According to one estimate, the average young person spends about 8 hours a week playing video games. While many parents are worried about all that screen time, there's an emerging body of research that suggests some social and psychological benefits to gaming. And now there's a new generation of educators who want to bring video games into the classroom, not only to make it more fun, but also more effective. Journalist Greg Toppo writes about their efforts in "The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter."
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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A lot of pro football players cross-train. They practice the plays and the running, the throws and the tackles. We've even heard stories of pro athletes taking ballet lessons to lighten their footwork. But for NFL MVP Shaun Alexander, training also included chess.
Did you know national parks intended for the masses are a 19th century invention and a distinctly American one?
Jim Fleming read “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and philosopher Sadie Plant talks with Steve Paulson about drug use by some famous writers, from Coleridge to Freud.
Zach Helm wrote the screenplay for "Stranger than Fiction," in which Will Ferrell hears the voice of Emma Thompson apparently narrating his life.
Tariq Ali about Al-Andalus, the largely forgotten Muslim society on the peninsula that's now Spain and Portugal where Christians, Jews and Muslims once lived together in relative harmony.
When Samuel Clemens took on the pen name “Mark Twain,” he was doing more cleverly appropriating a measure of depth. He was also tapping into one of the most well-known sounds along the river: sounding calls. Owen Selles tells about these calls in this piece, adapted from an essay he originally wrote for the online magazine Edge Effects.
Nick Bantock talks about his book, "The Trickster's Hat: A Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity."
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