Tory Starr is The Takeaway's digital producer, based out of The World newsroom at WGBH in Boston. Tory worked previously on the web team for the national PBS series American Experience, and on several film shoots, including HBO's Stranger's No More, which won the 2011 Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Tory has played fastpitch softball her whole life and never turns down an invite to lace up the cleats.
You can contact Tory via email at tory_starr@wgbh.org or on Twitter under @torystarr3.
We asked you: What should the Olympic theme song be for your favorite event?
Today on the show we asked our listeners: "What books have shaped you as an American?" We got some great responses.
George Zimmerman's defense team has posted a video where he re-enacts the fatal shooting. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in the February 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, although his lawyers claim he is protected under Florida's "stand your ground" law.
Two kids starting high school. In New York City Public schools, that is an exciting moment and something of a relief. It concludes what can be a harrowing admissions process. My wife and I are certainly glad that's over for our twin 13-year-old daughters, but having two girls going into ninth grade starts something else rolling. The first day of ninth grade will be the first step down that long road to choosing and being ready — financially and otherwise — for college.
It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood: PBS Digital Studios has commissioned Symphony of Science's mashup artist John Boswell to remix our favorite neighbor from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and the video has gone viral. The video, which features the late Fred Rogers talking about the power of imagination in the song "Garden of Your Mind", has gotten over 650,000 views in less than 24 hours.
Today we asked our twitter followers: What sounds from your childhood are going extinct? Rotary phones? Dial-up connections? Tetris?
What is essential knowledge for an American citizen? For the government, that's not a philosophical question, it's a pragmatic list of essential civic knowledge, codified in the citizenship test. Think you could pass? Try it out with this practice test from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services department.
We had a great response to today's conversation about this year's crop of college graduates. Check out this collection of responses from viewers, who called, texted, and posted advice for those facing the job market for the first time.
After we aired the segment "Lonely in a Digital Age" on Wednesday, we got lots of responses from listeners. Many agreed with our guest, Sherry Turkle, who argued that our digital-saturated society has sacrificed conversation in favor of connection. However, we also heard from those who believe that digital innovations have allowed them to communicate in ways previously impossible.
Lauren Howie is a 26-year-old leasing consultant in Atlanta, Georgia. She has a speech impediment, and she told us how technology has helped her communicate.
In a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal, former Transportation Security Administration administrator Kip Hawley said the current airport security system in broken, and he offers suggestions to fix it. He argues that beyond making airline travel unpleasant for customers, TSA officials are focusing their efforts on the wrong kind of threats.
The open road: it’s part of the American dream. Or, at least, it used to be. A new study finds that 16- to 34-year-olds without driver’s licenses rose to 26 percent in 2010 from 21 percent a decade earlier. At the same time, biking, walking, and other driving alternatives rose among young people in the past decade. Tony Dutzik is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Group and co-author of the study. Takeaway listener Emily is a 25-year-old who rarely drives, and didn't get her license until she was 19.
MARCONI UNION - WEIGHTLESS by Just Music label
Here are the top 10 most relaxing tunes:
1. Marconi Union - Weightless
2. Airstream - Electra
3. DJ Shah - Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix)
4. Enya - Watermark
5. Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
6. Barcelona - Please Don't Go
7. All Saints - Pure Shores
8. Adele – Someone Like You
9. Mozart - Canzonetta Sull'aria
10. Cafe Del Mar - We Can Fly
http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/music/scientists-discover-most-relaxing-tune-ever
Your take: What music keeps you calm? Comment here or go to our Facebook page to join the conversation.
After a conversation with filmmaker Lena Dunham about her new HBO show "Girls", John Hockenberry asks for some advice: should he tell his 13-year-old daughters about "Girls"?
Few places have come to symbolize climate change as much as the island nation of the Maldives. The nation's 1,200 small islands in the Indian Ocean sit, on average, about five feet above sea level. When Mohamed Nasheed became the first democratically elected president of the country in 2008, he made climate change his primary policy concern. Filmmaker Jon Shenk followed the president during his first year in office in his film "The Island President". The film culminates in the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit — but much has happened since then. President Nasheed resigned from office in what he has since called a coup, and the future of the country is again in political and environmental disarray.
The Takeaway host John Hockenberry spoke Friday at TED2012 in Long Beach, California.
Design has always been a part of Hockenberry's life. His father, who was a designer for IBM and Kodak, taught him what good design looked like.