Virginia Prescott

If you’ve ever felt like customer support from a call center is a hopeless case, there are now statistics to back that up. Forbes recently reported that fifty percent of calls that go through call centers go unresolved. IBM hopes to change that by putting their new star employee on the job - a super-computer named Watson. You remember Watson, right?

We’ve found yet another reason to be wary of what you post on Facebook. Potential employers, college admissions officers and vigilant parents are among the entities that monitor the personal information, photos, and links we choose to share on social media.  Add to that list credit bureaus and payment processing companies wanting to verify identity and assess credit-worthiness. Neal Ungerleider is a reporter for Fast Company and someone we regularly turn to for the stranger side of business news. He recently reported on this new twist in the evolving social media story, and discussed it further with us.

Depending who you ask, the literary genre known as street lit began when Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist …or in 1969, when Iceberg Slim came out with Pimp. These gritty, slightly lurid, often violent stories focus on the underside of city life.

People like Wahida Clark, a New York Times best-selling author three times over, are becoming more and more successful as thug lit comes into its own. Other popular titles in the genre include Brother and the Dancer and The Ski Mask Way. Now, with several new imprints and tie-ins with the hip hop market, street lit is making a play for the mainstream market. Darren Sands is a New York based writer and a freelance reporter for the New York Observer, where he wrote an article called “Holler if You Read Me: African-American Writers -- and Readers – Fret Over the Future of Thug Lit.” We spoke with him about the state of thug lit and its rising popularity.

West African singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara has a backstory not unlike many of today’s cosmopolitan Africans. She was born in Ivory Coast to parents from Mali and now lives in Paris. She’s a stage and film actress, singer, and songwriter, all of which has given her a world of experience which shines through on her 2011 solo album Fatou. The album plays to her roots, but retains an infectious pop sensibility. Fatoumata is performing next Thursday, June 13th at the music hall in Portsmouth. We spoke to her last year before her performance at Dartmouth, just after the release of the album Fatou which is also her nickname, reflecting the very personal nature of its songs and production.

Veteran storm chaser Tim Samaras was one of 14 people killed when tornadoes ripped through El Reno Oklahoma last Friday. Tim, his son Paul Samaras and their colleague, Carl Young, perished while trying to document the storm. Tornadoes weren’t the only elusive weather phenomenon Tim was chasing. Last summer, we spoke to him about a more painstaking quest…he spent six years and traveled tens of thousands of miles to try and capture a lightning strike in super-slow motion using a six-foot-tall, 1600 pound,  cold war-era camera, an endeavor profiled by National Geographic Magazine.

You’ve likely heard about the seventeen-year cicada, last seen when the Macarena was popular. Long before the insects began to poke out of the ground along the east coast, the species was making headlines for its wacky life cycle. Nature has plenty of examples of biological oddities… science journalist Brandon Keim compiled a list of nature’s strangest life-cycles for Wired magazine.

Sixty years ago last week, since Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first confirmed climbers to summit Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak.  Many than 3000 people have since repeated the feat…the numbers grow along with advances in mountaineering gear and forecasting technology…which make it easier than ever to reach the peak. Along with the unprecedented number of climbers comes the mounting problem of high altitude traffic jams. Jon Kelly wrote about Everest’s climber congestion for BBC news magazine, and he joins us with more.

In the US and around the world, researchers working for the armed forces are setting their sights on the human need to recharge, something increasingly perceived as a fatal flaw when missions demand pilots and soldiers stay awake and alert for days at a time. Here to discuss the fight against fatigue is William Saletan, national correspondent at slate.com where he covers science, technology and politics.

Time for a high school confessional…the digital edition. Teenagers and young adults often get stern warnings against over-sharing on social media…one incriminating photo or post could torpedo a college or job application, after all. Now, students across America are turning to online confession pages – anonymous forums for relaying painful experiences, grievances, and the baring of souls.  The appeal of anonymity and ease of use found on Facebook makes confession pages extremely popular among young adults. For example, UNH’s Facebook confession page has more than sixty-four hundred followers.  Justine Sharrock is West Coast editor at Buzzfeed.com; she joined us to talk about high school confession pages.

Meet Lance and Aaron Rice, whose project “Lance’s Brewery Tour” will be taking them across the country to some the best breweries in North America. Since launching “Lance’s Brewery Tour; A Beer Genius with Autism and His Dream.” on Kickstarter on May 13th, they have begun to receive national attention for the project.

Lance Rice is a brewery historian, who for forty years has been becoming an expert on all things beerish. He plans to write a book about North American breweries and their history, based partially on the trip he hopes to take with his nephew, Aaron. The kicker in all this is that Lance has autism.

Hear the phrase “Girl Scout meeting”, and you may think merit badges, social service projects – cookies, perhaps? Well, for a few girls in the Granite State, a scout meeting is one of the few times they get to see their incarcerated mothers. NHPR correspondent Melanie Plenda reported from Goffstown Womens’ Prison on the program, called Girl Scouts Beyond Bars.

Premium TV channels like HBO, Showtime, and AMC are pricey, and with  many programs available on Netflix, Hulu, and other online sources, viewers are cutting the cable cord.  Those hanging on say they want to watch what they want, when they want it.

Joining us to give us some practical tips on cutting the cord to premium cable was David Sirota, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, author, and contributor to Salon, where he wrote about his own exodus from cable.

One week of great radio, boiled down to a single delicious hour of spectacular programming.

This week, historic re-enactment meets medieval sporting event in the incredibly painful-looking "Battle Of The Nations".  Also, a smart guy explains "The Quantum Internet", the untold story of how thousands of women unwittingly helped build the first atomic bomb, and NH singer-songwriter Tristan Omand performs live from Studio D.

The Thing in the Spring is coming to downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire next weekend, June 6-9th. The quirky music and arts festival has over twenty bands playing in various venues around town and its own arts fair. The ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­founders of the festival, Eric Gagne and Mary Goldwaith came to give us the scoop on “The Thing.”

We have music from some of the bands who will be at the festival, under the cut.

Is there an adult out there who has not, in a moment of fatigue, insomnia, or on a particularly hard day at work, looked around at their life and asked, “Is this it? Is this what I want my life to be?”  Even people who have plenty of money and status and work in their industry of choice may find themselves fantasizing about a job that engages their spirit. A new book from the School of Life series sets out a practical guide to negotiating the myriad choices, overcoming the fear of change, and finding a career that has meaning. Roman Krznaric is a founding member of the school of life. He advises organizations from Oxfam to the UN on using empathy and conversation to create social change. He spoke to us from Oxford, England to talk about his new book How to Find Fulfilling Work.