Virginia Prescott

Our own Virginia Prescott will emcee the Poetry Out Loud state finals championship on Friday where New Hampshire high schoolers will recite their hearts out in hopes of taking home a shiny trophy and poetic street-cred. Watch online or head to Grand Representatives Hall at the statehouse in Concord on March 15 at 7:00pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Research published last month suggests that major mental illnesses may have more genetic associations than previously thought, perhaps leading to new diagnoses and treatments. Author David Blistein wrote his latest book, "David's Inferno: My Journey Through the Dark Wood of Depression,"  inspired by his own experience.

In a story riddled with cliché, world renowned particle physicist, Paul Frampton, was arrested in a Buenos Aires Airport last year for checking a bag stuffed with a half million dollars full of cocaine. Like a CSI plot gone off the rails, his explanation defied common sense: his online girlfriend/Czech bikini model forgot it at the airport and asked him to bring to her.

The International Labor Organization – or ILO -- announced last week that global unemployment has dipped to its lowest level since December 2008. However, the numbers don’t look nearly as promising for young people. An estimated 75 million people in the 15-to-24 range will be unemployed this year.  The ILO warns that if these trends continue, a generation will be scarred by economic disadvantage.  Mona Mourshed is Education Director  for the McKinsey Center for Government , which is studying youth unemployment. Mona is co-author of the McKinsey  report: “Education to Employment: Designing a System That Works.”

There was a time when locking the Vatican’s doors was enough to ensure secrecy over the process of choosing a new pope – but with at least seventeen cardinals on Twitter, and who knows how many on Facebook – the church isn’t taking any chances.   The Vatican has now installed something called a “Faraday Cage” – a device sort of like the “Cone of Silence” from the 1960 spy comedy, “Get Smart”, designed to keep what happens in the Vatican… well, in the Vatican. Joining us today to unlock the secrets of the Faraday Cage is Rob Fleischman, Chief Technology Officer at Xero-Cole, and our favorite explainer of all things wired.

Wonder Woman has yet to be the subject of a major motion picture. Until now…sort of. “Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines” is a documentary that follows the character from her Amazonian origins to that campy TV show in the 70s to her following among punk rockers, suburban girls, and even Gloria Steinem. The documentary is screening tonight at Concord’s Red River Theatre and will make its broadcast premiere on PBS’s Independent Lens series on April 15th. Kristy Guevera-Flanagan directed the film and joins Word of Mouth to talk about it.

IAN MORRIS, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University and a Fellow of the Stanford Archaeology Center, is author of several books including, Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, which was published in 2010, and his latest, The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations. We spoke with professor Morris about his new book, the seminar he gave at Langley to members of the CIA, and his early heavy metal aspirations.

The internet is a technological forum for public conversation, debate and cross-cultural interaction and their very opposites. Reader comments often take on characteristics more like the roman forum…it’s in the comments section where sniping, shaming and mean-spirited insults are pelted like rotten tomatoes onto a stage. A study published in the journal of computer-mediated communication measured the influence of reader comments on the articles they describe.   Dietram Scheufele, John E. Ross Professor in Science Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison discusses reader comments and their influence on the articles they cling to. He recently co-authored an article on the subject for the New York Times with Dominique Brossaard, "This Story Stinks"; the comments section for the article closed with 400 comments.

Once upon a time, Miss America ranked alongside the Superbowl and the Academy Awards as one of the most anticipated broadcasts of the year. But in 2012, 2.8 million viewers watched the nation’s best-known pageant… more than twice that number tuned in to see the Downton Abbey third season premier.  

And yet, a recent story of a disgraced pageant queen has gone viral –attracting far more attention than she ever received by winning a pageant in the first place.

“Dartmouth Idol” is the Ivy League college’s version of the ultra-popular TV show and singing competition…it may also be one of few venues where you’ll see future world leaders rapping. After a crowded field of contestants, the final round of this year’s “Dartmouth Idol” is onstage , Friday March 8th, at the Spaulding auditorium. Joining us to discuss the contest are Phoebe Bodurtha and Nathaniel Graves two of the finalists, along with the show’s producer and music director Walt Cunningham.

Last week, we came across an info-graphic that went viral among bookish types on Facebook and Twitter. VIDA, an organization for women in the literary arts, released a series of charts illustrating the results of “VIDA Count 2012”…that’s a tally of male and female book reviewers at major publications --  including The Atlantic, Harpers, and The New York Times Book Review -- and the  gender of authors they reviewed over the past three years. Jason Boog is editor of the publishing website "Galleycat", where he blogged about the findings.

Marijuana is now legal in Washington and Colorado and medical marijuana is legal or pending approval in dozens of states across the country, including New Hampshire which is voting on a bill tomorrow. It raises the question: how high is too high to drive under the influence of pot? That’s something to consider here in New Hampshire, where a UNH/ WMUR poll showed 79% approval for legalizing medical marijuana. Josh Harkinson covers a wide range of topics for Mother Jones, and recently wrote about the as-yet-undefined meaning of driving under the influence.

To anyone who doesn’t care to Tweet (that would be a whopping 90% of Americans), the massive influence of so few characters seems unlikely. Yet, information disseminated by NPR’s Andy Carvin during the Arab uprising spread across all forms of media, reaching people in ways no one would have expected.

New research by historians at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals the shocking scope of Hitler’s final solution that led to the death of an estimated 15-20 million people and the imprisonment of millions more. It’s an incomprehensible number—42,500 Nazi concentration camps, ghettoes, and labor sites were created leading up to and during World War Two.  

The average age for a Holocaust survivor is 79-years-old, and their carefully documented personal histories may just become that—a record. A new project is working to preserve their first-hand accounts as holograms for museums to educate future generations about the Holocaust.

Nearly sixty years after “Peyton Place” was published, tourists still stop in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, to ask locals about its author, Grace Metalious. The novel shocked America with tales of small town secrets, sex, and hypocrisy, and outraged the citizens of Gilmanton, where the unconventional Matalious lived with her family. It became one of the best-selling books ever, a hit movie, and TV's first prime-time soap. Writer George Kelly, came across some persistent Matalious myths while writing about the novel for New Hampshire Magazine. His article, “50 Shades of Grace: The Impact of ‘Peyton Place’ on New Hampshire Sixty Years Later”, can be found in the current issue of the magazine, as well as online.