Search Results for: NPR

The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers

The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers

The Man Who Spilled the Secrets

The Man Who Spilled the Secrets

The Gene Machine: Building the Personal DNA Decoder

Longreads Pick

Have we mentioned the ifs? Like all potentially disruptive innovations, gene sequencers could fizzle. Their success depends on unpredictable events: how fast the technology improves, how quickly researchers can make medical discoveries based on the new machines and–most critically–whether drugs can be developed to treat diseases. Gene test prices could drop, becoming a low-margin commodity like medical blood tests (cholesterol, blood sugar and so on), which, at a few bucks a pop, are a $40 billion business. Ultimately Rothberg’s machine may not win. Like the Commodore 64 home computer that dominated in the 1980s and disappeared soon after, the PGM could be quickly eclipsed.

Source: Forbes
Published: Dec 30, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,125 words)

The Decline Effect

The Decline Effect

From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect

From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect

Investigative Shortfall

Longreads Pick

Many news outlets are doing far less accountability reporting than in the past, bad news indeed for the public. New nonprofit investigative ventures have emerged, but they can’t pick up the slack by themselves.

Published: Sep 6, 2010
Length: 30 minutes (7,646 words)

The Web Means the End of Forgetting

Longreads Pick

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree.

Published: Jul 21, 2010
Length: 27 minutes (6,787 words)

The End of Men

Longreads Pick

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Aug 1, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,493 words)

Mark Zuckerberg: The Temptation of Facebook’s CEO

Longreads Pick

If not for founder Mark Zuckerberg’s stubborn streak, social-media pioneer Facebook might be just another part of a giant media or tech outfit today. Instead it’s a giant on its own, with close to 500 million users, some $20 billion in market value, and millions of investors eagerly awaiting an IPO. For his new book, “The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World,” Fortune contributor David Kirkpatrick gained unprecedented access to the company and Zuckerberg, who turns 26 this month. In this adapted excerpt, Kirkpatrick reveals Zuckerberg’s turmoil as he resisted takeover offers from a parade of moguls.

Source: Fortune
Published: May 6, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,320 words)

The Next Empire

Longreads Pick

All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 1, 2010
Length: 26 minutes (6,656 words)