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  • At Roosevelt High School in Seattle, teachers are using a new science curriculum called the Inquiry Method to teach biology. It's supposed to inspire curiosity -- sometimes at the expense of memorization of facts. NPR's Robert Smith is spending a whole year following the teachers and students at Roosevelt, and has this report. (6:15)
  • They are the creators of the original TV reality show An American Family. The 1973 PBS series followed the Loud Family. The new film Lance Loud! A Death In An American Family premieres on PBS January 6, 2003 at 9 p.m.
  • Harryhausen's trademark Dynamation method made possible a whole genre of science fiction and fantasy filmmaking. His films include The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. (Rebroadcast from Jan. 6, 2003.)
  • Robert talks with Mark Johnson-Williams, one of the designers of the Tickle Me Elmo toy. Johnson-Williams tells how the FBI investigated him for 6 months as one of the UNABOMBER suspects.
  • Delta will not mandate employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, but its CEO says the charge is necessary because the average hospital stay for the virus costs the airline $40,000.
  • Mia Bonta, who has already declared victory in an East Bay Assembly race, extended her lead over her opponent by more than 13 points Friday.
  • Bob Arum promoted Muhammad Ali's heavyweight title bout against George Chuvalo in 1966. Now, more than 50 years later, he's promoting the premiere fight of Ali's grandson, Nico Ali Walsh.
  • NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on a possible wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Really. Physicists measuring the fundamental characteristics of a subatomic particle, the muon, have come up with some very puzzling results that could punch a hole in the long-standing "standard model" of how matter is put together. And that could help usher in a completely new theory of matter, time and space. Unless, of course, some scientist has made a mistake. (4:30) (It was later revealed this was a mistake: "Well, I would say I'm responsible for the mistake. My collaborator did most of the work, but I am equally guilty of making mistakes." Toichiro Kinoshita, a physicist at Princeton University. Kinoshita's sin was to have a minus sign where he should have had a plus or maybe the other way around. He can't quite remember, though it ended up having gigantic consequences. Kinoshita and his colleague were calculating how a particular subatomic particle behaves when it's stuck in a magnetic field. The particle, it turns out, wobbles like a toy top at a particular frequency. Kinoshita enlisted hundreds of computers and, after a decade of heroic work, had precisely predicted how fast it should wobble according to the laws of physics. Last winter, other physicists who were out measuring the wobble found it differed significantly from Kinoshita's prediction. In the clockwork world of physics, this was potentially a huge finding, signaling something new and mysterious, except that it wasn't. Kinoshita traced his error to a tiny quirk in a computer program he was using. He hadn't checked that bit, in part because other physicists using a different approach had gotten the same answer."
  • Research shows that sleep deprivation makes people emotionally volatile and temperamental — a fact that hasn't escaped the notice of some reality TV producers, who deny contestants sleep in an effort to kick up televised drama.
  • A top Russian figure skater was allowed to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance before the Games. Kamila Valieva, age 15, helped Russia win the team event earlier this week.
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