PopTech Audio: PopCasts

Neema Mgana is a social entrepreneur, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and PopTech Fellow. She gives us an insider’s view into work she started last year with Architecture for Humanity in a PopTech match-up. Together, they’re creating a community-based health center in the rural Singida region of Tanzania.

For many, vocalist Yungchen Lhamo has become the voice of Tibet. Yungchen’s powerful a cappella vocals fill the Camden Opera House as she weaves rich narrative with spirit to share her life’s journey.

Author, futurist, activist and visionary, the inimitable Stewart Brand puts a lens to the next 30 years of the green movement. He sees increasing urbanization, new cities full of young people, the expansion of environmentalism and more.

Five educators, demonstrating leadership in technology and education, were awarded PopTech Fellowships presented by Sun Microsystems and Curriki, a new open-source-focused educational foundation. Check out their discussion about the future of technology and education.

Many consider Jason Moran, 32, the foremost jazz pianist of his generation, with seven albums under the Blue Note label since 1999. Here’s a sample of how he experiments with new methods and ideas to cook up his own flavor of jazz.

Anthropologist and Tibetan studies expert Losang Rabgey shows how technology is being used to open up Tibet to the world, as well as connect lives across the region, in ways true to their various experiences.

Wired editor-at-large Kevin Kelly explores the nature of technology through technology’s eyes. And, watch out!—Kevin thinks we’ll soon be dwarfed by the collective intelligence of all the technology we’re creating.

Since being detained and interrogated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist, Hasan Elahi has documented his every move in maps and images on the web. He walks us through his “little” self-surveillance experiment, where he’s found that the more public his personal information, the more protected he is.

Blaine Brownell is an architect obsessed with sustainable building materials. He introduces a wonderful world of products made from repurposed materials and provides a glimpse of what a post-fossil fuel world might look like.

The creative force behind The Sims series believes a complex way of understanding the world can be gained through very simple rules. Will Wright unveils his next game, Spore, where players are creators who build—and react to—ever-more complexity within their environments.

Hear how executive director of SELF, Robert Freling, is lighting up the developing world and empowering self-sufficiency by delivering solar power to more than 2 billion people on the planet living without electricity.

The Mexican acoustic guitar duo sensation Rodrigo y Gabriela put fast fingers to strings for a performance that will put you on your feet and keep you moving. There’s no better way to say it: they rock!

Musician, producer and artist Brian Eno shows how simple things can give rise to complex things—in art and life. See how he uses Darwin’s ecological model of the world as a roadmap for human culture now and in the future.

Part mad scientist, part artist, chef Homaro Cantu pushes the traditional limits of known taste, texture and technique in a stunning futuristic fashion. With lab partner Ben Roche, Homaro slices and dices technology to reinvent the way people eat.

Lester Brown, preeminent environmentalist and head of the Earth Policy Institute, warns that society is too dependent on fossil fuels, and consumption habits must change to maintain a healthy social, economic and environmental balance in the world.