Radiolab

Radiolab is a radio program produced by WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, and broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. The show is nationally syndicated and is available as a podcast. In 2008, Radiolab began offering live shows.

Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show focuses on topics of a scientific and philosophical nature. The show attempts to approach broad, difficult topics such as "time" and "morality" in an accessible and light-hearted manner and with a distinctive audio production style.

Radiolab received a 2007 National Academies Communication Award "for their imaginative use of radio to make science accessible to broad audiences". The program has received two Peabody Awards; first in 2010 and again in 2014. In 2011, Abumrad received the MacArthur grant.

Although Radiolab is a "limited run series", 12 seasons of five to ten episodes each have been produced. The thirteenth season is currently airing.

History

Having majored in experimental music composition and production at Oberlin College, Jad Abumrad worked for New York City Pacifica affiliate WBAI before landing a job freelancing for National Public Radio (NPR). In 2002 he produced a series of post-9/11 radio documentaries called 24 Hours at the Edge of Ground Zero, and regularly contributed material to Studio 360, both for WNYC. The first weekly episodes of Radiolab aired in May 2002, and each compiled two hours worth of NPR stories around a particular theme with between-story commentary from Jad Abumrad. These themes were not necessarily science-related, but tackled issues such as the death penalty, religious fundamentalism and politics in Africa and the Middle East.

Google+

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus) is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google Inc.

The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics have varied, depending on how the service is defined. Three Google executives have overseen the product, which has undergone substantial changes leading to a redesign in November 2015.

History

Creation

Google+ is the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, retired by March 1, 2012), and Orkut (launched in 2004, as of 2013 operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014).

Google+ launched in June 2011. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply "friends") into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums.

Doctor Robert

"Doctor Robert" is a song by the Beatles released on the album Revolver in the United Kingdom and on Yesterday and Today in the United States. The song was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded in seven takes on 17 April 1966 with vocals overdubbed 19 April.

Musical characteristics

The song is written in the key of A major, though the key center is B, thereby making it in the Mixolydian mode. The musical arrangement has staggered layering, with backing vocals starting in the second verse, the lead guitar just before the bridge while the bridge itself has added harmonium and extra vocals mixed. John's lead is automatically double tracked with each of the two slightly-out-of-phase tracks split onto separate stereo channels; creating a surrealistic effect supporting the lyric about drug use. An interesting feature is the suitably "blissful" modulation (on "well, well well you're feeling fine") to the key of B on the bridge via an F#7 pivot chord (VI7 in the old key of A and V7 in the new key of B) The extended jam that lasts 43 seconds at the end was recorded, but it was removed and replaced with a fade-out. However, John says: "OK Herb", at the very last second of the song.

Walter Mischel

Walter Mischel (German: [ˈmɪʃəl]; born February 22, 1930) is an American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Mischel as the 25th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Early life

Mischel was born on February 22, 1930 in Vienna, Austria, When he was 8 years old his Jewish family fled with him to the United States after the Nazi occupation in 1938. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York and studied under George Kelly and Julian Rotter at The Ohio State University, where he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1956.

Professional career

Mischel taught at the University of Colorado from 1956 to 1958, at Harvard University from 1958 to 1962, and at Stanford University from 1962 to 1983. Since 1983, Mischel has been in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism since 1986—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife Martha, and son Luke spent in the French capital.

Biography

Early years

Gopnik was born in Philadelphia and lived in Montreal. His Jewish parents, Irwin and Myrna Gopnik, were professors at McGill University, and the family lived at Habitat 67.

Gopnik studied at Dawson College and then McGill, from which Gopnik graduated with a BA. While there, he was a contributor for The McGill Daily. He completed graduate work at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. In 1986, Gopnik began his long professional association with The New Yorker with a piece that would show his future range, a consideration of connections among baseball, childhood, and Renaissance art. He has written for four editors at the magazine: William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick.