Culture
Does the rise of technology signal the end of "big?" Nicco Mele, author of "The End of Big," says "big" institutions - from big politics to big media – better start worrying. Read more…
One journalist argues that Americans haven't cornered the market on creativity. And that China is hot on our heels. Should we be concerned? Read more...
Think about your high school. No matter what city or town it was in, it likely grouped students by age. And offered an eerily similar menu of subjects — biology, math, history, Spanish — which met for 45 minutes or an hour. But why? Sal Khan has been asking some tough questions about education, and he's bent on re-inventing our system, one student at a time. Read more...
Sir Ken Robinson – whose TED Talk on creativity is one of the most popular of all time – once tracked down a music teacher in the port town of Liverpool, England. The teacher had taught two of the most famous Liverpudlians of all time - Paul McCartney and George Harrison - and Robinson asked if he had noticed anything special about McCartney and Harrison when they were students. The response? Read more...
In our continuing series on American competitiveness - and whether America will still be the place where great innovation occurs - we’ve looked at transportation with Former Governor Ed Rendell and education with Professor Paul Peterson and former Assistant Secretary of Education Chester Finn. Today we ask: how desirable are American workers? And is that desirability threatened by gridlock in Washington? Read more...
If you strolled around Wall Street in the 1950s, you’d see hoards of dark-suited businessmen bustling about, briefcases in hand. Visit today, and the view is a little different: the businessmen are still there, but they’re accompanied by something else: strollers. Leigh Gallagher, author of “The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving,” and Alan Ehrenhalt, author of “The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City,” say this is a trend that’s reshaping cities all over America. Once a place where people went to work - not live – younger generations are increasingly choosing to make the inner-city their home.
When you think of farming in America, the first things that come to mind are probably picturesque golden cornfields, or dairy farmers rising at the crack of dawn to milk their cows. But, according to demographer Joel Kotkin, a new crop is on the rise in Los Angeles, and it says a lot about how America’s population is changing. The crop in question? Bok choy, a leafy cabbage popular in Asian cuisine (“of course,” Kotkin jokes, “there’s another crop that may not be quite as legal that might have higher numbers”).
We're looking in the U.S. at an aging population - the baby boomers are rapidly turning 65, and the demand for people to help care for those who are getting older is only going to rise. Kara Miller chatted with WGBH Morning Edition host Bob Seay about amazing advances in technology - particularly in robotics - that may fundamentally change what life is like for us as we age.
Time for a little experiment. Open a new tab in your browser and type in the URL “Relentless.com.” It’ll take you to a surprising and probably familiar place: the homepage of Amazon.com. As Brad Stone, author of the new and controversial book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” notes, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos considered “relentless” a fair characterization of the company he wanted to build. But, truth be told, it’s also a fair characterization of the man behind the company.
It's time to examine the challenges and opportunities around green architecture. Read More...
