The Martian Book Club

The digital magazine Slate has chosen Andy Weir's The Martian as the selection for their next audio book club. Listen along below:



If you enjoy the Audio Book Club format, check out some of the podcast's previous choices: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

Who Made Your iPhone?

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is a one man show at the Public Theater in New York City featuring Mike Daisey who details the history of Apple and exposes what it takes to create a new piece of technology.  For reviews on this show, check out the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.  NPR digs deeper into the story of Chinese factory conditions that are responsible for creating our technology and Ira Glass features this story on This American Life.  To find out more about how your iPhone may have been created, see the show or listen to the podcast.

Get Out! “Occupy Wall Street” Protest Sites Cleared by Police

Oakland yesterday, NYC today: Police have been ordered by the cities that employ them to clear out “tent cities” associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The reasons given vary; in California, Oakland officials cited instances of drug use and violence—even a recent murder—in the encampments. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg declared he has sought to strike a balance between public safety and the rights of the protestors; apparently the balance shifted too much, for at 1:00 a.m. this morning, police moved in and cleared Zuccotti Park, ostensibly for cleaning. In both cities, protestors will be allowed back into the parks but will not be allowed to bring sleeping gear or tents. In Oakland, 33 protestors were arrested during the police action; in NYC today, police arrested 70.

Check out the latest articles and audio about these controversial police actions. The New York Times has articles from today's and yesterday's editions about Oakland and New York City. NPR featured audio segments on Occupy protests in NYC, Oakland, and Los Angeles in today’s Morning Edition program. (An interesting and perhaps unexpected point about the clearing of Zuccotti Park is that, from the perspective of some protestors at least, the movement itself could actually benefit, as Zuccotti is seen by some to have become an unwanted distraction from the movement's political goals.) 

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald posted this scathing criticism of Mayor Bloomberg and his order to clear Zuccotti Park. And finally, Slate.com features an interesting article on how the police themselves might feel about their roles as both protectors and enforcers.

9/11 Podcasts: Personal Reflections from NPR's Radio Rookies and StoryCorps

These two audio podcasts offer personal reflections on the September 11^th attacks and their effects on specific, individual lives. The hour-long programs gather shorter segments from the renowned National Public Radio programs Radio Rookies and StoryCorps, respectively.

Our 9/11: Growing Up in the Aftermath (Radio Rookies)

Family, Friends of Sept. 11 Victims: 'We Remember' (StoryCorps)

Cell Phones and Cancer!

The World Health Organization (WHO) has just announced that cell phones can increase your risk for cancer, particularly brain cancer. They now consider the devices in the same risk category—“carcinogenic hazard”—as car exhaust and lead. The story is all over the mainstream news; check out “Cellphone Radiation May Cause Cancer, Advisory Panel Says” from the New York Times or “WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk” from CNN.com. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta urges caution, including using an earpiece and carrying phones in your back pocket whenever possible.

Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family, by Devra Davis, exposes cell phone dangers and suggests measures to take in the face of these purported risks. This book came out in 2010 and is available in the Imperatore Library. The fact is that people in many nations around the world are rejecting the carefree attitude toward mobile phones that many in America have. In Europe, in particular, anti-cell phone movements are growing. Just weeks ago, The Telegraph (UK) reported that a Council of Europe committee ruled that cell phones and wireless networks pose a grave threat to children and should be banned from schools entirely.

Check out this recent discussion on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” on the effect of cell phone radiation on the brain.

Eyesight to the Brain

Anyone interested in research about the human brain will want to check out neurologist Oliver Sacks’s The Mind’s Eye. Sacks has made it his lifelong passion to study extreme cases where medical dysfunction sheds a new light on how the human brain and body interact. The book discusses past and present cases—including his own experience with prosopagnosia (face blindness) and the loss of sight in one of his eyes—where language, reading ability, and perception itself are compromised in surprisingly targeted ways. The Mind’s Eye was published in October 2010 and is available in the Imperatore Library. There’s a review of it in the April 2011 Harper’s magazine; take a look at the magazine in the Periodicals section in the Library.

Sacks seems to have had the book’s title on his mind for years: his 2003 New Yorker article “The Mind’s Eye” examines cases where sudden loss of eyesight forces the brain to muster other senses to create a “visual” experience in the brain. The case of Susan Barry became the subject of a 2006 New Yorker article by Sacks called “Stereo Sue.” Barry, herself a neurologist, was born with crossed eyes and spent most of her life unaware that she did not possess stereoscopic or “binocular” vision. (View the article abstracts via the above links, or find the full articles in the ProQuest Research Library on our library databases page.) Barry’s book Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions details her own efforts to acquire, however partially, binocular vision; along the way, a singular picture of the complexity—and flexibility—of the brain emerges. Fixing My Gaze, which features an introduction by Oliver Sacks, was published in 2009 and will be available in the Library this fall.

Check out this interview with Susan Barry on NPR’s “Fresh Air”:

Check out Oliver Sacks on Radiolab in a segment last month called “About Face” where he discusses face blindness: