hear more, listen to our challenge one podcast above. Phone Freedom 101   1. Remember to breathe "When we check our email, wait for messages to load, we unconsciously hold our breath. And this matters because... holding your breath is something you do in moments of anxiety." 2. Turn off non-vital notifications "I often think smartphones behave like children. When you first get them, you open them up with all their defaults, they’re set to alert you to absolutely everything. New message, pop up window. Text message, it comes up immediately... In this respect, smartphones behave like children. When they want your attention, they want it right now." 3. Make sure you do get the notifications that matter to you Knowing that you'll hear about a sick kid or cancelled flight lets you rest easy about everything else. "In an emergency, in the zombie apocalypse, who do you want to be able to reach?" Pang says. "Those people, I’ve given one ring tone. In my case it’s Derek and the Dominos’ "Layla." The whole rest of the world gets Brian Eno’s "Ambient Music for Airports." 4. Fight "phantom phone syndrome:" Practice not answering messages right away "We become so accustomed to extending our senses for the next call or next tweet, we begin to misinterpret other things. If [you're] a medical resident you tend to have this an awful lot — if you’re on call and you miss your pager going off or you miss your phone, that’s a really, really bad thing, because that means someone’s in the ER and not getting your attention...  It is a small but subtle way in which your relationship between you and your phone has tipped in the phone’s favor."  For everyone else, you can get to that text later. 5. Carry your phone in a bag, rather than in your pocket or in your hand (this one's extra credit!)  "Not carrying your phone right against your body but carrying it in your bag can help ease some of that sense that you always need... to have a little of your attention turned toward your phone." Got more? Use the hashtags #BAB and #NTCPocket (yes, it's kosher) to tell us about it, or add a comment below. To make sure you hear every challenge, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

Drumroll, please: It's time to release some baseline Bored and Brilliant data. (If you missed our kickoff episode, listen to The Case for Boredom here). To contextualize our numbers on this week's podcast, we've got Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist and human development psychologist at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. They explain how our findings compare to the broader scientific research landscape.  Here's a hint at what we hear in the podcast: Baseline stats For the Bored and Brilliant participants using our partner Moment and BreakFree apps — and there are now more than 4,600 of you — these are the averages so far: Average minutes per day: between 90 to 100 Average screen unlocks per day: between 40 to 50 times That means you’re checking your phone about 2 to 3 times every waking hour. For comparison, the average non-Bored and Brilliant Moment user spends around 64 minutes on his phone per day. So our baseline is pretty high.  You already knew this. Almost 84 percent of our participant survey respondents say they spend "too much time" or "way too much time" on their phones: (Survey Monkey/New Tech City) Demographics According to Kaufman and Immordino, it's not surprising that the subset of people signed up for our project feels that way. Here's what we know about the 1,117 of you who took our survey: 75 percent are female. The average age is 36 years old.   Half are married. About 40 percent have kids. 57 percent live what they would describe as an urban environment; 34 percent live in the suburbs. Our participants tend to live in the biggest U.S. cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco), but we have people in almost every state and a number of countries around the world (Australia, the U.K. Germany, Israel, China, Japan, Switzerland, and more). Motive Anecdotally, we've heard from a lot of people with a creative bent, interested in writing books and screenplays and working on other big projects. One of the more striking takeaways from our survey? Respondents really, really want more time to just think: (Survey Monkey/New Tech City) Phone Behavior Miscellany  It's those pesky pickups!  (Survey Monkey/New Tech City) About 40 percent of respondents say the phone is adding stress to their lives. Of the people who say they spend "way too much time on their phone," 20 percent report the place they keep their phones is "in their hand." As opposed to, say, their pocket. Among the minority of respondents in our group who say they spend "just the right amount of time" on their phones, less than 1 percent say they keep their phone in their hand. Significantly more of these happy phone users are keeping their phones in their bags—out of sight, out of mind. The most popular place for women to keep their phones was on their desks (47 percent). They're doing this more than men, who are keeping their phones in their pocket (68 percent). Loving these numbers, but want some more context? Click play on the audio player at the top of this post for the full podcast audio with more analysis and "intriguing correlations." If you know someone who could use a little boredom and brilliance in their lives, there's still time—get them on board (bored?) before challenges start Monday!  You can sign up here: We'll issue all of our challenges via mini-podcasts starting Feb. 2. To hear them, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

High school is pretty much how you remember it, but the mean girls don't have to look you in the eyes anymore. There has been a lot of back and forth about how teenagers do and don't use social media recently. The conclusions? Don't generalize. Ask teenagers what they think. Listen. So, because phone behavior is endlessly fascinating to the New Tech City team, we decided to do just that. On this week's episode, 16-year-old Grace was kind enough to keep an audio diary of everything she does on her phone. Hear her navigate through endless app alerts, group messaging drama, clueless grown-ups, that bizarre old technology of email and even how she handles a sext request. Grace has some pretty good advice all around, even if you don't know any teens: 1. Cyberbullying is, more often than not, minor burns. “Of course people say like snotty things...or someone will unfollow someone on Instagram or something like that, but its not, like, awful awful like ‘Go kill yourself.’” 2. Not every picture goes on Snapchat or Instagram. (Jackie Snow)   In fact, some get locked away. Grace uses the Photo Vault app, which puts pics behind a passcode. It’s free and can be downloaded here. 3. Anonymous Apps like Whisper and Yik Yak? Way over. 'Yaks,' as they are called, can only be seen by people in the same geographic location, like a few miles around a school for instance.  (Jackie Snow)   Grace did do a little Yakking on Yik Yak, but once too many people joined in on the anonymous posting, "it was just bizarre." Like Tamagotchi and hairbands in Central New Jersey, anonymous apps have come in and out of style. 4.  There's always one kid making everyone jealous. In Grace’s town, getting a phone at the end of elementary school or beginning of middle school is the norm. But: “There is always, like, one kid who gets it super early.”  5. Sexting is not widespread (or, at least, not taken seriously). (Courtesy of Grace)   6. There is still paper in school. Typing on a tiny keyboard does not improve handwriting. (Courtesy of Grace) Besides essays (which are typed, 12-point font, and double-spaced) Grace’s assignments have her writing out her work by hand. 7. There's a trick to recharging your phone faster during class. Putting your phone on airplane mode before plugging it in speeds up charge times. You might not be able to get Internet or texts, but if you’re in a rush, this is the way to go. This video by CNET last year showed a phone charging a whole four minutes sooner in airplane mode. Turning it off completely would go even faster. But then, you know, your phone is off. 8. Acronyms: so LOL. Despite articles like this warning parents about all the acronyms kids use, Grace said it's not the case. Out of the list, she says she only sees “THOT” and “420.” “These rest are made up or weirdos use,” Grace said. She's got some new ones though that she and friends make up as they go along.  9. Trust your kids. This is the most important. Grace advises parents to respect their kids’ phones, unless they have reason to believe their child needs help. “Not every kid is sexting. Your kid is probably not sexting. Don’t go through their phones, that’s not good... even if you have good intentions, it’s going to backfire.” It really is probably more innocent than you think. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

This episode kicks off the biggest project New Tech City has ever done: Bored and Brilliant. Our goal is to get you rethinking your relationship with technology. Sign-up for the NTC newsletter to get the challenges.      YES! I want to get Bored and Brilliant!   Here's the issue: It goes back to when Apple introduced the first iPhone in 2007 — that's less than a decade ago. Fifty-eight percent of American adults have a smartphone today. Sixty-seven percent of the time, people are looking at their phones without any sort of ring or vibration. Forty-four percent of Americans have slept with their phone next to their beds. Statistics aside, all you really have to do is go outside and see how many people can't even walk without staring at a screen. We counted them! When we asked for your stories, many of you told us smartphones make you feel like you have the power to be connected all the time, organized beyond measure, and never, ever without entertainment while you're waiting for coffee. But you've also told us they make you feel dependent, exhausted, and addicted — some of you say you're actually relieved when you lose or break your phones for a day. There's a paradox here. But one thing is clear: Paying attention to our smartphones through so many of our waking moments means our minds don't spend as much time idling. And that matters! We talked to boredom researcher Sandi Mann of the University of Lancashire of the U.K.   "You come up with really great stuff when you don’t have that easy lazy junk food diet of the phone to scroll all the time," says Sandi Mann.  Mann's research finds that idle minds lead to reflective, often creative thoughts (we discuss her projects in depth in this week's show). Minds need to wander to reach their full potential.  During bouts of boredom our brains can't help but jump around in time, analyzing and re-analyzing the pieces of our lives, says Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of York in the UK. He says inspiration strikes in the shower because it's a moment when we're not really looking at or focusing on anything else. Researchers have only really started to understand the phenomena of "mind-wandering" — the activity our brains engage in when we're doing nothing at all — over the past decade or so. "There’s a close link between originality, novelty, and creativity... and these sort of spontaneous thoughts that we generate when our minds are idle," Smallwood said. But when mental stimulation is a touch of the phone away? "That’s where daydreaming and boredom intersect," Smallwood says. "What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are in terms of our goals." And that's where Bored and Brilliant comes in.  Let's do it together. Sign up here:     YES! I want to get Bored and Brilliant!   Subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  

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 Leslie Horn makes a powerful case for voicemail in an essay last year that we just loved. It... well, it stuck with us, and we really wanted to hear the voices she described. Because those scratch recordings buried in her phone's voicemail folder got her through the tough months after her father's death. "Voicemail is a default archive of your life. You would miss it if it were gone," she says.  So this week’s show is about the way listening can jog memories and emotions like nothing else. To that point, we'd really encourage you to listen to this one above even if you have read her post already. (You can listen by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.) And when you’re done, leave us a voicemail! Our number is (917) 924-2964. Don't let our inbox look like this: Give us a call and tell us your story. (New Tech City

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 involves his daughter's piggy bank. Listen above. And if you’re struggling too? You can request a copy of the program for yourself from David here.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

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 psychological and biological. So no, this isn't an excuse to push the kids away on Christmas morning. It's more of a long-term lifestyle plea, culled from a ton of data WNYC collected earlier this year. And in that spirit, we're re-airing one of our favorite episodes from 2014, about something we do every day (or at least we try to do). Getting enough rest to stave off some pretty staggering screen-fueled sleep deficits.  Give it a listen (or another, if you caught it earlier this year), and join us in getting some much-needed rest this winter. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

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 town, by hacking into its schools, its water systems, its power grid, and its Internet, as colleagues and instructors watch on screens in the other room. It's run by the SANS Institute's Ed Skoudis, whom the military hired to design a new generation of training equipment –  and, as Skoudis said, your average digital simulator wasn't going to cut it: "If you tell them, 'Hey, one of your folks was able to hack into a power grid and turn the lights back on,' certain people in the military leadership would look at that and say, 'You just showed me that my people can play a video game.' Whereas we can say it was a real power grid. Admittedly controlling a city whose surface area was 48 square feet – but still." While we can't disclose CyberCity's precise location, we can say this: Skoudis' souped-up model train set sits very near the center of innovation in military training, national security and technology-fueled warfare. We sent radio producer Eric Molinsky (of the podcast "Imaginary Worlds") to check it out in person. We were oohing and aahing right along with him (listen above). Because what Skoudis told him was simultaneously terrifying... "Those people in CyberCity are not physical little people. What they are is, they’re data.... Most of the residents have birth records in the hospital, some of them are getting various medical treatments, they have prescription medications – all that stuff is in the hospital. We have social networking inside of Cyber City. We have something very like Facebook, we have something very much like Twitter. We have a newspaper in Cyber City. We call it the Cyber City Sentinel. So for example we’ll have a reporter who writes Cyber City Sentinel articles. That reporter also has a bank account. That reporter also has birth records. She has a family. So there’s really – I guess the way to describe it is there’s a fabric to the citizenry of Cyber City." ...and kind of charming. Listen to the full story on this week's episode of New Tech City, in the audio player above, on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. CyberCity by day. Everything has a specific purpose for cyber war scenarios. One mission involves thwarting a train hijacking. (Eric Molinsky) Skoudis is proud of the details within CyberCity like this house with a flowerpot. Those details reminds him that people’s livelihoods are at stake in cyber warfare. (Eric Molinsky) It feels like a hazy bright morning by the power plant in CyberCity. (Eric Molinsky) There are some notes of whimsy on the model, like the DeLorean from Back to the Future. (Eric Molinsky) Some cyber war games involve challenging but realistic rules of engagement, like avoiding the school. (Eric Molinsky)   The military requested a mission where a fire breaks out in the chemical plant. They couldn't use real fire, so they use lights and orange and yellow streamers until the "fire" is put out. (Eric Molinsky) The eerie calm of night settles over a city steeling for the next attack. (Eric Molinsky) The power plant may be a plastic simulation, but the computer system that runs it underneath the model is as realistic as possible.. (Eric Molinsky) Technicians monitor CyberCity through web cams. They can also use those laptops to make mayhem happen. (Eric Molinsky) Ed Skoudis describes his Steampunk office as “a mad scientists’ lab from the 1880s.” There’s a model train that runs along the ceiling. He also has Edison bulbs, an Enigma machine, vintage radios. (Eric Molinsky)   This week, Manoush is up for a challenge: Come up with a topic you know you should care about, but it just sounds so boring. We'll figure out a way to make it interesting, and we'll convince you to care once and for all (well, first we'll figure out if you need to care. That first.)  Email us ([email protected]), tweet at us (@NewTechCity), or leave a comment on our New Tech City Facebook page. 

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 poked fun at how African Americans spoke and how they were 'gonna get their hair did.' By the time they got to the whole 'Chinamen' and doing nails, I just said, 'you know what, this is just too much for me.'” Tamika quit Facebook.  Before you go that far, scroll down (or click play). We've called in the experts. We've commissioned a survey; consulted a psychologist about how racism on Facebook slips by; collected some personal examples; and we've adapted a tool for healthy dialogue into this handy flow chart for you to pin on your wall, physical or digital. "LARA" is a strategy promoted by the National Conference for Community Justice (New Tech City/Piktochart)   Some Data for You We commissioned a survey from the market research company Survata. Of the nearly 300 Facebook users polled, 46 percent have seen a discussion about race show up in their newsfeed in the past month. Almost a third of them say they've considered blocking or unfriending someone over offensive comments about the news. Things get testy on Facebook. (Survata and New Tech City) The Bottom of the Barrel Among those numbers are listeners like Vishavjit Singh, who wrote to tell us about the reaction to his 28-second Facebook video, which has been viewed over four million times. Singh, who has a beard and wears a turban, shared what people said to him: The internet is not always a welcoming place. (Screenshot, Facebook) Yeah.    We've included a few other examples, and some smart, thoughtful, constructive ways to respond, in this week's episode. What are you seeing out there, New Tech City listeners? Please tell us (and like us!) on our newly-created... you guessed it... Facebook page.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

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 came at a cost. Not just to the people replaced by automation, but to the beneficiaries too. Actual hands have sewed fabrics; living, breathing office-dwellers prepared taxes; physical human muscles carried cargo, and real people have picked up phones to make real-life telemarketing calls. And all of those humans bring a human softness to those tasks that is worth something. But according to a study from Oxford University, close to half of the U.S. workforce is under threat of losing their job to technology in one form or another. The research team ranked 702 jobs from most likely to least likely to be automated, and telemarketers topped their list, just barely beating out title examiners, sewers, and mathematical technicians. Their big conclusion: Amy isn’t the only job-eating robot waiting in the wings. The quaint travel agency near Manoush Zomorodi's house. (Manoush Zomorodi) So has the moment come to pity the poor telemarketer? Is automation inevitable? Is their loss everyone else's gain? Nick Carr, author of "The Glass Cage: Automation and Us," says "not always." On this week’s episode, we talk with Carr (and another special, live, human guest*) about using technology without stopping to consider why—when the process of automation becomes, perhaps, a little too automatic.  *OK, so this isn't actually Manoush's personal trainer but you can hear him on the show, “You can’t replicate the having-the-person-in-front-of-you-watching-everything-you’re-doing factor. You can’t replicate that on a phone," Nick Vargas tells Manoush.  Here's the top of Oxford's list of jobs most likely to be automated:  Telemarketers. Title examiners, abstractors, and searchers. Sewers, hand. Mathematical technicians. Insurance underwriters. Watch repairers. Cargo and freight agents. Tax preparers. Photographic process workers and processing machine operators. New accounts clerks. Library technicians. Data entry keyers. Next week on the podcast, we're going to delve into the world of racist or race-baiting posts on your social media accounts, where things have gotten pretty tense in recent weeks. We’ll get advice from experts on where race dialogue fits into Facebook. In the meantime, we want to know: How do you deal with those posts that just totally offend you on your feed? Email us at [email protected] and we might put you on next week's show.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And follow us on Twitter @NewTechCity.

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 will reach that point in time where we simply cannot allow you to do a task as simple as this," Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.AI In this episode, we test out a new breed of personal assistant. Her, or its, name is Amy Ingram. She's plucky, tenacious, and loves arranging meetings. In contrast to Apple's Siri, Google Now or Microsoft's Cortana, Amy is specialized on one thing and one thing only: scheduling. A new and increasingly common type of software, Amy isn't a program you download, or an app you install. "I’m just really grateful that I can have that time back to be productive.... I’ve been in heaven honestly," Jonathan Lehr, Co-Founder of Workbench and user of Amy the robot assistant. You simply email her a request like you would a human—she has her own email address—and Amy comes to understand your natural language. Then she takes over the email ping pong with your friends and colleagues and hashes out the details until a meeting is set. Sound like salvation? In theory. We put her to the test. And also had a little fun using Amy as a daft Turing test on our friends to see if they would know the difference between a robot and a person. Along the way we found out a few dirty secrets about human nature that pop up when you are trying to program a robot helper. Like when our producer Alex tried to break Amy's will. "For some reason when you know it is a machine the impulse is: I am going to make her cry," Dennis Mortensen. Next week on the podcast, we'll cover the human cost of automation from job loss to craving that human touch. Subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And follow us on Twitter @NewTechCity. * A note: Since the taping of this podcast, Amy and X.AI can now interface with more than just Google Calendar. 

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 games. And he wanted to do it in a big way: with scholarships. The result was a deluge of applicants clamoring to get into the first ever college to enroll varsity e-athletes. One of the players already dropped out to go pro. Another says his mother flat out didn't believe him when he said it was possible to get a scholarship for gaming. Now she proudly tells her friends her son is a competitive collegiate e-athlete. One student late for practice found his You Tube privileges were taken away in the gaming arena so he would focus more on his game playing.   The Game The Robert Morris Eagles play League of Legends. It is by far the most popular video game for organized competition drawing in tens of millions of fans to watch top matches. It is incredibly complicated and hard to master. Each player chooses from 121 different characters called champions, each with their own set of powers that top players need to memorize. Then teams of five take on other teams of five and basically try to destroy each other. It’s called a “multiplayer online battle arena game” or MOBA for short. As with physical sports, the school can earn money back with a winning program. How that works is a little different though with video games. It is most certainly not an NCAA sport, so the school's team can compete for cash prizes and if it wins, the school keeps the take.  The Eagles Arena The Robert Morris University in Chicago E-Sports Video Gaming Arena (Manoush Zomorodi) Just Like the Football Team  Add Caption Here (Manoush Zomorodi) Subscribe:  To get all our episodes downloaded to your device, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. You can follow us on Twitter @NewTechCity.  

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 work at it a little bit," she says with a charming laugh in this week's episode. Though she plays Street Fighter, she dreams of a new kind of game that speaks to her stage in life. A game that doesn't exist yet, but soon will.  'Kid in a basement;' 'Dude in a man cave;' '#Gamergate flame wars;' All of the stereotypes of video gaming paint it as the dominion of young, single men, but when you look at the data, older women are the fastest growing demographic. Add to that the original cohort of young gamers coming up on middle age and there's a swell of demand for a new kind of video game experience. How Games Will Change The response from game designers is fascinating. From dealing with a family member’s cancer to managing depression, new games are exploring real-world phenomena like emotional loss, existential doubt, and a simple quest for beauty. They cultivate deeper connections between players, and even among players and their families.  “Our fundamental feeling is that as the audience of game players grows up, there’s a huge opportunity to make things that grow with us,” says Robin Hunicke the cofounder and CEO of Funomena, a game studio in San Francisco. Mentioned in the show Here's what the guys of Dude Mountain look like. Joey is the one in the hat.  Joey McDaniel and Dan Lawrence. (Casey Miner)   What Luna looks like, the next game from Robin Hunicke: Luna (Funomena) Subscribe to New Tech City If you liked this episode, or this topic, do us a favor and send it two elder gaming friends, or post it on your Facebook wall and tag them. You can subscribe to the New Tech City podcast — it is different than what you hear on WNYC on Wednesday mornings — iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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 20, 30 hours at a time working that one disaster." Astredo organizes a team of virtual first responders called Info4Disasters.  Digital disaster responders are a growing force in emergency responses. These are self-organized, self-appointed and self-directed virtual volunteers and established aid organizations are still trying to figure out what to do with them. Many of them are like Astredo, a little older — she's 55 — and former on-the-ground volunteers or NGO workers who want to stay in the game. And then there are a newer breed: younger techie types — data scientists or mapping aficionados — who realize they have skills they can contribute in search and rescue operations or logistics missions.  "I think that we’re stepping into a new, unchartered territory when you talk about taking care of the digital disaster volunteer," says Lisa Orloff the founder of the World Cares Center that offers support, including counseling to disaster volunteers.  In this episode of New Tech City, get to know Leesa Astredo as she shows how a digital disaster volunteer works, and she explains how too much vicarious trauma can lead to it's own problems. Plus, what the Red Cross thinks of all this and how they are adapting to these outpourings of digital aid workers. If you like this episode, why not send a link to a friend who likes volunteering. And if you haven't already done it, go ahead and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. UPDATE: Manoush appeared on WBEZ's Afternoon Shift program talking about this episode. Give a listen here.   

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 speak out against something that we think is wrong because we are really setting the standard for future generations,” Ladar Levison. Ladar Levison and William Binney both play a role in the Ed Snowden affair—and they each appear prominently in Laura Poitras' new documentary Citizenfour. Binney worked for the NSA for more than 30 years. He was an early architect of the NSA systems that were eventually used for mass surveillance on U.S. citizens. That wasn't how he intended his programming skills to be used, so he quit and cried foul. Without documents to prove it though, he was overlooked for years by the general public.  Ladar Levison built the encrypted email system Lavabit that Ed Snowden has said he used for private communications. Naturally, the FBI wanted to take a look at some of those messages. But rather than turn over the keys to his encryption—something that would have compromised all his clients, not just Snowden—Levison shut down his whole company in dramatic fashion. (He was on a previous episode of New Tech City while under a gag order about the case. Listen here.)  We wanted to find out who does something like that? Why take that stand? What's the motivation? The strategy? The fallout? We got the two men together for the first time and tried to understand the mindset of a privacy crusader. They have two very different strategies, but share one big sense of outrage. Why not send this episode to that friend who doesn't care at all about privacy. See what they think. And please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.  To listen, click the audio player above the image.   

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 on American citizens. When he found out, he quit the agency and went public about it. Call him the pre-Snowden NSA whistleblower.  Ladar Levison ran the secure email program Ed Snowden used to communicate with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. When the FBI came to him asking for the keys to the encryption he decided to shut down his company rather than comply. That dramatic story is told in our episode "When the FBI Knocks." After you listen to this bonus segment of New Tech City, let us know how you want us to keep the conversation going. Post a comment, we'll get the message. Or get in touch on Twitter @newtechcity or at newtechcity at WNYC.org If you like this episode, why not post a link to this on a friend's Facebook feed who cares about privacy. And if you haven't already done it, go ahead and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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 this friend who loves video games. To have future episodes download directly to your device, subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed.

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 $200,000 ticket to fly on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic for over 10 years. Through divorce and a battle with cancer she has refused to trade in the ticket for a financial cushion. “That money is the money that I don’t count on,” she says. “That is my dream, and it’s put away in a separate box.” Lina is still waiting to go. She just really wants to know what it feels like, not just what it looks like, to see earth from above. She's never gotten a satisfying answer even after asking several astronauts. Until today.  “I was giggling like a little kid and one of my crew-mates took off his gloves and let it sort of spin in the air, and I’m like, oh my god, I can’t believe I’m in space,” Anousheh Ansari. Anousheh Ansari is an engineer and entrepreneur and the first female private space explorer. She tells us what it's like to rocket up to orbit, about lifting out of her seat with weightlessness and being overcome with joy and excitement so much that she spun and spun and spun until she found herself cleaning up vomit in zero gravity. Kind of gross, but also kind of amazing. The two women have a lot in common: both have childhood dreams of space travel that they couldn't shake, both are immigrants to the U.S., both well educated and they are most certainly not thrill seekers. “I don’t even go on, you know, roller coasters. To me, it wasn’t about the rocket ride. It was about being in space,” Anousheh says. They are also both just so so likable you can't help rooting for them.  The magic really happens at the end of this episode, when Lina and Anousheh have their first conversation. They talk logistics, like going to the bathroom in space as a lady. But also, Lina gets an answer to her driving curiosity: What does it really feel like to see our planet from space? Are our biggest earth-bound questions answerable? This show definitely got us rethinking our fears and expanding our mental horizons. How about you? Would you take a trip out of this world after hearing this? Why? Let us know in the comments below or record your answer on your phone and email it to us at [email protected].    Space Travel Options Mentioned in the Audio: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic:Tickets on sale for $250,000. Blast-off delayed multiple times but now looking like early 2015. Space Adventures: Circumlunar Mission. Ticket price is not yet determined.Expected Blast-off: 2018 Visit the International Space Station. Cost: Around $20 million. Blast-offs began in 2001, and international recording artist Sarah Brightman is set to go in 2015. There’s an option to extend this trip and conduct a spacewalk accompanied by a professional cosmonaut. Suborbital Spaceflight: Tickets will be $100,000. Blast-off has yet to be announced.   XCOR Aerospace: Tickets are on sale for $95,000-$100,000 depending on the aircraft you choose. Blast-off expected in 2015. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin: The suborbital adventure’s ticket price and blast-off date has yet to be announced. If you like this episode, why not send this link to a friend who dreams of space. To have future episodes download directly to your device, subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. It only takes a few clicks and helps us a bunch. Thanks.  

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 Twitter, which was just released in paperback. We were so intrigued, we decided to share the previously-untold backstory to how Bilton used Twitter to report on the founders of Twitter. And before you say, "well, duh." It goes way beyond what you'd expect.    Bilton scraped data from thousands of emails, Twitter handles, Flickr and Instagram photos to cross reference background information, fact check his off-the-record sources, and to find the crucial little telling details that make the book read an intimate insider account. For example, he would use a tweet to learn when someone’s meeting happened and their Instagram photo to see the coffee shop where it took place.  While Bilton is one of the first to employ this type of big (social) data investigation for the use of nonfiction storytelling, he will most certainly not be the last.  Subscribe to New Tech City's podcast to get all our future episodes automatically downloaded onto your device via iTunes here, or on Stitcher,TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or our RSS feed if you are into that kind of thing.

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, who deployed some evidence-based parenting and experimented with screen time extremes for his seven year-old. It didn’t go so well as you might imagine, but the lessons were probably worth it. “The reality is that [tech execs] actually have a better understanding of where tech can go wrong than most non-tech parents do,” Nick Bilton. Nick Bilton, tech columnist for the The New York Times, joins Manoush to swap stories after informally surveying tech execs in Silicon Valley about their family rules. It seems the parents most entrenched in the tech world are the ones most weary of what they’ve created.  This episode will leave you thinking about your own house rules, whether or not you have kids. If you’ve figured it out, even just a little bit, we’d love to hear from you in the comment section below. If you like this episode, why not subscribe on iTunes here, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. It only takes a few clicks and helps us a bunch. Thanks.     Resources mentioned in this episode:  OpenDNS is the tool Nick Bilton mentions to control what websites work in your house and at what hours is. Here are those rules Manoush mentions from the American Academy of Pediatrics about screen time for kids. Heard in this episode:  “Anything that you do in excess is probably not good for you,” Nick Bilton. “No parents in history have ever had to cope with the unprecedented convergence of a ubiquitous sophisticated alluring habit-forming screen technology and unfettered unregulated advertising," Susan Linn, founder of The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “Addiction in the 60s was about sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. The response in the 80s was safe sex education, say no to drugs, and the commoditization of popular music. This generation, the addictions are games, social media, and upbuzzclickbaitworthy articles.  What's the response?” Sameer Ajmani, parent and programmer.   

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 values of automation and likes lawyers sitting side by side with soldiers. Several experts tell us about the terrifying moral risks of letting machines think too far ahead of people in battle. We learn there could be lives to be saved, war could be made less atrocious if -- and it is a huge if -- the technology can advance side by side with the antiquated laws. In the end, we hear from the activists who want autonomous lethal weapons banned before they march on the enemy. A U.N. body has just begun to consider it. A version of this story won the German Prize for Innovation Journalism. It aired on Deutschlandfunk by Thomas Reintjes with help from Philip Banse.  Quotes heard in this episode:  "Maybe we can make war -- as horrible as it sounds -- less devastating to the non-combatants than it currently is." -Ronald Arkin director of the Mobile Robot Lab at Georgia Tech When to unleash the machines: "They must do better than human beings before they should be deployed in the battlefield." -Ronald Arkin  On why Las Vegas could be considered a target: "With Napoleonic-era combat, you knew where the battlefield was, right? With modern warfare, modern conflict, you really don't know, where the battlefield is." -Brad Allenby, Arizona State University "Robotics has been trying to do visual recognition for... a bit more than 50 years and we can just about tell the difference between a lion and a car. So the idea of putting one of these things onto a battlefield... and thinking it should discriminate between [innocent people] and insurgents is just insane." -Noel Sharkey Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "In today's warfare, a drone pilot is looking on a screen, talking to potentially five to ten other people looking at that same screen, one of which is a lawyer." -Missy Cummings Duke professor and former fighter pilot  About autonomous lethal weapons: "These machines for the foreseeable future would fail to meet the requirements of international law." -Peter Asaro, International Committee for Robot Arms Control "The preemptive ban is the only thing that makes sense." -Stephen Goose, of Human Rights Watch If you like this episode why not share it with that friend of yours who always posts about military issues? To get future audio downloads of our program direct to your phone or computer, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS. It just takes a second. Thanks.

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, where a version of this story first appeared. Click the audio player above to hear Alex and Manoush go on a journey of discovery to find out why backing tracks enraged him so much when he found out his favorite band was less live than he thought. Along the way we hear from musicians who make backing tracks, we listen to some huge non-backed tracks to show it can be done pure, and we meet Columbia University professor Jennifer Lena, who studies the sociology of music. She gives Alex a hefty smack down about music snobbery in the second half of the show.  Naturally, we couldn’t end this episode without taking our own stab at backing tracks. Call it Manoush’s debut single: Podcasting Glory, which premieres at the end of this episode. Hilarity ensues.  Quotes from this episode: On how pervasive backing tracks have become: “I think it's totally an industry standard at this point," Ian Pei, drummer of Avan Lava who also makes backing tracks for bands.  On the risks of backing tracks: "We we’re playing in front of 50,000 people, my computer’s plugged in not only to the sound system but also to the video screen. And... this giant beep goes off, and then my photo library is playing on a video screen in front of 50,000 people,” Ian Pei of Avan Lava. On why she uses backing tracks live: “Until it can be afforded to have like 20 musicians up there... until all those sounds can be replaced, then yes, I do feel it necessary," Brittany Campbell musician.  On why not to judge too rashly: “I don’t want us to have an artistic culture where the majority of the conversations we have about the stuff that’s really at stake for us is judging whether we’re right or somebody else is right,” Columbia Professor Jennifer Lena.  If you like this episode why not share it with two friends who love music, or who go to live shows. To get future audio downloads of our program direct to your phone or computer, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS. It just takes a second. Thanks.

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 Tufts University. She says we have to develop a 'bi-literate' brain if we want to be able to switch from the scattered skimming typical of screen reading to the deeper, slow reading that we associate with books on paper. It is possible. It just takes work.  One person who has done it well is Maria Popova, founder of Brainpickings.org. In this episode, Manoush visits her home, marvels at the piles of books everywhere, and learns how Maria manages to read about a dozen books a week and still retain the information, organize ideas around a myriad of themes, and churn out multiple smart, insightful, original posts every day. She does it using a mix of digital and analog tools and techniques to help her read better. Quotes from this episode: On why a 'bi-literate' brain is important: "There are things in our lives, whether they be novels, short stories, mortgage documents, whatever, that actually need our slow reading," Mike Rosenwald, Washington Post staff writer. "In the old days before the internet, reading was a linear event," Mike Rosenwald.  On ideal reader: "What we're after is a discerning 'bi-literate' brain: A child who knows when to allocate attention to those deep reading processes and when to play and move from one interesting thing after another," Dr. Maryanne Wolf. The internet is not making us dumber but it is changing us: "I don't worry that we will become dumb because of the internet, but I worry that we will not use our most preciously acquired deep reading processes because we are given too much stimulation," Dr. Maryanne Wolf.   On the eventual convergence of screens and paper reading: "It's a very young medium. My hopes are that its imperfections will be addressed such that the medium is not of any difference," Maria Popova.  "I actually prefer electronic reading in some regards," Maria Popova. Resources mentioned in the audio: Mike Rosenwald's excellent Washington Post article on how serious reading is harmed by online reading.  Anne Mangen's University of Norway study comparing plot retention when reading a Kindle vs on paper. Maryanne Wolf's recent article about the brain's plasticity. (Full report) Book by Ziming Liu of San Jose University, "Paper to Digital: Documents in the Information Age" Also by Ziming Liu, a report on how reading behavior has changed in the past 10 years.  As far as visual fatigue goes, e-ink is a lot like paper according to this study in PLOS. And The New Yorker dove in too: "Being a better online reader."   If you like this episode why not share it with someone who reads a lot. To get future audio downloads of our program, direct to your phone or computer, subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes or via RSS. It just takes a second. Thanks. 

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 policy against talking to media, even after quitting, four former "specialists" tell us what they think of all the hype and of the people lining up for weeks outside the doors. We've got horror stories, confessions of Apple love, and tips for navigating a product release from the experts. Hint: you don't need to wait in line.  Quotes from this episode:  On the emotional toll: "I found myself counseling or consoling people twice my age in a way I never thought I would." On how to be good at the job: “When someone comes to you in tears, you just have to be a human.”  On getting the job: "I had to do four interviews. By the 4th one I was ready to tell them to stick it."  On how customers treat them: "If you go to an Apple store, just be nice. Please. That’s it." On the joys: "We couldn’t wait to help people… the most rewarding part of our job was getting to work one to one with people." On the culture: "When you start working at Apple you are just immediately indoctrinated to Apple culture." If you like this episode why not share it with someone you know & subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes or via RSS. It just takes a second.   

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 frightening calorie counts are posted as goals and achievements, hashtagged #thinspiration. "When you are starving you don't feel emotion. So I hadn’t felt a lot in a while." These communities have existed as long as the internet, but 25 years after the start of the web, digital life has its tentacles around us in a different way. The threat has matured. Now, if you are trying to recover from an eating disorder, temptation is just a Tweet or Instagram away. And when a single picture of bony arm or a post about a celebrity who only weighs 100 pounds can mess with your recovery, it’s not just the internet that’s a dangerous place. It’s your whole world. This week on the podcast, the story of how a lonely young girl used the internet to get better at starving herself for over a decade without even her family finding out. And then, the online moment that changed her course to recovery. In this episode:  Joanna Kay opens up about growing up with anorexia alongside an ever evolving online threat. Sharon Hodgson remembers the dark days of running a Pro-Ana site for anorexics. danah boyd tells us why banning these sites -- as Italy has tried to do -- is a fools errand. Ideas for what could help girls like Joanna. Resources and where to get help:  Joanna Kay's wonderfully brave personal recovery blog: Middle Ground Musings. National Eating Disorder Association. You can call them at1–800–931–2237 or chat with them online. National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Sharon Hodgson's recovery site, We Bite Back. Consider talking anonymously with a trained active listener at 7 Cups. If you are in a crisis, there are trained volunteers waiting to counsel you at www.imalive.org. If you found this radio program helpful or intriguing why not share it with someone you know and subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes or via RSS. It just takes a second. 

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 habits. Charles Duhigg and New Tech City are here to help this week.  "These habits are powerful only when you are not aware of them. As soon as you make deliberate choices, the habit is delicate and falls apart." Duhigg wrote The Power of Habit: How We Do What We Do in Life and Business in 2012. It explains how habits are formed and altered and often manipulated. But his bestseller doesn't include much about technology even though Duhigg knows the tech sector pretty well -- so much so he won a Pulitzer Prize reporting on it. So in this episode of New Tech City, Duhigg updates his habit thesis to address the clever and devious advances in addictive tech that have come out in the past two years.   "If you decide you want to read something deep and meaningful, then your brain will actually begin assigning more reward salience to a New Yorker article and less to Facebook," Duhigg says. "But you have to make a deliberate choice." In this episode:  Why Uber and Seamless are so satisfying. Why Facebook makes you scroll down and down. What the bevy of new fitness tracking apps are really offering as a reward. What needs to happen for society at large to get smarter about tech habits.

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 began a jumble of doubt and worry with baggage from high school math holding her back. "I am going to have to commit an act of coding to bring my anxiety level down a notch," she decided by late morning during the theory portion of the day. Yet within hours, Manoush had made a mostly functioning web app for her kids. "The mere act of making it myself made it less scary," she concludes.   Along the way she gains a greater reverence for the language of our machines and for the people fluent in them. Manoush wrote about this wild ride in more detail here, when a previous version of this show first aired.   Also in this episode:  Keith Devlin, author of "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" and many other books, describes the kind of thinker that tech firms are desperately looking for. The new tech economy needs mathematicians, but he says, of the kind of math that is not so much about numbers, as problem solving and pattern recognition. These skills can be learned! If you liked this story, please click here to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes / RSS to find our other episodes. We're on Twitter too: @NewTechCity Now watch Manoush learn to code, despite her 10th grade math teacher!   (This episode is a longer version, with additional information, of our show that aired on January 8.)

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 mishaps as they build a visual language of two. At the end of the experiment, Emoji-only texting seems to morph from a guinea pig gimmick into a profound lesson in what is often missing from the written word: nuanced emotion.  Grocery shopping though gets way harder.  In this episode:  Richard Sproat, computational linguist on the history of ideograms and visual languages David Lanham, designer and creator of "stickers" for social networks on how he picks what zany characters you get to send your friends.   If you like this story, subscribe to us on iTunes or by RSS to get all our other episodes. Mentioned in the audio:  Image translation. Alex: I'm going home. Liza: I'm with a friend and she's had a death in the family, don't come to drinks with us. Alex: ? I'm gonna drink with other people instead.   (This is a re-edited, re-released version of an earlier show that covered additional topics: translating Moby Dick into Emoji and the story of Charles Bliss, the man who tried to build a global language entirely out of images.)

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 coding naturals and also lure in newbies, who tend to be female as often as male. There's more to it, of course, and it's a nuanced game to cut down on the macho without cutting out the well-meaning enthusiasm that causes it. This episode is about how they did it, and what it teaches us about gender and learning. One sample lesson: when computational thinking is framed broadly, about solving problems, about helping society, then just as many women enroll as men.  If you like these stories, subscribe to our podcast for more. (iTunes / RSS)

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-voiced mayor of Manoush's street with all kinds of hot tips for the hood. (Original story) Story 2: Kids Are Like Software Author Bruce Feiler experiments on his family, running his household according to the Agile programming method. For those who don't know Agile, you'll get a intimate peak into how coders are so productive. For those who do know Agile, you'll chuckle at what a family meeting sounds like when run like a software scrum. And parents, you might just pick up a discipline tip or two. (Original story) Story 3: Can Mike Bloomberg Take Credit for NYC's Tech Boom?  This winner in the business reporting category chases down the real genesis of New York City's boom in tech talent and startups. The mayor at the time, billionaire Mike Bloomberg, likes to take credit for presiding over a tidal shift in NYC's economy. But as we find out, what might have mattered more than any policy was a talented programmer who just didn't want to live in Silicon Valley anymore. (Original story) If you like these stories and want to hear more, please subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes or anywhere else. 

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 seconds. It could also determine if a salesperson is using the "perfect sales intonation" or if a given customer calling up is 'exasperated and furious' or 'exasperated and ready to listen'. Market research and call centers may be the early testing ground of emotion detection software, but the applications could end up working as a wellness tool or even a dating aide (humorously demonstrated in this video).    Listen to part 1 on tech and the human voice: mental health and medical research.  If you like these stories, please subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes or RSS. 

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, or you speak, can be clues to shifting mental states.  "Speech is incredibly rich it encodes so much of our behavior, it encodes information about gender, about our age, about our identity, and in this case about mood," explains computer engineering professor Emily Mower Provost of the University of Michigan. She and her colleague psychiatrist Melvin McInnis are testing out how to plumb the hidden signals and codes of a human voice to enable early action and better care for people with mental health issues.  It gets touching, it gets ambitious, and it's all pretty hopeful. Have a listen.  This is Part 1 of a two part series on voices and how computers and new technology can hear hidden meaning in how we speak. Next week: how this is being used to make products and profits. Subscribe to New Tech City here to make sure you don't miss it. 

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 takes to innovate at the post office. How other countries from Sweden to Namibia have more digital-forward mail services than the U.S. The proposals for postal innovation that have a chance at happening.  

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 initiative. And she says, meeting girls where they are is definitely the way to go.  And if you look at the Initiatives and after school projects popping up left and right with names like Girls Who Code, Girl Develop It, Girls Teaching Girls to Code, Black Girls Who Code... well, there's a lot of pink mixed in with the computer science.  We want to know why? And if it is really necessary to embrace gender norms on the path to bridging the gender divide in tech.  (Listen to our episode 'The Way We Teach Computer Science Hurts Women' for a sense of why this is so urgent).   In this episode:   Mindy Kaling, actress, TV producer, first Indian-American to create and star in her own sitcom Jocelyn Leavitt, creator of Hopscotch (and best friend of Mindy Kaling) Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code Carol Colatrella, author of Toys and Tools in Pink And some 14 year old girls explaining code to host Manoush Zomorodi.   

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 a man with a heart-wrenching plea for Google to forget one macabre photo, from a German lawyer inundated with new clients trying to jump on the forgetting bandwagon, and we talk to the philosopher Viktor Mayer-Schönberger who wrote the book that started the whole conversation about who should own your online identity and search results.  Forgetting, he says, "enables us human beings to evolve, to learn, to move forward, and if we undo that capacity to forget because our digital tools remember, then we are undoing a very important element of what makes us human."  We get thoughtful, personal, and a little European in this episode. Click play above to listen.  For more stories like this one, subscribe to our podcast via iTunes or RSS. And follow us on Twitter, won't you?   

Matt George runs a new bus company that doesn't own buses. And he's making some big promises. We go on a hi-tech road trip to see if his company, Bridj, can really revolutionize mass transit.

Can kids beat back fear of math by striking a power pose? We explore the process of actually putting a TED talk into practice, in this case, through an unlikely confidence-building video game for kids.

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 start talking about robot morals.  However you look at it, Google's self-driving car is a robot and it will be entering our lives soon. So we talk with psychologist Adam Waytz of Northwestern University about his experiments measuring how people form bonds with robots, and how we naturally project human characteristics onto machines — for better or worse — including a friendly driver-less car named Iris.   By the end of this episode, we raise a lot of questions and offer a few answers about the ethics of living in a robot world. Please consider this the start of a conversation and let us know what else you want us to ask, answer, cover or investigate, including who you want us to interview next.  You can get in touch with us through Twitter, @NewTechCity or email us at newtechcity (at) wnyc.org. And if you like this episode, please subscribe on iTunes, or via RSS. It's easier than finding your toes.    VIDEOS: We mention a few videos in the podcast. Here they are in the order they appear in the show.    Watch the full event with Hod Lipson showing off his thinking robots. He shows off his "Evil Starfish" starting around 14 minutes in. It "gimps along" best at 28 minutes in.     And here is Google's promotional video for it's first fully driver-less car.

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 destroyed the next day and just limping through like a zombie." This is David's tech addiction. But he's beaten it. Part of the solution involved creating a special program for his computer that would outsmart him in his moment of weakness. You can request a copy of the program for yourself from David here.  Also in this episode, a reprise of a great Radio Rookies piece about how teens are "vamping" all night long, forgoing sleep to chat and click and post online from their beds. It's like an infinite sleepover that wreaks havoc on morning classes.  Stories of tech addiction on this week's New Tech City.  If you like this episode, why not subscribe to our podcast here, and follow us on Twitter here.     

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 tracked as part of the Pecan Street Research Project. It's preparation for America's energy future. Seven hundred otherwise-normal homes have been wired to track how people really use energy when they have things like solar panels, smart thermostats and electric cars, lots of electric cars. The thing is, in the process of gathering all that information, the people who live here now are awash in data about themselves and that changes how they behave. Hear their story in this week's New Tech City.  If you like this episode, why not subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or listen to past episodes in the green player on the right. Or follow us on Twitter.    EXTRAS: Here's the chart mentioned in the podcast where Sokolic spotted her refrigerator behaving oddly and took action!     VIDEO: Peek inside the homes of Muëller.

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 a kind of crystal clear consciousness when they were awake that was not familiar to them. And it made me wonder if any of us knows what it’s really like to be awake — fully awake,” Wehr says.   Even though technology is the problem, it can also be the solution. "You have people that are using their phones as alarm clocks, people who are checking their phones all night long... And every time you get that hit of light, it’s like a hit of espresso, and we’d like to fix that for everybody,” says Lorna Herf, co-creator of the app f.lux. She and her husband have an app and a plan. The revelations in this episode might be a wake-up call. You’ll sleep better after listening to this one. If you liked this episode, why not subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes and follow us on Twitter. 

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 rating she wasn't even supposed to know about. But that’s just the beginning. Just as the Fair Credit Report Act regulated the use of personal information in private businesses in 1970, privacy advocates and now the White House are calling for laws that regulate opaque consumer scoring that’s extracted from petabytes of data. This is happening at banks, in car services, in marketing and more. As data privacy consultant Robert Gellman asks, “Now everybody is scoring everybody all the time on all kinds of characteristics. Do we all have to live according to a certain model in order to be treated properly in this economy?” All this data may lead to a new brand of “digital redlining,” where some customers get treated better than others based on algorithmic decisions. Data discrimination could solve or replace old style racism. We ask what should or shouldn’t be done about secret consumer scores on this week’s New Tech City. If you want more stories like this one, subscribe to the podcast, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook. 

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 this: Retailers get nailed by a bad review. Sometimes it's honest, sometimes it's exaggerated, and sometimes the bad review is flat out false and defamatory. But either way, it hurts business. So retailers are trying various ways to stop the reviews from happening: from unfounded financial fees, to extreme copyright claims about the very right to post a review about an experience, to totally justifiable defamation lawsuits.  This is part 1, the thrills and dangers of rating a company, of a two part series. Part 2, the secret ratings companies keep on customers, is here.  If you like these kinds of stories, why not subscribe to the podcast or follow us on Twitter. 

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 does continue to take hold, will really significantly change the way people are hired, the way people are promoted, and to some extent, the way they see themselves," says the Atlantic's Don Peck, who wrote about these new-fangled hiring practices in the excellent article, "They're Watching You at Work."  Good hiring is an art, but it's turning into a science replete with video games, intelligence tests and personality quizzes that can know you better than your boss, and maybe better than yourself. But... will this lead to a darker kind of professional determinism, or to a new breed of biased hiring? On this week's New Tech City, we find out. We get inside these new data-driven hiring practices so you know what to expect. We test out the video games and assessments for ourselves — to some shock and indignation. We hear from the people who make the games. And we show you what it is going to be like when you apply for your next job (so you can start studying).  If you like this episode, why not subscribe to hear more podcasts like this one. Or follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates. 

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 corporate research program brought us inventions — from the transistor to the computer coding language C — that form the backbone of just about every electronic device we touch. So we ask, can Google possibly pick up the torch? Well, maybe so.  In this episode, we consider if the conditions are right for the dawn of a new golden age of corporate invention. To help us along, researchers at Google X open up about their process, we consult archival tape from AT&T, and chat with Fast Company's Jon Gertner, the first journalist to visit Google X and author of the "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation." For more Google X inside info, check out Jon's story in Fast Company or watch the video below that follows the X team through a day in the life of a wild idea. And if you like this New Tech City episode, why not subscribe to the podcast, or follow us on Twitter. 

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 circles. There's annoying patriotic sausages, smokey hot ladies, and a global tech ethnographer all mixed together. Good times.       

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 kids themselves think is the right way to help them grow up healthy and confident in the digital age. There is a happy balance between technology adoption, addiction. Join us as we try to find it. In this show we mention two past stories we've covered. Find more about how and why to build Minecraft computer with your kids and that summer camp experiment with cell phones. 

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 attracted to what you can do with computer programming and the stories the code can tell. But that's not what most classes have taught. We bring you the story of the shift. Plus, inspiration from the first computer programmer ever, who just happened to be a woman and the daughter of a very famous literary figure.   Solutions, stories, and why rolling back tech's gender gap could make all the difference to the future of the U.S. economy. Yes, it's that big of a deal.  *A previous version of this post stated the incorrect percentage.

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 and the minimum wage.  Plus, New Tech City has been experimenting with hiring people via the gig economy. Let us know in the comments section below if you like any of the new logos we commissioned from a graphic designer on Fiverr, where everything costs about $5. Or, did we just get what we paid for? We also want to hear your story of working in for websites like these, especially if it's different than the examples we cite.

This post is by New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi.  I went to the South by Southwest Interactive festival this year with a hypothesis: My guess was that we might see the world's largest gathering of people wearing Google Glass. It's been over a year since the company began its invite-only trial program, and I figured these early adopters could come together and change the whole dynamic of the conference! Well...I was dead wrong. Not that many people were wearing them, even at an event about Google Glass. So, why the reluctance? This week on New Tech City, we explore why one of the most hyped technologies out there is facing a backlash even before it hits the market. 

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 lighter moments in life all while accomplishing daily tasks. Here are five steps to follow as you try to manage your daily workload and make it more efficient. 1) Assess what needs to be improved. Ask yourself: What really needs improvement? What's causing confusion? What's wasting time and effort? 2) Sort, stabilize, sweep/shine, standardize and sustain. At Toyota, we call this "5S." It's a methodology for organization that can be applied to an area such as a work space to maximize effectiveness. 3) Consider bulletin boards for yourself or your family where you can map out tasks in a clear, visual way. (See how New Tech City applied it to podcast production here.) 4) Analyze your habits and routines. Use and improve them to make them smoother and apply "built-in-quality" and "continuous flow." That means taking an inventory of what tools you need to do a task like laundry, dishes, or washing your car and then listing out a sequence of events to follow. So here's how it could work in action with a simple example.  "Built-in Quality" Applied to Cleaning Your Home Look for a process or routine that your family does on an ongoing basis. Take a look at the chore closely so it can be executed more effectively. Take cleaning the family room as an example.  1. How often should it be cleaned? 2. What cleaning supplies are needed? 3. What parts can adults do? What parts can the kids do? Make a list of what needs to get done that's broken down into these parts.  4. How long should it take? This is helpful to know to understand whether your ahead or behind in achieving your goal of completing the task. 5. Once the job is done, ask yourself: Was the job completed to your satisfaction? Why or why not?   Achieving efficiency is a process, not a simple fix. It takes iteration, awareness and constant adjustment to find the right flow. Hear more about applying Toyota's principles of efficiency to daily life and, in particular, Manoush Zomorodi's daily work routine in the latest New Tech City podcast. 

Productivity demands new ideas. Think about it: As the Industrial Age gives way to the Information Age, we office workers pecking away at our keyboards are akin to the assembly line workers churning out product. But can a knowledge employee streamline her production process to be as be as efficient as a finely-tuned modern factory?  I invited Toyota's automotive productivity guru, Jamie Bonini, to help me find out by giving me and New Tech City an efficiency makeover. Bonini travels the country implementing the Toyota Production System, a playbook for achieving extreme efficiency through iteration and something called Jidoka.  But my "product" isn't car after car after (almost) identical car. It's a podcast that changes every week. And what I need more of are ideas, as well as time. So how does Bonini deal with the glitches in my assembly line, like sick kids and a glut of emails? Well, he goes low-tech. His answer to digital clutter is simplicity and flow. And, basic as that sounds, it is hard to put into action. Really hard. But that's the point. Listen to Bonini guide us through the process of applying the Toyota Way to regular people on this week’s New Tech City. Or read a few here.  Subscribe to the podcast to get the extended New Tech City each week.   And here's what our board looks like now. No promises it won't get updated again soon.

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 sticker sets, a trend that has grabbed the attention of Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook and Google. This week on New Tech City, we try to find out if these new visual communication tools are expanding how we can express ourselves and relate to one another. You'll hear from an illustrator who designs emojis and stickers about what he's trying to express when he draws a wombat taking a bath and drinking a glass of wine. We'll also introduce you to several people who are testing the limits of visual communication: Data engineer Fred Benenson who oversaw a translation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into emojis, i.e. Emoji Dick;  Computational linguist Richard Sproat who explains the history of graphical languages in the plainest English imaginable, including the fascinating story of Charles Bliss's Blissymbolics; And you'll join us on the endearing journey of New Tech City's own Alex Goldmark and his girlfriend as they banish text from their text message diet and try to communicate with only emojis and digital stickers (no words). It gets pretty intimate, and confusing.   (Image translation) Alex: I'm going home. Liza: I'm with a friend and she's had a death in the family, don't come to drinks with us. Alex: ? I'm gonna drink with other people instead. 

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 standard T-shirt, but made an unexpected pivot toward inspirational wall hangings when their own list of mottos went viral on the internet. "Our focus now is creating art that encourages mindful living," says co-founder Michael Radparvar. To hear more about Holstee's unlikely journey and what the popularity of the Holstee Manifesto says about the tech sector, click on the audio or subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes. And if you have this poster up in your office, let us know why you chose these words to motivate you? Or if you don't buy into this manifesto, why not? As you'll hear the audio, we don't expect everyone to eat this up, but many many people have.  Special thanks to all the staff of WNYC lending their voices to the audio incarnation of Holstee Manifesto poster at the end of the podcast.

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. Kenneth Cukier, data editor at The Economist, explains "you'd be a fool to try to do online dating without machine intelligence, without machine learning." So we get him to explain what that means.  Kang Zhao, professor of management sciences at the University of Iowa, is a very smart guy who has a plan to make sure the matches in front of you are people you'd actually like, and who will actually respond to your messages. "There are ways to improve [profiles] because the information you have in your profile is sometimes just too much." And then we put all this to someone responsible for a whole lot of online meetings, VP of matching for eHarmony, Steve Carter, who says a few unexpected things, including that dating sites only work if you shake up your rigid mindset and embrace the real life, offline magic of face-to-face dating. 

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 time for an auto-delete revolution. Host Manoush Zomorodi talks to experts from a email folder's worth of extremely smart people with niche expertises to find out how clicking 'delete' more would affect our memories, the environment, our relationships, and more. Plus, a prolific college-age Snapchatter explains why he loves when the photos and videos he sends to his friends just disappear. Don't worry, this podcast won't self-destruct in five seconds. 

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 the mind (minus the cayenne-lemonade). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear strategies and science from two experts about building a more purposeful approach to email and smartphones, on how to strengthen your IRL relationships and even rediscover the wonder of your neighborhood or town.  Priya Parker of Thrive Labs is a visioner who helps companies and leaders set goals and innovate in part by questioning the use of technology. You'll hear her tips for how to identify your core purpose and make sure tech is a tool — not an impediment — as you work to stay true to that purpose. You'll also hear from Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, a podcast/company/conference that seeks to bridge the gap between spiritual practice and technology. Stay to the end of our podcast for a special mini-meditation session led by Horn.   Alternately, if you have just one minute, this video is a fun motivational pitch for attempting to take control of your digital vices.  Some music in this episode provided by Podington Bear from the Sound of Picture Production Library. Find a soundtrack for your own project at soundofpicture.com. 

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 York's Attorney General. His office subpoenaed Airbnb last year as part of an investigation into whether some of the people renting out their apartments are evading taxes and violating housing codes. Airbnb is fighting back and pointing out how it's helping New Yorkers and benefiting the city's economy. This week New Tech City examines Airbnb's legal limbo and how it's affecting landlords and hosts alike. Plus, office buildings have digital locks, but the technology is just starting to go residential. One man who installed the high-tech locks at his home in Connecticut and the results: Good (unless your battery explodes).

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 room). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear stories of young leaders learning to lead including Brian Wong, the 22-year-old head of Kiip, two founders that are even younger, and Arjun Dev Arora of Retargeter. Plus, what happens when an employee pushing 40 is asked to forgo her own hotel room and share a bed with her 24 year-old boss and coworker to save money. 

For the last two years in January, an enigmatic message has appeared on the internet from an unknown source signed "3301," sending thousands in search of answers to increasingly complicated puzzles and mysteries. But for whom, and to what end? Welcome to Cicada 3301, the "internet mystery that has the world baffled." To solve it, you need to know not only programming and encryption codes, but pre-Christian literature and Mayan numerology (it also helps to have friends around the world). This week New Tech City dives into the internet thriller made up of elaborate secrets and meets the people trying to solve the mystery. It’s a journey through obscure message boards that branches out across the internet and eventually around the globe. 

For this Christmas edition of New Tech City, a look back at two of our favorite segments from 2013. If you're like millions of other shoppers, you probably ordered at least a few gifts on the online retailer Amazon this holiday season. And even if your packages weren't delivered by drones, you won't want to miss my interview with Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone about his book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And it's not just about how Bezos's ingenious (sometimes controversial) tactics for selling us everything under the sun, but also insights into the CEO's aspirations for space travel and the giant clock he's building in a remote part of the world. Plus, a look at the startup Nextdoor, it wants to be a kind of Facebook for neighborhoods. Will you be its friend?

Bitcoins. Bitcoins. Bitcoins. These days, you can’t swing a digital cat without reading a story about the digital currency that’s got tech and financial reporters all in a froth. It’s complicated (though h/t to Quartz and its explanation about how it all works) and at times, hard to figure out how to make it relevant to everyone else. That is until I heard two stories about bitcoin that make up this week’s New Tech City.  First, there’s Gina Fox, a self-described "old mom" from Rhinebeck, New York, who misplaced as many as 100 bitcoins. So you know, in real life dollars, that could be worth about $100,000.  Can she find them?  Then, the second story, bitcoin goes locally-sourced near the organic aisle at a Whole Foods (and not in Brooklyn…yet…). Where bitcoin dealers meet for some face to face trading.  Slightly odd considering it’s a virtual currency. 

The millenial generation has a reputation for selfies, oversharing and cat memes, but many faith leaders are flocking to platforms like Facebook and Twitter to attract more of these young people to the church. In this week's episode, reporter (and lapsed Catholic) Marielle Segarra visits several tech-savvy churches in and around New York City to see if worship via smartphone apps and social media can bring her back into the fold. Click on the audio to hear Segarra's personal journey and how one Long Island pastor tracks down parishioners away at college to make sure they are going to Mass.   Do you have any personal stories about technology and faith?  Leave a comment below or tweet us at @NewTechCity.

Workers of every age have to keep their tech smarts up to date to stay relevant in today's workplace.  This week on New Tech City, inside tips from three experts on how to upgrade and hone your skills in a constantly changing and increasingly tech-dependent job market.  Larry Harris, Chief Marketing Officer of ad-tech company PubMatic, does a lot of hiring of recent grads. He offers tough truths, interview tactics and a brash tale for younger workers looking to make an impression with potential bosses.  Carmen Scheidel, Vice President of Learning + Development at Time, Inc., give tips for mid-career workers. (Hint: She's a big fan of the tutorials at Lynda.com). She also has an idea or two for how not to be the one to be laid off, if it comes to that.  Tom Kamber, Founding Executive Director of Older Adults Technology Services, talks to a few guests on how to reboot their outlook on technology and working for people a generation older. It gets a little touchy at parts.  Harris, Scheidel and Kamber were panelists at Tech + Today's Worker, a recent Greene Space event hosted by New Tech City's Manoush Zomorodi. Click on the listen button to hear this week's podcast with the best excerpts from the event as well as interviews with additional experts, audience members and a few surprises too, naturally.  There's also a short visit to graduation day at General Assembly's web development immersive course to show you the brimming optimism newly minted coders feel as they head into the workforce.  You can watch the full event here. The talk Manoush mentions in the podcast by Zach Lieberman of the School for Poetic Computation begins at 57:05. Also, check out the slides from the event below.  Tech + Today's Worker: Upgrading Your Skills at Every Stage of Life from Manoush Zomorodi

You love the planet and your gadgets, so how do you find a balance? With the holidays come tons of new gadgets from the iPad to the Xbox. But all of our old electronics have to go somewhere. This week we're sifting through solutions and uses for all our e-crap. First, a chat with environmental icon Al Gore about how to balance our love for the latest smartphone and protecting the earth. Then a conversation with Justin Wetherill who repairs shattered, cracked or otherwise abused smartphones so they won't be tossed. Then, we follow the death (and rebirth) of computer as it makes its way from an outdated hunk of junk to valuable bits of metal, plastic and circuit boards. And finally, the seemingly simple idea — picture a giant oven mitt — that fixes problems with radiators.

This week on New Tech City, we're crossing the digital divide.  First up, some residents New York City's Housing Authority who use free WiFi vans run by the city to apply for jobs, shop online, pay bills and take care of other odds and ends on the internet. Then, there's Mike, a 50-something owner of a diner in Brooklyn who's never surfed the web. According to a recent Pew poll, there are millions of people just like Mike all around the country (h/t to our friends at TLDR, a new WNYC podcast about all things internet). Finally, your home WiFi: Should you nix the password and let anyone in range surf the web for free? Tech writer Brian Hall did. Maybe he'll convince you to do the same.

Games have power, so this week, we play a few that can motivate kids to learn more, whether they realize it or not. And we see how a test case of a new technology for football might help keep young heads safer (and smarter) from injury. We’re familiar with GPS navigation and how smartphones use it to provide information about what’s around us, but Rabbi Owen Gottlieb of the Converjent Jewish gaming organization has deployed the technology in his Jewish Time Jump for fun, education and maybe a little connection (or reconnection for some) to Jewish history. “My interest is capturing the imagination of young learners," he says.  Are you ready for the scavenger hunt? Then there’s Minecraft. Don’t know what it is?  Well, South Park has an episode just for adults.  For WNYC's John Keefe, he had to take drastic measures to reclaim his computer from his daughters' Minecraft mania. With help from his girls, ages 8 and 10, they built their very own computer, just so they could play Minecraft. Finally, to the football field where concerns continue over concussions and possible brain damage. Reporter Tracey Samuelson visited a youth football team using new technology under their helmets that monitors hits and maybe, in the process, lets parents make a more informed decision about what is an acceptable risk in the name of the game. But it's never just a simple choice. 

Andrew Rasiej, chairman of NY Tech Meetup, argues that tech talent can do more for kids and New York's tech sector, if talented programmers get more involved in the classroom. In this week's New Tech City Quickie, where host Manoush Zomorodi talks with one smart person on one interesting topic, Rasiej lays out a vision for increasing civic engagement. "The tech community is rising up and saying 'We can actually help here. We can actually develop programs, go into public schools and start teaching science and math, teaching teachers and actually building the future that we want as opposed to waiting for the government to respond,'" he says.   It's part of a vision of "we government" replacing "e-government," and what Rasiej calls the "internet public" who are looking for ways to make the world a better place and to use technology to do it. "The most important things that [technologists] could possibly do is go to the public school in their neighborhood, find the principal who is willing and give them some time," Rasiej says.     

Coders have a very specific way of working, it’s called Agile.  One family decided to apply it to their lives.  What if healthcare.gov had too? Meet the Feiler-Rottenbergs.  They’re like any parents raising two 8-year old daughters, except their family runs on Agile. What’s Agile?  It's a system software engineers use to organize projects. As its manifesto describes it (yes, it has a manifesto), it’s about encouraging collaboration, change and constant improvement. Kind of like what should happen when raising kids. "This is a very abstract way of talking about families, a systems way, but it is the reality parents face," Bruce Feiler tells Manoush Zomorodi in this week’s New Tech City.  Bruce is the author of The Secrets of Happy Families, a book about how he applies Agile and other Silicon Valley workplace techniques to his own family. To see how it works for engineers, Zomorodi also visits Huge, the digital agency down the road from Feiler's home in Brooklyn that was behind the redesign of New York City's website

The tiny Baltic nation of Estonia puts the United States to shame when it comes to electronic voting (not to mention marinated eel served cold and teaching little kids to code.) In 2005, Estonians became the first voters to cast ballots online thanks to innovative ID cards and a special card reader that allows citizens to vote from home or anywhere with an internet connection. "Instead of going five kilometers uphill in a snowstorm to the voting booth, it would make more sense to stay home and just click a mouse," Tarvi Martens, chairman of Estonia's Electronic Voting Committee told Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's New Tech City The day before elections in the US, little Estonia has some tips on running democracy.

This week New Tech City looks at New York's internet connectivity a year after Sandy knocked out communications for so many New Yorkers. WNYC's Ilya Marritz tells the story of how parts of Red Hook, Brooklyn, have its own Wi-Fi courtesy of the local startup, Brooklyn Fiber. One of the technologies used involves "mesh wireless networking," something researcher Anthony Townsend, author of Smart Cities, discusses in detail. Then Susan Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, talks about the problems that arise when three internet service providers — Time Warner Cable, Verizon and Cablevision — control the market in New York City. Finally, the story of one New York businessman who saved his small CPR training company from Sandy by storing everything in the cloud before to the storm hit; and how he's obsessed with backing everything up to this day.    

He wants to find in a cheaper way to get to outer space.  He’s building a clock that ticks once a year, moves its "century hand" once every hundred years and chimes once a millennium.  Oh, and he’s also the CEO of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.  He is Jeff Bezos. In this week’s New Tech City Quickie, Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone, author of the new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon throws light on the story behind the man and the company: His upbringing, his personality and management style and why Bezos continues to pump Amazon's extraordinary revenues into new ventures within the company instead of pleasing shareholders by turning a profit.

No heavy subject matter this week. Instead, we're diving into two subcultures that have been transformed by tech: Coffee and cigarettes. If you've never heard of a burr grinder or cartomizer, this podcast is for you.  What's disruptive in the world of coffee? For one thing, there's a boatload of new ways to make a cup of joe.  "The techniques are relatively new," says food writer Oliver Strand. "They're counter-intuitive. They're coming from unexpected places." Plus, WNYC's Ilya Marritz investigates the largely unregulated $2 billion e-cigarette industry. He introduces e-cig terminology: Vaping anyone? And explains where e-cigarettes fall on the good-for-you-or-bad-for-you spectrum.  

More and more micro-entrepreneurs are using online services like Etsy, Kickstarter, Uber and Lyft to create their own jobs. Welcome to the new DIY economy. This week, New Tech City introduces you to the drivers, the Airbnb hosts and the other entrepreneurs making a living (or supplementing their income) in today's "sharing economy." "We are going through the greatest economic transformation in human history," Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, tells host Manoush Zomorodi.  According to one recent report, more than 40 percent of us will be freelancers, contractors and temp workers by 2020.

The recent revelation that companies like Google and Facebook routinely hand over data about users' digital communications to the National Security Agency has many Americans wondering whether everything they do online is being tracked by the government.  This week on New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi and producer Alex Goldmark explore what happened when Lavabit and Calyx — two companies that took a stand for privacy — were visited by the FBI. "There was a real serious knock at the door and when I opened the door, there was an agent straight out of central casting with a trench coat," says Nicholas Merrill of Calyx.  The experience of Merrill and Ladar Levison of Lavabit raise questions of when technologists should hand over data to the government and what a "Hippocratic Oath" for technologists might look like.  To hear the full story, click on the audio player. 

As Twitter's lawyers prepare to take the company public, they aired some of the company's financial dirty laundry in a regulatory filing this week, confirming that the social media service continues to lose money. For dirty laundry of a more personal nature, we can expect details in Nick Bilton's forthcoming book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi spoke to the New York Times technology columnist about why none of Twitter's original founders continue to work at the company and how a service built on connections ended up driving four friends apart.

Two groups of people that shy away from many technologies — Amish and Mennonites — are actually on the cutting edge when it comes to genetics.  In this week's New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi visits a testing facility that caters to the children of these families, many of whom have genetic disorders due to the relatively narrow gene pool in their communities in rural Pennsylvania. An Amish woman who works at the Clinic for Special Children as well as a doctor tell the stories of their Amish patients — some heartbreaking, some life-affirming — who are grappling with when and how to let technology into their lives.  Back in New York City, a visit to a place at the opposite end of the spectrum of genetic diversity: The New York Genome Center, which houses a ton of genomes from people around New York and the world. 

It’s Obamacare-time!  On October 1, states launch their online exchanges where people can choose their health care plans. But Eric Molinsky discovered it's a last minute scramble at the tech companies trying get the sites up and running in time.   Also, New Tech City Host Manoush Zomorodi talks to Cyrus Massoumi, founder and CEO of ZocDoc, who says Obamacare is a big opportunity (read, profits!) for tech companies that focus on health care. And Stan Alcorn profiles Tasting Table, where employees wear UP by Jawbone bracelets that track their daily activity minute by minute. For the company, it's about wellness and community; in the future, however, other employers could use it to monitor employee activity – or time on the couch – and tie it to health care premiums.

Mayor Bloomberg likes to take credit for transforming New York City into the second biggest technology economy in the country. Does he deserve it?  Silicon Alley power players are certainly willing to give the mayor some major kudos: They respect the man that built his own tech enterprise — the Bloomberg terminal — into a multibillion-dollar empire.   This week New Tech City talks to New York's software developers, engineers and startup CEOs about the impact of having an "entrepreneur-in-chief" running City Hall for 12 years. Overall, Mayor Bloomberg gets a glowing review from residents of Silicon Alley. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of how and why the city's tech sector has grown, there's room for debate. 

This week New Tech City takes you into the bodegas, laundromats and back alleys of New York's black market for stolen cell phones. More than 15,000 handsets were snatched in the city last year alone. AT&T's chief security officer says theft is just one of the ills smartphone owners face: Your phone can also be spammed, hacked, hijacked and attacked in countless other ways. WNYC's Ilya Marritz and host Manoush Zomorodi review what you can do to protect your devices.  Plus, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley eulogizes Red Burns, the so-called "godmother of Silicon Alley," who passed away last month at the age of 88.

Scientists in New York City are at the center of President Obama's brain research initiative, a $100 million effort to better understand the inner workings of the human noggin.  "For a lot of the way that different brain regions work together to generate complex functions, we're really stumbling around in the dark," said Dr. Cori Bargmann, a Rockefeller University neuroscientist and co-chair of the project. "The point of the brain initiative is to turn on some lights." This week on New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi sits down with Bargmann for an in-depth discussion of the program's objectives. "The living brain and the way that activity flows through the brain when you have a perception, or a memory, or an emotion or a thought are the things that really concern us," she said. President Obama announced the BRAIN initiative in April. Yes, like much of Washington-speak, it's an acronym: Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. Just don't call it brain mapping.  "A map is something static, and the whole point of the brain is that it's always moving," Bargmann said. "If you want to think of it as a map at all, you should think of it more as a Google Map that shows where the traffic is moving." If only human heads and brains were translucent like zebrafish heads and brains, you might even be able to see what Bargmann describes as "neurons...twinkling like stars in the sky."  Also in this week's show, WNYC business and economics editor Charlie Herman visits a new biotechnology lab in Harlem called the Harlem Biospace where biotech entrepreneurs can make discoveries and turn them into businesses. New York has nine major medical centers and is a major center for biomedical science, according to the lab's founder Sam Sia, but there are still barriers for entrepreneurs working in biosciences in the city.  "The issues so far with translating some of the research into inventions and products is that there hasn't been a place to get started for people in terms of a lab for the one- or two-person startup," he said. This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

When it comes to finding just the right sized office space, New York City's tech companies are turning to subleases because they are not ready to sign five to 10 year leases favored by the city's landlords. This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Dan Tucker reports on what it's like for a growing tech company looking for office space in neighborhoods like Union Square, Flatiron and Dumbo where loads of startups are piling into the same floor or office. "Most floor plates of offices are bigger than your average early-stage startup will need, so mutualizing or sharing in this way, I've found to be extremely common," said serial entrepreneur Amol Sarva.  Plus, an answer to the question: So, what is the difference between an angel investor and a venture capitalist? (Hint: Angels are kind of like an extension of your parents.) "People often mix up angels and VCs or they say them in one breath — angels and VCs, or VCs and angels — but they are very, very different creatures," says David Rose, CEO of Gust, a website that connects startups and investors. Finally, the sport of tennis is changing thanks to technological innovations and new rules recently passed by the International Tennis Federation.  As the U.S. Open revs up, New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi talks to USA Today tennis correspondent Doug Robson about rule changes that could allow technologies like rackets that track biometrics and a camera that records a player's court position and unforced errors. Robson says players like Bethanie Mattek-Sands are even experimenting with Google Glass. 

Simple experiences, like borrowing a ladder from a neighbor or just taking a long solitary hike, are being altered by tech. This week on New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi examines a service called Nextdoor, a social network that aims to form a kind of online community posting board for physical neighborhoods.  "The research shows that if you use an online mechanism to connect with your neighbors, you're 70 percent more likely to communicate with those neighbors in person," says Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia. Plus, WNYC's Amy Pearl heads out to the Appalachian Trail in upstate New York, where she finds the act of "getting away from it all" has been changed forever thanks to the strong 3G signal on the northern part of the trail. All the thru-hikers she met completing the 2,180-mile trail seemed to have iPhones. "I'm not trying to experience the wilderness. That's not why I'm here," said one hiker with the trail name Big Spoon. "Happiness isn't real unless it's shared," said another thru-hiker who goes by Brain Damage. Check out this slideshow of thru-hikers that Pearl met along the trail, and on a related note, our first video podcast about what happens when a summer camp lets teens bring along their smartphones. This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

Experiments in the life sciences, taxi technology and bike sharing are helping regular people do DIY scientific research and transform the way they get around.  This week on New Tech City, reporter Jessica Gould visits Genspace, a community biotech lab in Brooklyn where lay people can extract genes from strawberries, sequence DNA and play Bill Nye the Science Guy for a few hours.  "The benefits of having a garage biology or amateur biology movement grow are that you get people thinking outside the box," said Art Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. Meanwhile, New Tech City producer Dan Tucker tests out a new model for bike share with no docks, no kiosks, just bikes. Unlike New York's Citibike program, tech startup Social Bicycles makes a self-locking bike with a bevy of tech-savvy features like GPS location and social media capability.  "What we've done is put the communications technology onto the bike," said Social Bicycles co-founder Ryan Rzepecki.  Also on this week's show, this is the first summer when New Yorkers can "e-hail" a taxi with a smartphone app like Uber or Hailo, and so far, it's caught on with only a very small slice of the population. During June, the first month the apps were allowed, less that one-quarter of one percent of taxi rides originated with an e-hail. When the data came out last week, New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi tweeted: "Old habits die hard. New Yorkers still prefer to hail cabs by hand." When Stacy-Marie Ishmael, product manager at the social media startup Percolate, tweeted back "Brown people disagree," New Tech City called her up to hear her story.  "One of the advantages of these kinds of apps is they remove the uncertainty that you face that a cab driver will pass you by because they're profiling you based on how you look," Ishmael said. This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

Biographers have relied on handwritten letters for centuries, but more and more, they're using emails, texts and online chats to tell the story of a person's life. This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports on how writers like Walter Isaacson — author of Steve Jobs — are using electronic correspondence to write biographies. Isaacson told Marritz about emails between Bill Gates and his team at Microsoft reacting to new Apple products, including one that read "we were smoked." "It was sort of a wonderful exchange to know exactly what people were thinking at Microsoft when the iPod first came out," Isaacson said.  Then, WNYC's Dan Tucker explains a digital trend he's noticed at a spate of recent weddings when it comes time for speeches and toasts. The best man or maid of honor takes the microphone, whips out a sheaf of paper and starts reading from emails the bride and groom sent each other when they first met.  One newlywed said having your emails to your bride-to-be read aloud to 250 wedding guests was hilarious and embarrassing but ultimately touching because everyone got a play-by-play of love blossoming.   "I think it's the coolest thing ever," said Josh Galecki. "It's kind of a snapshot or a look in on a relationship that you really can't get."  Also on this week's podcast, you'll hear from Mike Bergelson, CEO of a Everwise, a startup that's trying to update the idea of mentoring in the workplace through technology.  It's something akin to online dating for mentors and mentees with a notable addition: So-called "relationship managers" based in Minnesota who help shepherd the process along.  This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

In the smart home of the future, your milk jug will tell you when your milk has gone sour, your plants will text you when they need watering and with solar panels on your roof, you may not even need to be connected to the power grid.  This week on WNYC's New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi tours a "Home of the Future" where appliances talk to their owners and each other and furniture can be taken apart and hung on the wall.  "The systems are going to start talking to each other," says Piers Fawkes, founder of the consulting firm PSFK, which set up the smart home (really, a smart apartment) in Manhattan. Across town, some Brooklyn homeowners are teaming up to bring their apartments and houses solar technology. WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports on Solarize Brooklyn, a coalition that's trying to help hundreds of families make their own electricity.  Finally, Astrid, one of the most popular to-apps shuts down for good August 5th.  Jill Duffy, PC Magazine's resident productivity expert, gives her advice on the strategies and apps for staying on task and organizing your life in a digital world. This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

Some e-retailers are shifting their strategies and deciding to open brick-and-mortar stores, hoping to lure customers who might not be comfortable purchasing a pair of shorts or eyeglasses without first trying them on.  This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports on companies like New York-based Warby Parker and Bonobos.  Like other e-retailers, they've decided to to open boutique showrooms in trendy neighborhoods in cities across the country, from Manhattan's Soho to San Francisco's Union Square. According to Bonobos CFO Bryan Wolff, there's no shame in the new strategy.  "That's the nature of a start-up. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to be when you grow up," he said.  Plus, some service sector employers like retailers and restaurants are joining the digital age and forgoing the old-school paper application. Instead of making applicants sit in the corner and fill page after page by hand, businesses are handing out iPads loaded with user-friendly digital applications.  New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi visited the yogurt shop 16 Handles to talk with Adam Lewis, CEO of Apploi, a start-up that helps businesses make new hires with little more than an iPad. "You saw in the June jobs report that out the 195,000 new jobs, 112,000 of those are in hospitality, leisure and retail. And why are still so many jobs open? One of the reasons I believe is that it's not easy enough to apply to these jobs," he said.  This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM, AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.

New York City is a leading center for neuroscience research, so you'd think it would stand to benefit from President Obama's new $100 million initiative to map the human brain. Well, not so fast.  This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports on some of the roadblocks the city faces as it struggles to grow its life sciences sector and compete with the likes of Silicon Valley, San Diego and Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It's not that New York lacks for money. It just doesn't have a deep pool of people who've made money in life sciences in the city," said Maria Gotsch, president and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City, a nonprofit investor in biotech businesses. One company profiled in this week's show — Neuromatters — is funded by a grant from the Defense Department. That raises the question about how important defense spending is to growing the nation's tech sector.  Tech and security journalist Noah Shachtman tells host Manoush Zomorodi that Pentagon support is indispensable for start-ups and established tech firms alike. "If you're a university researcher and you are working on a far-out robotics project, a far-out cybersecurity project, a far-out big data project, the chances are really, really, really high that somewhere along the way, you are going to get Pentagon funding," said Shachtman, executive editor for news at Foreign Policy magazine. The Pentagon has long funded innovators and entrepreneurs, but there are some new ways for private companies to raise capital as well.  WNYC business editor Charlie Herman explains a recent ruling by the SEC that will allow so-called "general solicitation" for the first time. That means, starting soon, companies ranging from startups to hedge funds will be able to put out advertisements, send emails to potential investors and even create a Facebook page requesting cash.  The provisions are part of the JOBS — or Jumpstarting Our Business Startups — Act, which was signed into law in April 2012.  This is an extended podcast of New Tech City. You can listen to the broadcast version every Wednesday morning at 5:50 and 7:50 a.m. on WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820 and New Jersey Public Radio or subscribe to the program on iTunes.