Note to Self

Touchscreen phones work so well for blind people that Braille may become obsolete. But advocates worry this could render the next generation "functionally illiterate."

We take a look at exactly what tech is in the classroom. Which leads to a bigger question: Why is this tech in the classroom?

We're kicking off a series on kids and technology. Sure, it’s just easier to ask, “did you finish your homework?” and assume they’re figuring it out on their own or from other kids. But as one middle school teacher found out, there's an opportunity to go WAY deeper.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier, author of “Data and Goliath,” says you should stop feeling guilty about skimming the Terms of Service. Get mad instead.

Watching TV — especially when it isn’t, strictly speaking, on TV — has gotten complicated. This week we bring you a conversation with the creators of "High Maintenance." They're staying off broadcast and embracing a smaller but devoted online-only audience, instituting a paywall in exchange for the artistic freedom. So what do they think of sharing passwords on Netflix accounts and fast forwarding through commercials?

Manoush made some phone calls to Bored and Brilliant participants around the world. This week, New Tech City eavesdrops.

We changed our phone habits, opened our minds to day-dreaming, and it felt good. Here's what the experts had to say about our data.

It's time to get really bored and make something creative. You might just learn something about yourself with this challenge designed by artist Nina Katchadourian.

For today's challenge, we want you to take note of one person, object, or interesting, uninventable detail you would have missed if your nose were glued to your phone.

Your instructions: Craft an away-message like “I’m out, taking an intensive sushi making class! Wasabi fingers so no phone for me today!" Put it up for an hour, an afternoon, or the whole day. It's good for your productivity.

Your instructions for today: Delete that app. And listen in as our favorite casual cell phone video gamer confronts the designer of her worst addiction.

We take 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") photos per year, mostly on our phones. Today, we want you to start seeing the world through your eyes, not your screen.

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.

Prepare for our week of Bored and Brilliant challenges with a peek at the data we're gathering on how much you use your phone and what you want to change. Plus, a psychologist and neuroscientist put it all in context with tips for behavior change.

"Hello, this is Grace from Westchester. I am 16-year-old girl. I have an iPhone 4 and I am going to record my activities for the next few days."

Minds need to wander to reach full potential, and all that time on your phone might be getting in the way. We're here to help with a big project called Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art of Spacing Out.

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. He says his company Bridj is going to "rethink the way mass transportation works for the first time, really, since 1897 when the first subway tracks were laid" in Boston, where Bridj just launched its first data-driven routes. George thinks that by crunching enough mobility data he can figure out where people need to go in almost real-time, and create or alter bus routes so there's always one when you need it, and they all go pretty much express. As for the not owning buses thing. Bridj will make the schedules and routes then contract actual bus companies for the wheels, much like the way Uber and other taxi apps use private drivers but don't employ any of them directly. If George is right, his technology could fundamentally change the way people get around cities with something between a taxi shuttle and the subway. It could also become an elitist alternative public transit for the smartphone crowd. To find out — and to test out a few other transpo tech promises — New Tech City producer Alex Goldmark takes a road trip from New York to Boston using every possible means of high-tech-enhanced transportation and trip planning tools he could possibly find. Listen to this episode to hear how the future of transportation rolls... and lurches, and crashes.

Fear of math is real. In fact, psychologists now use the term “math anxiety” to describe the panic many people — particularly girls and women — have about doing math. On this week’s New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi plays a new video game that is being developed to alleviate math anxiety by getting physical in front of a screen. Players move into so-called 'power poses.' It's all based on the incredibly popular TED talk below. The game Scoops! from NYU-Poly's Game Innovation Lab turns fractions into fun and attempts to put research about the mind-body connection to use all by making kids stand strong. Can it heal Manoush’s own math PTSD? VIDEOS:

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.