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While all eyes are trained on South Africa and the soccer World Cup, we should note that Singapore this month played host to RoboCup 2010. That’s only one of the great tech stories you’ll hear about in this, our newly minted monthly round-up of the best in global technology news. We’ll also talk about Wikileaks, the .xxx domain name, the One Laptop Per Child Project, and cyber-security. (Photo: FUmanoids)
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In this week’s World in Words podcast, an attempt to get Belgians to adopt families online from across that country’s language divide. Also, in Montenegro, the government is promoting what it calls the Montenegrin language, formerly considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian. Plus, a discussion on what happens to spelling in the age of Spell Check and Google.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
On this episode of How We Got Here we delve into personal history with terrorism expert Jessica Stern. Stern is perhaps best known for her work interviewing terrorists about their motivations, research that culminated in the acclaimed book Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. She’s now written a very different book called Denial: A Memoir of Terror. It is a deeply personal account of the childhood traumas that have shaped her life and work. Stern discusses the book in detail on this week’s history pod which runs about 30 minutes.Download MP3
www.jessicasternbooks.com
Jeb Sharp’s radio interview with Jessica Stern
The Chronicle of Higher Education article on Denial: A Memoir of Terror
New York Times review
Washington Post Op-Ed
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Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves opened last week’s cyber-security conference in Tallinn with a wake-up call to governments. “Get your heads out of the sand,” he said, and wake up to the host of global online threats facing us. But is the whole notion of “cyber-war” completely over-hyped? Download this week’s Technology Podcast for an in-depth look at the subject. (Photo: CCD COE)
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In this episode of our Talking Travel podcast, Lonely Planet’s Robert Reid talks about his recent trip to the Gulf Coast in Florida. Reid went down to assess the short-term and potential long-term damage to the region’s tourism industry. Each year, people from across the globe come to the area. Reid advises to not be too hasty in canceling your trip. (Photo: US House of Representatives)
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Today’s Geo Quiz might help you stay looking young. It’s not entirely clear who first came up with the story of the Fountain of Youth. Fictional pirate Jack Sparrow searches for it in the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. He follows the footsteps of Ponce de León. The Spanish explorer thought the Fountain was in Florida. He never found it but there is a place in Florida that is closely associated with the Fountain’s legend. Can you name it? Download MP3Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It’s been a good couple of weeks for show segments with historical angles. How We Got Here features three of them on Episode 47. First you get a Marco Werman Q & A on the background to the violence in Kyrgyzstan with Peter Zeihan of the global intelligence company Stratfor, then Gerry Hadden on the legacy of a 2002 oil spill of the coast of Spain, and finally Mary Kay Magistad with an evocative piece about the Pacific Island of Tinian and its outsized role in U.S. military history.
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In the latest World in Words podcast, it’s not just Brazil vs Spain at the World Cup. It’s Bafana Bafana vs Les Elephants, soccer vs football, cleats vs boots and the coach vs the gaffer. We have stories on the new adidas ball and its globally correct corporate name; on the race to rename streets in South African cities; and on the US-English confrontation off the field: the linguistic battle over soccer terminology. Download MP3
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In this episode of our Talking Travel podcast, we speak with Paul Clammer, author of the Lonely Planet guide to Haiti. Clammer recently went back to Haiti, to assess the recovery efforts and to spend a week volunteering to help clear rubble in the town of Leogane. You can hear his impressions of where Haitians stand six months after the January earthquake. (Photo: Amy Bracken)
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The World Cup has begun, so in honor of the games, we bring you the All-Africa Global Economy Podcast. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on stadiums and infrastructure improvements in South Africa. Who has benefited? Also, a look at the economy of Zimbabwe. And some upbeat economic news from Africa: The continent proved resilient in the face of the global economic crisis. Download MP3
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How We Got Here takes on soccer this week. We speak with Duke history professor Laurent Dubois, author of Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France.
Soccer spread so quickly. A lot of sports spread along the sinews of empire, you can think of cricket or rugby or even baseball in the U.S. case. What happened with soccer is it did spread via English–it was created and codifed in England and it spread with English people who crossed into other countries but very quickly it took root in those other countries. France is one case among many where in the early 20th-century English communities brought it there and then very quickly it became just part of the social fabric of every day life and very quickly it became an extremely important pastime for many many people. – Laurent Dubois
Dubois explores the roots — in Empire — of the diversity of the French national team, long celebrated but also maligned for its preponderance of players of African and Caribbean descent. And he profiles two players in particular, Lilian Thuram and Zinedine Zidane, in his tale of how soccer and French identity are intertwined. Download MP3
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It looks like an ordinary cargo container. You know the kind they use for shipping. However, this one’s got a fully functioning, solar-powered Internet cafe inside of it. Computer Aid International will be field testing these cafes over the next few months. You can hear more about that story, and many others, in this week’s Technology Podcast. (Photo: Computer Aid International)
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In this week’s World in Words podcast, Anamika Veeramani won the National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word “stromuhr”. It’s one of many English words in the contest that sound decidedly unEnglish. After a report on that, we speak with David Wolman, whose book “Righting the Mother Tongue” traces the anarchic evolution of English spelling. English is barely policed: foreign words, often with foreign spelling intact, migrate unhindered into the language. Download MP3
There are 5 countries in the spotlight for today’s Geo Quiz: Here’s the list: New Zealand – Iceland – Japan – Austria – and Norway. So our question for you is simply: what do these countries have in common?
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On this week’s history podcast we replay three stories from our Memorial Day broadcast on May 31, 2010. Here’s the lineup: Marco Werman’s interview with Major Fred Salanti of the Missing in America Project, Alissa Quart‘s essay on the Neues Museum in Berlin, and reporter Molly Murray on oil spilled in the Atlantic during WWII. Download MP3
