Download MP3 (31:21)

You don’t have to be a fan of Spider-Man to know that an arachnid’s silk is some pretty powerful stuff. After all, its tensile strength is close to that of high-grade steel. But is turns out that the strength of a spider’s web is about more than just the silk. Some new research from MIT suggests that its also the material’s combination of strength *and* stretchiness. In this week’s tech podcast, you’ll hear all about the research, and its possible implications for human building and design.

Also in this episode: you’ll hear about a German company that’s taken to the web, and to apps, to help drivers and passengers share rides. It’s called Mitfahrgelegenheit, or Carpooling.com for you non-German speakers.

We’ll also bring you the story of one Texas technology company, Eolas, that created quite a legal stir in the online world. Plus, how a virtual reality game helped one Afghanistan vet deal with the pain of horrific burns.

And we end with a lovely mini-documentary on that little block-filled game you love to hate: Tetris!

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Duk)

Andrade holds Evoria in great esteem, but she’s definitely her own artist.

Global Hit: Mayra Andrade by The World

Listen above for some really beautiful music and for the answers to these three Mayra Andrade trivia questions.

1. Why does Mayra Andrade carry a dinner knife and a length of metal wherever she goes? (It’s not for eating.)
2. Who was her musical mentor in Cape Verde? (It wasn’t Cesária Évora.)
3. Which part of her own body does she want people to access through her music? (It’s not her head.)

Subscribe and follow The World’s Global Hit

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Follow @marcowerman
  

We start 2012 with a fantastic B-side podcast. The BBC’s Peter Curran takes us on a tour of a giant silver donut in the English countryside. Sounds yummy, right? Well, just wait until you hear about the tech and the science inside the Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron. As you’ll hear, these scientists take their infra-red and x-rays very seriously. So seriously that they have their own podcast!

And we should note: with the new year comes a new way to savor the joys of the tech podcast. We have created a mobile app that can be used with most smartphones and tablet devices, including Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Just follow this link with your mobile browser, and then either download or “add to home screen” as preferred. Not only can you automagically access the latest podcast, but you can also read the show notes, and follow WTP on Twitter and Facebook. One stop shopping, as they say, for Tech That Matters.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

What made it distinctly Indian was one of the figures at the center of the protest: a bare-chested yoga guru named Baba Ramdev who undertook a public fast. (The other central figure was–and remains–the social activist Anna Hazare.)

These days stories from India tend to be about the country’s technology-driven charge into the 21st century, powered by an army of web gurus.

In contrast, the notion of spiritual gurus conjures the image of hermits living in the mountains, or bearded sages from the sixties living in remote ashrams.

So how did they become some of India’s most powerful figures?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of India’s most visible gurus. He displays all the hallmarks of the Indian guru: He’s childlike, he giggles; there’s flowing hair and simple robes.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Don’t confuse Sri Sri Ravi Shankar with Ravi Shankar the sitar player. This one leads an international non-profit organization called The Art of Living: it aims to create a world free from violence by eliminating stress.

But the guru says he’s also obliged to speak out on Indian politics, for instance corruption. “Spiritual leaders cannot sit back and say this is not my area. They have to take action. They have the role of reformers, not rulers, but they will have to have a say.”

They already do have a say.

When Baba Ramdev arrived for his anti-corruption fast in Delhi, Indian government ministers took the time to meet him at the airport. That’s a lot of political bowing and scraping for someone unelected. And it provoked a degree of soul-searching in the Indian media.

On Indian TV commentators wondered if the likes of Baba Ramdev were indeed more like politicians than gurus. Was it, they asked, for him to be weighing in on complicated national issues such as corruption?

The consensus is that spiritual leaders like Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have managed to do what India’s political leaders have so far not: capture the hearts and minds of many in India’s growing middle-class.

Ramnath Narayanswamy is a professor of management at a Bangalore business college. He teaches a course called ‘Spirituality for Global Managers’.

“I think India’s unique contribution to world civilization is precisely what we call in Sanskrit a ‘guru shishya parampara’, the relationship between a master and his disciple” he says.

Ramnath Narayanswamy's ring bears the image of his guru (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

That master-disciple relationship still resonates throughout Indian society–from the office to the school to the ashram. Pair a genuine teacher with a committed student and knowledge will flow.

Narayanswamy met his own guru on July 28th, 2007.

“It was an enormous outpouring of love,” he remembers.

Narayanswamy says his guru has spiritual powers beyond rational understanding.

“As soon as I approached he seemed to know everything about me. In about three minutes he told me my whole life. He knew everything. If there’s a scratch on your body, he’d know about it. And he’s never wrong.”

But millions of Indians–especially young Indians–aren’t so comfortable with that degree of belief.

Young professionals like Nandini Rao are members of the secular global community. She’s a brand manager for an IT company in Bangalore. But she’s also Indian.

“At one level we feel very educated, all of us are traveling across the globe,” she says.

“But at the same time there is a conflict.. How much of a connection should I have to my Indian roots?”

The problem is that, as India’s middle class has grown, its Indian roots have become harder to grasp.

In a city like Bangalore, people don’t know their neighbors any more. They’re unhappy with their careers, or their appearance. They’re money-conscious and time-poor.

So what do you do?

Well therapy’s out, says Sumit Acharya, another IT worker. This is India, after all.

“If somebody wants to go and talk to a psychologist it will be considered a negative in the society,” he argues.

“But if somebody goes and meets the gurus, [it] will be considered a very positive step forward.”

So you’ve got a growing Indian middle class that’s feeling cut off from its roots. And you’ve got this cultural ideal of the master-disciple relationship. Put the two together and you get some pretty fertile soil for an enterprising guru.

A bearded sage by the name of Sadhguru appears on giant billboards throughout Bangalore. He’s developed a philosophy designed to appeal to tech-savvy Indians. It’s called ‘Inner Engineering’.

A Bangalore billboard promoting 'Inner Engineering' (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

Sadhguru is a kind of life coach as much as anything else.

“Engineering fundamentally means to create situations the way we want it. But our inner situations are not the way we want it.”

He sells DVDs and self-help books alongside his Inner Engineering course. The profits, his foundation says, help fund charitable projects in rural India.

But even if the motives of Sadhguru and others are humanitarian, the sheer scale of their operations makes others uneasy. Ramachandra Guha is a well-known Indian author and columnist.

“Historically and traditionally, spirituality has been associated with solitude, with a retreat from the world,” he says.

“It’s rather difficult for someone like me to think of such a guru who’s interested in brand strategy and brand marketing and expanding his empire. But that’s how many Indian gurus are today.”

Some say many of today’s gurus are something else: corrupt.

Sathya Sai Baba, who died earlier this year, was one of India’s most powerful and revered spiritual leaders.

He built schools, hospitals, and transformed his own village into a thriving city. But over the years, he was also publicly accused of money-laundering, fraud and sexual abuse–charges he always denied. And after his death, large amounts of cash, gold and silver were found in his private quarters.

For Ranji David, an IT training manager, he was just one of many gurus who didn’t live up to their billing.

“What makes it frustrating for the urban youth is that every time these babajis come it’s good work and you know packaged really well. But somewhere down the line they get exposed.”

So how can Indians today tell the difference between the fraud and the teacher worth following? It’s an important question, not just for India’s spiritual life, but for its political future too.

One straightforward answer came from, as it happened, another guru–a clean-shaven man named Eswaran. He lives with his wife in a small apartment near the center of Bangalore.

Vedanta guru Eswaran at home in Bangalore (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

“When it comes to the teaching of the master, you [must] go extremely critical,” he says.

“You’ve got to be doubting, doubting, questioning, questioning, questioning.”

In other words, don’t forget to use your brain.

“God has given intellect to human being[s], right. For what? To think.”

Good advice in any age.

We’ve got some inspirational tech stories this week on the podcast. First up, this is a Katherine Bomkamp, a student at West Virginia University. In interviews, Ms. Bomkamp says she likes the normal student activities: hanging out with friends, going to parties, etc. But, she’s also an entrepreneur with her own company. When she was 16, she was inspired to help veterans who suffer from phantom-limb pain. Now, four years later, she’s well on her way to developing a prosthetic device that she believes can help them. It’s called the Pain Free Socket, and you can hear Bomkamp talk about it in this week’s edition of the best kept secret in podcasting, the World’s Technology Podcast.

Also, we’ve got another great inspirational item on a project called Random Hacks of Kindness, and we’ll also have an in-depth look at the Satellite Sentinel Project.

For those who prefer a bit of fear to inspiration, we’ll also take a look at the raging debate over how the rules of war apply when the war moves online.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Greg Ellis for WVU)

Who says that robots have to be tall, dark, humanoid and metallic? Certainly not George W. Whitesides and his team at Harvard. They’ve created a whole new set of robots that take their cues from worms and starfish, not Arnie and the Terminator. These soft, flexible and squishy ‘bots can do all manner of interesting maneuvers. The hope is that they will be able to go where few other kinds of robots can. In this week’s tech podcast, you’ll hear Professor Whitesides talk about the advantages these robots have. We can’t resist giving you this video sampler as well:

There’s also this:

Also in the podcast this week, we’ll hear about two compounds that have been very much in use, and in the news, both in the United States and elsewhere: pepper spray and tear gas. One of the inventors of modern pepper spray tells us why he’s now speaking out about its use. We’ll also hear from an expert on tear gas.

We also will tell you about some research on the development of a new kind of contact lens – one that might be able to actually project your email right in front of your eyeballs. And we’ll end with a check-in one of WTP’s favorite stories, Bletchley Park in the UK. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Sue Black, who is fighting to save the building and the grounds where British code-breakers cracked German codes during World War II. Truly, tech that still matters.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

This is the Kiira, an electric vehicle that has been built and successfully tested by professors and students at Makerere University in Uganda. They’ve been working on it since about 2009. Most of the parts were built in Uganda, and the car was assembled there. Some are hailing it as proof that African science and technology is pushing forward at a rapid rate. Others…are not so sure it was money well spent. Listen in to episode 346, and you can decide for yourself. You’ll hear from some of those involved in the project.

The Kiira is one of three stories from Africa on the podcast this week. We’ll also bring you a story about the arrival of a new fiber optic cable in Liberia, and what it might mean for Internet access, and the country’s economy. The third story is about a unique project for recycling plastic bottles in Nigeria. How so? Well…how about using them to build a house. Yep, a house.

We’ll also talk about how a US company’s products have been implicated in Syria’s net crackdown, and in Burma as well. And you’ll hear about Instant WILD, a phone and web app that allows you to help scientists discover new animal species.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

That happened to Yang’s father, who ended up working in a coal mine.

He thought his daughter might escape that fate if he taught her to play an instrument-well enough to enter an elite music academy.

And so she learned to play the traditional two-string erhu. She studied under her father’s tutelage for several hours a day. Because the family’s apartment was so small, and the walls so thin, she would practice the erhu in the park.

The hard work paid off. Yang won a national competition playing a famous piece of music called River of Tears.

Her success led to a place at a music conservatory in Beijing. From there she became a soloist with the Chinese National Song and Dance Ensemble. She performed for countless foreign dignitaries on their visits to China, including American presidents.

“I played for Ford, Carter and for Nixon,” Yang says. “I remember three. I probably performed for more.”

More important to Yang though, were her tours of China, where she learned about the country’s regional differences, the music and the dialects. The many dialects of Chinese “really had an effect on the music.”

But while Yang was being exposed to new sounds, she still had to perform the same old stuff.

As an erhu soloist with a renowned national ensemble, “you probably only play two, three, four repertoires your whole life.” Yang says it tired her out. “And I really wanted to do something new.”

It was the late 1980s. China was opening up. Yang started going to rock concerts put on by the US Embassy. Clubs were opening, bands were forming. She taught herself the bass guitar. She said it was like learning a new language.

Yang founded Cobra, China’s first-ever all female rock band. She knew that she was breaking several taboos at once, and that many people would disapprove.

Yang says her father was “not very happy.” And other classical musicians, “thought I was crazy.”

Yang tried to infuse some of Cobra’s songs with traditional elements. She even re-imagined a traditional folk song as a rock anthem.

That spirit of anything-goes fusion ultimately moved Yang in another direction. She emigrated to the United States, and began studying jazz. She recognized common elements between jazz and Chinese folk music. Both rely on improvisation, and make the instrument sound “as if it’s singing, like the human voice.”

She started playing the erhu with an American jazz group.

Today, that has brought her back to China, where she and her group are performing at the Beijing Nine Gates Jazz Festival.

Yang Ying photos

• Global Hit Podcast on iTunes
• Global Hit Podcast via RSS
• Global Hit Archive (prior to June 2009)
• Global Hit on Facebook
• Marco Werman on Twitter

Also in this episode, we’ll explore the legacy of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who 50 years ago became the first human being in space. We’ll hear from the Soviet side, and the American side, and we’ll give you some points to ponder in the manned vs. unmanned space exploration debate. Oh, and we’ll give you the world’s first space/earth flute duet. Awesome.

And we’ll end with the BBC’s Chris Vallance offering you an audio glimpse, if that makes sense, of Daphne Oram’s prototype electronic music production device, the Oramics Machine. It will go on display this summer in London’s Science Museum, but Chris gives us a preview.

Oh, and the theme music these days comes courtesy of Pennsylvania’s own The Ocean Blue. The track is called Ballerina Out of Control, from the album Cerulean. Top, top stuff.

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan group.

(Photo courtesy: http://www.bambinoafrica.com)

The climate is pretty inhospitable but the Touareg nomads who live there are warm and welcoming. One of them is Bombino. He is speaking from Niamey, the answer to our quiz.

(Ron Wyman Photo courtesy: http://www.bambinoafrica.com)

Download a free track from the movie site
Bombino videos

Bombino North America Tour Information

I spend the bulk of my time for the radio program, The Big Show, chasing my tail trying to bring you “all the latest news.” What’s great about the podcast is that it affords me, and therefore you, the chance to step back and get some historical context and perspective on the news. That’s what I’m doing this week with the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima in Japan. Here you see a picture of the reactor at Chernobyl, encased in its concrete “sarcophagus.” That’s one of the places we will revisit, along with Three Mile Island in the United States, and the Tokaimura plant in Japan.

Yes, I’ll admit that WTP 324 will not be the most uplifting episode we’ve done. But it’s a fascinating glimpse into the past, and will hopefully arm you with some much-needed perspective amidst the daily deluge of breaking news.

To make up for the darkness, we will also feature a Tokyo blogger who is helping translate tweets from Japan during these difficult times.

(Photo: Elena Filatova)

This is Malte Spitz, German Green Party politician and cell phone user. Super user, actually. Recently, he started wondering just how much data his cell phone company had on him. So, he asked for it. And under German Constitutional Law, the company had to fork it over. Spitz then took the data, all six months of it, and it available to the German newspaper “Die Zeit,” which took it and made an intriguing, some might say frightening, visualization of it. Not hard, considering Spitz cell phone was registered and logged by a local cell phone tower no fewer than 35,000 times in that six month period. In this episode of The World’s Technology Podcast, we’ll feature an interview with Spitz, and find out why he asked for his information, and what he intends to do now. You can read, and hear, a longer interview with Malte Spitz over at Deutsche Welle‘s Spectrum program.

Also on this program, we’ll do a survey of how countries that currently use nuclear power, and those that had plans to, are feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan. It all raises the question of risk assessment, not just with nuclear power, but with all the things that we might have cause to fear in our lives. To give us some perspective, we’ve got an interview with Dan Gardner, author of Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.

Haven’t you always wanted to take a peak inside Virgin Galactic’s commercial spacecraft? I know I do. Luckily, the BBC was granted access to get inside the craft, and we’ll have the report. If you’ve got $200,000 to spare, it just might be a sweet, if short, ride.

And here’s a question: how would you like to help the FBI solve a cold case? Well, you might have to know a bit about cryptography, or not. No one’s really sure if the scraps of paper left behind at a 1999 crime scene are encrypted clues, or just gibberish. So, they’ve made the notes available online, and are asking for the public’s help.

Finally, we pay tribute to a giant of stickiness, Harry Coover. Coover worked with cyanoacrylates, and that work eventually gave rise to the product we all know and love (and hate), Super Glue. Coover passed away this week at the age of 94. He had more than 400 patents, and was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2010.

Remember, you can always join the fun on our Facebook fan page, or follow us on Twitter.

(Photo: German Green Party)

This is an aerial shot of reactors three and four at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO. It’s been the focus of global attention this past week, as operators try to prevent the leakage of radioactive material from the plant’s reactors. The nuclear fuel rods began to overheat earlier this week, after water from the post-quake tsunami swamped the electrical controls for the plant’s cooling system. Japanese officials have been trying a number of measures this week to try to cool things down, including dropping water on the reactors by helicopter, and swamping them with seawater. There have been a series of explosions at the reactors, prompting many to worry about a potentially catastrophic release of radioactive material. You can find the latest from the International Atomic Energy Agency here. TEPCO is providing plant status updates here. Around 50 TEPCO employees continue to battle the crisis at the plant.

In Tech Podcast 321, we’ll take a look at the nuclear crisis in Japan, and hope to provide you with some reality checks that will go beyond the hype and hyperbole.

One of our listeners asked on Twitter earlier this week about the use of robots in Japan during the post-quake and tsunami search and rescue, and any potential uses of ‘bots at Fukushima. Here’s what I’ve found so far.

If you really want to keep up with all the latest tech angles coming out of Japan, we suggest you join the Tech Podcast on Facebook, and/or Twitter.

Some foreign media organizations have made the comparisons (for example, here and here). Also implicitly making the connection was Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who has called the quake and its aftermath Japan’s worst crisis since World War Two. A further sign of the historical significance of the moment, and of the country’s plight: Japanese Emperor Akihito made the first television address of his reign.

That said, there are significant differences between the 1945 bombings and the earthquake. The most obvious is that the 1945 events were military attacks (though the vast majority of victims were civilians). The destruction of two cities and the radiation released was fully intended by Japan’s wartime enemy, the United States. Also, radiation levels today are nowhere near as high as in the aftermath of the bombings. Nor, so far, is the loss of life, as shockingly high as it is.

In the podcast I put together for the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic bombs, there are two takes on self-censorship. A child survivor of Hiroshima explains why she kept quiet about her experiences for so long, through the pain and guilt of survival. She was seven when the the bomb fell, killing her parents and siblings but inexplicably sparing her. Late in life, Sueko Hada tells her story, in the presence of her daughter and granddaughters. They’ve heard some of it before, but she includes many new details this time. I snapped the picture above of the family on the day I interviewed Mrs Hada in 2005. My report originally aired on The World as part of a series on the mental health of A-bomb survivors, known in Japan as hibakusha.

Before I met Mrs Hada, I don’t think I fully understood why people with painful pasts remain silent, essentially censoring their own histories. But if you grew up in post-war Japan, surrounded by people who believed that radiation sickness was contagious and hereditary, you too might keep quiet about your past.

The legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is hard to gauge. Japanese children still visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (left). But these days, Tokyo Disneyland is a far more popular destination for school groups.

For many Americans, the use of the bomb remains a hugely sensitive issue. Views both pro and con seem entrenched, dialogue virtually impossible. The debate — such as it is — hasn’t progressed much since the 1995 controversy over The Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibition. But there has been new research about some of the earliest news reporting of the bombs. That began in 2005, when several dispatches written by Chicago Daily News reporter George Weller were published first time by the Tokyo newspaper Mainichi Shimbun. That was followed by publication in English of those and other reports in First into Nagasaki, a book put together by Weller’s son, Anthony.

Weller blamed U.S. military censorship for the previous non-publication of his reports. But Japanese freelance reporter Atsuko Shigesawa disputes that in a new book. (Japanese links here and here.) At the Library of Congress, she came across a statement from Gilbert Harrison, who was a sergeant in the US Army Air Forces and went to Nagasaki with Weller. Harrison went on to become editor of the New Republic. In his statement, he describes how he delivered Weller’s reports to a Chicago Daily News employee in Tokyo. As far as he knows, he says, the reports were filed there and then and were not subject to military vetting. He says he “doesn’t know why” the New York Times and the Arizona Republic reported in 2005 that “our reports were censored and not printed for 60 years.”

Atsuko Shigesawa believes that the true acts of censorship in reporting on the A-bombs were self-imposed, sometimes by reporters, sometimes by their editors. In Weller’s case, she believes his editors at the Chicago Daily News killed many of his stories. And when it came to other reporters filing stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Shigesawa found that newspapers routinely cut the segments dealing with radiation sickness and other after-effects of the bombs on the human body. (The photo to the right was taken at a hospital in Tokyo. The original caption reads: “The patient’s skin is burned in a pattern corresponding to the dark portions of a kimono worn at the time of the explosion.”) In addition to these editorial cuts, at least one correspondent chose not to report on his hospital visits, believing that they were part of a plot to hoodwink him. William Lawrence of the New York Times wrote that American reporters were being subjected to “a Japanese propaganda campaign calculated to shame Americans for using such a devastating weapon of war”. He continued: “I am convinced that, horrible as the bomb undoubtedly is, the Japanese are exaggerating its effects in an effort to win sympathy for themselves in an attempt to make the American people forget the long record of cold-blooded Japanese bestiality.” For those reasons, Lawrence did not write about his hospital visits and the cases of radiation sickness he witnessed until 1972, in his memoir.

We don’t — and probably never will — have the full story of what influenced those initial reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But there’s enough to suggest that self-censorship played a prominent role.

For another take on the meaning of Hiroshima and memory, check out Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s memoir Hiroshima in the Morning. It is a 2010 finalist in the autobiography category of the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

Download MP3

• The World in Words Podcast on iTunes
• The World in Words Podcast via RSS
• The World in Words on Facebook
• Patrick Cox on Twitter