PopTech Audio: PopCasts

Adaptation is the basic idea that we get used to stuff and interpret signals. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores how these types of signals relate to pain and social adaptation. How does our previous exposure to pain alter how we experience it now? How is it that we all appreciate the pinnacle of beauty in the same way, but we’re drawn to partners with a level of attractiveness similar to our own?

Designer Orlagh O’Brien gave a simple emotion-specific quiz to a group of 250 people. Asking respondents to describe five emotions – anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love – in drawings, colors, and words, O’Brien ended up with a set of media she used to create Emotionally}Vague, an online graphic interpretation of the project’s results.

The West Philly Hybrid XTeam came this close (thumb and forefinger ever so narrowly spaced) to winning the Progressive Automotive XPRIZE’s $10 million prize this year. Simon Hauger, who came to teaching from a career in engineering, started the team as an afterschool project for students who wanted a hands-on science experience. Hauger and team co-captain Azeem Hill, a senior at West Philly, share their XTeam story.

Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. He thinks all projects need to answer four questions: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it correctly when they get it? Too many bad ideas are using up our limited resources and that needs to change.

Riley Crane, a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Media Lab, found out about the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge four days before it started (find ten balloons placed in ten different locations around the country). Four days, eight hours, and 52 minutes later his team had won the competition. Watch him talk about how they did it and the challenges they encountered in the process.

The story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton is one of liberation and forgiveness. In 1984, Thompson testified that Cotton raped her, for which he was sentenced to life in prison. Eleven years later, DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. Thompson and Cotton went on to write a memoir together about their experience.

What if you were completely conscious but couldn’t move or speak? Neuroscientist Adrian Owen and his team have been using brain-imaging techniques to determine levels of consciousness in vegetative patients. By giving simple commands and then measuring brain activity, Owen has learned some patients are completely aware despite being entirely unable to communicate or move their limbs.

Patrick Meier, director of crisis mapping at Ushahidi, and Josh Nesbit, executive director of Medic Mobile (formerly FrontlineSMS: Medic) describe their organizations’ collaborative response to the Haiti earthquake using text messaging, mobile mapping, and a cadre of dedicated volunteers.

What makes an ideal marriage? Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history and family studies and author of “Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” says that marrying for love is a radical idea. Ironically, as marriage is becoming a more emotionally satisfying relationship, it is also becoming less stable as an institution.

Kathryn Schulz is an expert on being wrong. The journalist and author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error,” says we make mistakes all the time. The trouble is that often times being wrong feels like being right. What’s more, we’re usually wrong about what it even means to make mistakes—and how it can lead to better ideas.

Author of the Guardian’s weekly ”Bad Science” column and Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks, British physician Ben Goldacre dismantles the questionable science behind an assortment of drug trials, court cases, and events of our time.

Larry Smith wants to know your story. Since 2006, Smith has undertaken the Six-Word Memoir Project inviting his Smith Magazine readers to tell their live stories in just six words. His six-word memoir project can now be found in classrooms, boardrooms, hospitals, churches, speed-dating sessions, and at live six-word “slams” across the world.

Colin Rich captures fantastic images of the world from 24 miles in space. He creates his amazing videos and still photographs with simple system that includes high-altitude weather balloons, hacked video cameras and a GPS system to track the cameras wherever they land. Read and watch more on the PopTech blog.

Technology entrepreneur Lisa Gansky believes that the growing ubiquity of networked information and relationships are leading to what she calls a “mesh” economy of shared services and products. This “meshiness” not only rewards sharing over ownership, but it is also fundamentally changing our relationship with things from product to experience.

Elizabeth Dunn conducts experimental research on self-knowledge and happiness with a focus on how people can more effectively use their money to increase well-being. Dunn determined that by rethinking how we spend our money, we can “change the world, increase our happiness, or win a game of dodgeball.”