An old toy has made a major comeback—in virtual reality. Last year, the toy manufacturer Mattel teamed up with Google Cardboard, Discovery, National Geographic, Vuforia and Littlestar to bring View-Master, a 1939 stereoscope toy that shows 3D images from slide reels, right into the twenty-first century. The makeover expanded what the original version made possible, which was to peer into a whole new [...]
When I was a child, going to the circus was a family pastime. Although my family and I never watched it as much as an NFL game, we definitely got something out of it that we never got out of watching my dad’s favorite sport. There was something about going to the so-called “greatest show on Earth”—with its menagerie of death-defying tricks, spectacular [...]
Podcasting is an established, but still emerging means of listening to your favorite stories or talk show personalities. It is not an issue of what types of content people want to listen to; it’s finding the time to enjoy listening to them. Perhaps this is what has sparked the newest trend—is speed-listening the new speed-reading? Overcast, a free podcast-listening app for iOS, was [...]
As a longtime employee at PSG, I harbored a deep, dark secret—one I kept from all my pun-loving (get it?) coworkers: I hate puns. I’m not usually one to withhold my opinions (Prefer cats? No way; dogs are superior in every way.), but I’m embarrassed to admit I felt intimidated by the overwhelming adoration of all things pun by literally every other staff [...]
One sweltering Monday in the third week of July, I stood in a parking lot with a hundred other students in lines exactly five yards apart—the outline of a football field had been painted in white over the yellow parking lines. One of my band directors stood on the scaffolding built at the side of the parking lot on the top of the [...]
In late 2014, a 12-part podcast focusing on a high school murder case called Serial became mainstream news. Serial reached 5 million downloads faster than any podcast before it. But it wasn’t just radio and podcast fanatics who tuned in. English teacher Michael Godsey decided to use Serial in his tenth and eleventh grade classes. Students were instantly hooked on the murder mystery. They held mock debates, examined evidence gathered [...]
For the past few years, my Sunday nights have been dedicated to catching up with my favorite characters on television. Beginning in early January, there is a pretty good chance that I will be spending my Sunday nights watching the final season of Downton Abbey. Earlier this year, I had to say good–bye to Don Draper and the rest of the complicated characters on Mad [...]
When asked to picture a high school play, most people probably see a shaky spotlight focused on a student standing in front of a backdrop painted on an old bedsheet, reciting lines dutifully—if somewhat unenthusiastically—and waving around a rubber prop for emphasis. These days, you might see what I saw as a stage manager in high school. Productions have been getting bigger and [...]
When I was younger, story time was arguably my favorite part of the day. My mom and I would sit on our living room couch as she read to me from the books I had carefully picked out at the library. On many occasions, a Dr. Seuss book would be in the mix, my favorites being The Foot Book and the more popular One Fish Two [...]
When I was a kid, I had a lot of trouble going to sleep. And with two younger children, my mom didn’t have the time to read out loud to me until I drifted off. That’s why every night I listened to audio books. I drifted away to books like Holes and The Giver, and to authors like Ronald Dahl and Cornelia Funke. While I love [...]