If Soterios Johnson leaves WNYC, does that mean the world is coming to an end?

Plus: Dilbert's CEO on "Making the world a better place"

Soterios abandoning his WNYC mic? Is this really allowed?

by Ken

Yeah, sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket -- Trump, Hillary, Nice, Istanbul, Munich, blah blah blah. Normally I would be happy to solve those problems, but this week we've got a real problem. When I got around to opening the latest issue of the recently instituted member newsletter of WNYC, our public-radio station, I was promptly assailed by this bombshell:

We're Going To Miss You, Soterios!

We're starting this month's newsletter with some news you may have already heard: Soterios Johnson is moving on from WNYC and is headed to sunny, warm California at the end of August. He's accepted a position as Director of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Partnerships at the University of California, Davis. We’re happy for Soterios, but we’re having a hard time imagining waking up without his dulcet voice to start the day.

During his time with us, Soterios has become an important part of our morning routines, and we're all going to miss him. So, we wanted to give our members the opportunity to help send Soterios off. We've created a form for you to share your thoughts and memories of Soterios's time at WNYC, and we'll share what you write with him before he heads out west. And be sure to listen to your radio in August—we have some special plans of our own for seeing Soterios off!

Say what? Soterios Johnson leaving WNYC?

Now this sounds lovely for Soterios. And what WNYC listener doesn't wish the station's much-loved morning guy well? That is, as long as it doesn't involve depriving us of this uniquely welcomed, welcoming, and trusted voice. Hey, consider the thousands of hours of station pledge drives I've listened through largely because there on-air was Soterios. It just didn't seem right not to listen.

Who the heck, you may be wondering, is Soterios Johnson? Here's the website answer:

Soterios Johnson

Before you ask... it's Greek. And, so is Johnson (via translation). It's a long story... Soterios Johnson seemed strangely drawn to the news, even as a young child.

As a kid he would lull himself to sleep listening to WCBS NewsRadio 88. "As a kid, I always wanted to be in the know... and to spread the word," he says. In high school, Soterios worked at a small FM station in his hometown in New Jersey, followed by a four-year stint as an undergraduate at Columbia on WKCR, New York. He was an Associate Producer at Newsweek On Air and worked in the field of science journalism for several years. He earned his master's degree at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.

I suppose I ought to try to explain for the benefit of unfortunate folks who aren't in the habit of waking up to Soterios just why he's so uniquely "welcomed, welcoming, and trusted." And it's not just because you've come to understand that "Soterios" is really a name and "Soterios Johnson" is a real person. It's because . . . nah, if you have to ask, you have to be there.


BUT IF YOU WANT TO HEAR WHAT HE SOUNDS LIKE --


In this November 2015 interview, WNYC's Soterios talks about the legendary obstacles to building a Second Avenue subway with Hobart and William Smith Colleges history professor Clifton Hood, author of 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York, who says: "The problem with New York City from 1920 to today is that we've never been able to come up with a formula that would provide the subways with the money they need to maintain good shape."

Well, okay then, good luck in California, Soterios, dammit.


SUNDAY SPECIAL: DILBERT'S CEO HAS A PLAN
FOR "MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE"

[Click to enlarge.]

This is so perfect that I really can't think of anything to add to it.

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Let's say you wouldn't be irresistibly drawn to a site called "New Tech City." Could there be a better name?

Out with the old . . .


. . . and in with the new


by Ken

Not long ago I was pleased to call attention to an interesting project undertaken by the New Tech City podcast-and-blog of New York's WNYC called "Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art of Spacing Out," which was designed to help smarphone addicts wean themselves from their addiction by embracing, you know, the lost art of spacing out.

It's true that I didn't do a whole lot of follow-up to see how the project worked out. The idea was for listeners-readers to share their experiences with the series of six challenges presented to them. Actually, I didn't do any follow-up. That could be because smartphone use isn't one of my addictions, or it could be, at least in some small part, because I didn't feel exactly a magnetic pull toward a site called "New Tech City."

Which brings us to this latest news coming out of NTC. It's not called that anymore. As the keeper of the site, Manoush Zomorodi, recalls in a post yesterday announcing the new name, on April 27 she sent out an announcement and a call for help:

Hello friends,

I've got some exciting (and kind of nerve-wracking!) news for you.

We are going to change the name of this podcast. And we want your help.

In 2012, we launched as a short news update on New York City’s burgeoning tech scene. Now, because of the good feedback (thank you!), we've grown into a real podcast.

And in the process, we've outgrown our name.We know "New Tech City" sounds like a show about infrastructure, subways, and start-ups. People who have never listened before expect urban designers who code. It feels a little funny coming out of my mouth after stories like this one. Or this one. Or this one.

Now, this podcast has more to do with the ways our brains, relationships, and values are changing at a pace never seen before in human history — how so many of us feel overwhelmed by the incessant amount of information coming at us, yet too busy to stop and read the fine print.

This is where you come in: What’s a name that fits this mission? I’m asking you because of a recent tipping point: that project called Bored and Brilliant that thousands of you did with me a few months ago (and some of you are still doing). You gave us tons of feedback, and you gave us hundreds of other ideas for topics you’d like to hear explored on the show.

So now, we want you to weigh in again. We're looking for something clear, pithy, and meaningful — for example, I love the name of "Death, Sex and Money," because my colleague talks about, yes, death, sex, and money. Gretchen Rubin's "Happier"? It's about how to be happier. "How to Do Everything?" Couldn't get much clearer than that.

Please click through to answer some questions that will help us think through our new name, whether you have the perfect suggestion in mind or not.

And believe me, your ideas can't be any worse than mine:

AND THE WINNER IS --

The April 27 appeal, Manoush informs us in the new post, drew more than 700 responses, "including, but not limited to":

"As I went through all the suggestions," Manoush tells us, "a theme emerged: we’re on a search for balance in the digital age."

In no uncertain terms, you told me you listen to our show because you're interested in "purposeful use of technology." According to our survey, the shows that seem to have resonated with you include:

• Nine things we learned about phones from 16-year-old Grace,
• A history of how technology has messed up our sleep through the ages.
• And, of course,the Bored and Brilliant project, when we took a week to rethink our gadget habits and jumpstart our creativity.

With you so far, M.

And so: We're renaming this podcast "Note to Self."

Oh.

This is, Manoush says, "something I do every day, as I think about my life, my responsibilities, and the sorts of stories I want to cover for all of you." She offers examples including visual aids, like this one:


"My desk at WNYC, covered with just some of the notes I leave for myself."

Er, okay.

This show is a place where we find solutions together, both high and low tech (see above!). We're not just talking literal notes. We're here to do more experiments, stories, and reminders about how we can live and think better in an era of information overload.

Listen above for more about our new name. Soon you’ll be able to find us at notetoselfpodcast.org. If you're already a subscriber or a regular listener, you don't have to do anything at all -- you’ll just see a new logo and hear a new intro each week. We'll be updating all of our social media profiles, and you shouldn't have to do a thing.

Right.

Manoush has more to say about the new name, and the new plans for it, and she encourages everyone both to sign up for the newsletter and to provide feedback and suggestions of any sort. You can read all about this, and do your signing up onsite, and your feeding back and suggesting.

The only thing is . . . um, "Note to Self"?

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Say it ain't so! It begins to look as if NJ Guv Kris "The Athlete" Krispy may (gasp!) have fibbed about Bridgegate!

Governor Krispy is flanked by two members of the crackerjack Krispyteam he installed as New Jersey's half of the leadership team of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: now-former Deputy Exec Director Bill Baroni (left) and the Krispyman's high school chum David Wildstein, uh, some other fat guy who just went to the same high school at the same time as the governor.

"Let me just clear something up, okay? About my 'childhood friend' David Wildstein. We didn't travel in the same circles in high school. You know, I was the class president, and an athlete. I don't know what David was doing."

-- NJ Guv Kris "The Athlete" Krispy, at the famous January
2014 "Lies! Lies! And more lies!" press conference

WNYC's Andrea Bernstein reports on the team's findings today on Morning Edition.

by Ken

It was almost like Camelot, the dynamic, visionary team that NJ Guv Kris Krispy sent to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is staffed half and half by the governors of New York and New Jersey. Of course the Krispyteam is all gone now, its shining lights having one by one hastily packed their stuff and vamoosed a step ahead of the law.

It was a bold gamble the Krispyman took that day in January 2014 when he held the marathon press conference at which he laid to rest all those scurrilous things vicious people (like "the press") had been saying about his presumed knowledge of and participation in the punitive closing off of crucial Fort Lee access to the George Washington Bridge -- aka Bridgegate. His Krispiness was gambling that, even with all the incriminating e-mails that had already surfaced to and from members of his inner circles showing them to be up to their ears in the payback against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for failing to endorse the Krispyman's reelection bid. nobody could disprove the bold lies he decided to tell.

One piece of business was obviously crucial to the scheme: distancing his rotund self from that low-down weasel David Wildstein, whom the Fatman had appointed as PANYNJ's $150K "director of Interstate capital projects" because of . . . well, just because. Certainly not because this guy7 what's-his-name was an old school crony of the governor.

Incredibly, the brazen Krispyscheme sort of worked. While it's possible that some residue of the Bridgegate mess, not to mention the plague of scandals also attached to the Krispy admnistration, had something to do with the deflating of the Krispyblimp the governor hoped would float to the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, that's hard to pin down. Certainly all of the scandals, along with the guy's basic lordly-punk demeanor, had something to do with it. And the governor's tanking poll numbers in his own state suggest that the jig, while perhaps not quite up, isn't up and dancing.

Still, Krispy has yet to be unmasked as the liar, bully, and extortionist he clearly is. And let us not forget Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer's utterly plausible accusation of a gangland-style hit by the governor's team, threatening to withhold the Sandy relief funds passing through their sticky fingers en route to beleaguered Hobokenites. After all, if you take away the Krispy bluster and bullying, what do you have left? Ladies and germs, I give you Gov.Kris "The Athlete" Krispy.

For a bluff of this magnitude, I'd say that's pretty darned good -- say, maybe, 8 on a scale of 10. Not bad at all for a guy who should have had to resign in his job in disgrace, the way all his PANYNJ appointees did, and then sweat out the wait for the appropriate state and federal indictments.

Given the general silence surrounding the ongoing investigations, it's not hard to forget that there are ongoing investigations. In a way it's a shame the presidential Krispyblimp has deflated. It would have been more fun if the fallout to come fell out on a GOP presidential front-runner or even actual nominee.

I don't begin to suggest that the Krispyman is ever going to be held to account for more than a tiny fraction of even his illegal activities, and forget the merely unethical ones. Still, there's still a chance that some of the more egregious lies will unravel. I'm sure, for example, that it hasn't been lost in the Krispy Inner Circle, either the pre- or post-Bridgegate version, that what's-his-name, the $150K PANYNJ guy -- that's right, Wildstein -- is singing to the federal prosecutors in an effort to save some of his oversize carcass.

And now a team of Public Radio reporters from New York's WNYC and New Jersey Public Radio have had the effrontery to go rummaging around among, you know, the facts. Right-wingers, as we know, hate facts, which are merely left-wing conspiracies against honest patriots. And based on "examination of calendars maintained by David Wildstein during his four years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, along with a review of more than 1,000 photographs provided by the Port Authority and thousands of pages of documents released by the governor’s own legal team and the New Jersey Legislature," NJPR's Matt Katz and WNYC'S Andrea Bernstein are claiming: "The political operative who helped mastermind the notorious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge -- and is now cooperating with a federal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal -- had more extensive contact with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's inner circle than the governor has acknowledged."

It can't be!

No direct link yet to the Krispyman himself, except insofar as reasonable observers might be led to conclude that he has been, er, fibbing pretty steadily in his indignant public denails of involvement. And the larger danger to Krispyworld is that once prosecutors and voters accept the pattern -- that Governor Krispy lies freely, baldy, and remorselessly whenever it suits him -- all sorts of other dark alleyways of his administration may be up for review with considerable prejudice.

Here's just an upfront chunk of Matt Katz and Andrea Bernstein's report. The kind of vast sifting operation undertaken here yields up tiny bits of incriminating detail scattered across the tainted landscape, so by all means check out the rest.

Christie has insisted he had little to do with Wildstein, his former $150,000-a-year appointee at the Port Authority with whom he attended Livingston High School in the 1970s.

“I don’t even remember in the last four years even having a meeting in my office with David Wildstein,” Christie said at his marathon two-hour press conference in January 2014, after the legislature released Bridgegate records including the now infamous email to Wildstein declaring, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Christie told reporters:  “I may have, but I don’t remember it.”

But the documents, corroborated by current and former Port Authority and Trenton staffers who requested anonymity because of the ongoing federal investigation, paint a new picture of Wildstein’s role in the Christie Administration. That view chips away at Christie’s and his lawyers’ portrayal of Wildstein as a rogue employee largely isolated from the governor who acted with one staffer in closing lanes and causing epic traffic jams on the roadways of Fort Lee for four morning commutes in September 2013.

The records and interviews indicate that during his tenure at the Port Authority, Wildstein met at least twice with Christie and others in the governor's office, joined Christie at seven public events and had regular meetings with Christie's closest confidantes. On the day after a news report revealed that Wildstein was involved in the mysterious lane closures, his calendar had one 14-hour entry: Trenton.

Wildstein’s schedules list seven meetings at the statehouse, but his calendars are sometimes inconsistent with records maintained by the Christie Administration, and WNYC was not able to independently confirm the five other meetings took place.

The digital calendar entries were posted on an obscure section of the Port Authority’s website. Wildstein did not return repeated emails and his attorney, Alan Zegas, would not comment.

The difficulty of corroborating events in the calendars can be shown by examining one entry on a Sunday in November 2013 as the Bridgegate scandal was unfolding. Wildstein listed a 1 p.m. meeting with “CC” —the governor’s initials — at the Black Horse Tavern in Mendham, down the road from the governor’s house and across the street from his family’s church. "There was no meeting with the governor," said Kevin Roberts, a Christie spokesman.

Many governors make their meeting schedules public. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo posts his on the internet. But when WNYC requested Christie’s own meeting schedules under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, the request was denied. WNYC sued to obtain the documents; a judge ruled against the request.

WNYC’s reporting shows extensive contact between Wildstein and Christie’s top staff, notably the people involved with the governor's political career. Wildstein’s schedules – in entries verified by interviews — show almost monthly meetings with Bill Stepien, Christie’s top political aide at the statehouse and the manager of Christie’s two campaigns. Through his attorney, Stepien has said that he had nothing to do with the lane closures. Stepien and Wildstein had been friends since working together on a campaign in 2000.

“I was well aware he was going down to Trenton and briefing Stepien regularly,” said one former official who didn’t want his name used for fear of reprisals. The official said Wildstein spoke of traveling to “Trenton to deal with the politics” of Port Authority decisions.

The calendars also show lunches and dinners with Christie’s top outside strategist, Mike DuHaime of Mercury Public Affairs.

WNYC’s reexamination of Wildstein’s role in the Christie Administration comes as the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, Paul Fishman, enters the 15th month of his Bridgegate probe. The federal investigation began after the legislature released an email showing a Christie deputy chief of staff telling Wildstein: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”  When the email became public, Christie distanced himself from Wildstein.

“I could probably count on one hand the number of conversations I had with David Wildstein since he worked at the Port Authority,” the governor said during a news conference at the statehouse.

Yet official photos released by the Port Authority show Wildstein among an inner circle of agency officials who attended five public events with the governor. Photos show Wildstein speaking with Christie during at least two of them: A June 2013 ceremonial ribbon-cutting for the raising of the Bayonne Bridge and at the World Trade Center memorial ceremony on Sept. 11, 2013, which took place during the lane closures. . . .

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Welcome to New Tech City's "Bored and Brilliant": Part 2, Challenges 3-6

"What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are in terms of our goals."

-- Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive
neuroscience at the University of York

by Ken

Okay, nothing much to splain here, provided you go back to Part 1, which contained both the introduction to WNYC's New Tech City's "Bored and Brilliant" project, which seeks to help wean smartphone addicts from their addiction and into "the lost art of spacing out."


Challenge 3: Donate That App



Flurry Analytics defines a “mobile addict” as someone who launches apps more than 60 times a day. The average consumer launches apps 10 times a day, so to qualify as having an app dependency, you have to be pretty app crazy.

And the people most likely to be addicted? According to Flurry, teens, college students (skewing female) and middle-aged parents.

Even if you aren’t at 60 times a day, just about everyone has that one app — that one damn app — that steals away too much time.

Your instructions for today: delete it. Delete that app. Think about which app you use too much, one that is the bad kind of phone time. You pick what that means. Delete said time-wasting, bad habit app. Uninstall it.

This will be difficult, because app designers are pretty smart. And they are pretty good at building things we want to just keep on using, over and over and over. In this episode, Manoush breaks her cycle. She deletes the seriously addictive game Two Dots. It wasn't easy and it followed a pretty, er, dramatic confrontation with the game designer. It might be cathartic for you.

If you need a little push to take the plunge, Dr. Zach Hambrick, professor of cognitive psychology at Michigan State University, says cell phone games do just about... nothing for your brain. You don't get better at anything but playing the game, he says. And only that game.

"If you play Ms. PacMan a lot, you’ll get better at Mr. PacMan, and video games where you have to move through a maze. But you won’t get better at Space Invaders or some real task like filling out your tax forms," Hambrick said.

Listen for more. And seriously... delete that app.


Challenge 4: Take a Fauxcation



Today, you’re getting a break from email, texting, social media, or whatever means of digital communication interrupts you all day long. It's a fauxcation (or "fake-cation" if you prefer).

Your instructions: Set an email auto-reply just as you would if you were out for a real vacation, send an "I'll be back later" text out on group chat, or put up an away message status on social media.

Come up with your own. Or if you are feeling like a Bored and Brilliant Booster, use one of these badges we made for you. Whatever it'll take to give you peace of mind while you focus.

Worried about being away from work? On our podcast today, that's exactly what we take on: the role of boredom, downtime, and unplugging at the office.

Matthew Krentz is a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Krentz and his company let the Harvard Business School take a small team of consultants to use as time management guinea pigs. They discovered that perpetual connectivity was good in the short term — not so much in the long term. Studies say we actually perform better when we have a chance to think.

Look, we're in media. We get it. Maybe there’s no way your boss will let you be off the grid for an hour today, and maybe not until the bigger, broader system changes. But perhaps you can make an hour for yourself tonight? That's when more of you told us you want to reclaim time from your phone anyway.

When you check back in, we'd love to hear how it went. Scroll through our gallery of away messages below, and let us know what you decided to go with! Our hashtag for the day is #NTCFauxcation.


Challenge 5: One Small Observation



Social networks help us stay connected. We love social media. But how often do we swipe past strangers' selfies, baby pictures, and career updates in lieu of the actual humans around us?

For our second-to-last challenge (yes, there's a weekend project coming!), we want you to flex the creative muscles we've been freeing up all week. The first step is noticing.

Your instructions: Today, go somewhere public. It could be a park, a mall, the gas station, the hallway at work or school. You pick.

Once you get there, hang out. Watch people, or objects, or anything that strikes you. Try not to be (too) creepy. Imagine what a single person is thinking, or zoom in on an uninventable detail. Just make one small observation you might have missed if your nose were glued to a screen.

If you feel inclined, and we hope you do, record that detail using a voice memo app on your phone (yes, yes, we know, but we think this is worth a pick-up). Two good ones are the built in voice memo app for iPhone or an Android one called Easy Voice Recorder. Then, email it to us at newtechcity@wnyc.org. We always love to hear from you. And we might use it in an upcoming show.

Or you can tell us about your observation in the comments below. What'd ya see? How'd it feel?


Challenge 6: Dream House



You've spent the week picking up your phone purposefully. You've kept it in your pocket, you've abstained from photo-taking, you've considered life beyond the screen. To take our project to its logical — and admittedly weird — conclusion, boredom artist Nina Katchadourian has assigned us a group project.
We want you to get really bored, and then make something creative, introspective, and personal.

Your instructions today are multi-part:

• Put away your phone.

• Put a generous pot of water on the stove and watch it come to a boil. If you don't have a stove or a pot, find a small piece of paper and write "1,0,1,0" as small as you can until it’s full. Either way, you should get bored. Keep it up as long as it takes to daydream.

• Next, take out your wallet and empty it of all its contents. Use them to construct your dream house. It could be the place you wish you lived in all the time or a getaway. Take as long as you need to build.

• Give your house a descriptive name.

• When you're finished — and only when you're finished — go get your phone. Take a picture of the house. (Careful with your credit card numbers.)

• Email your picture to bored@wnyc.org, and tell us about your creation (put its name and location in the subject line, and tell us why it's your dream house in the body).

Then, high five a friend. Check out the submissions here. Share your favorites. They'll be uploaded over the weekend.

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Welcome to New Tech City's "Bored and Brilliant" project: Part 1, Introduction and Challenges 1-2

"What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are in terms of our goals."

-- Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive
neuroscience at the University of York

by Ken

Don't be overwhelmed. What I've gathered here is a week's worth of challenges in the project "Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art of Spacing Out," presented by New Tech City, the Web project of NYC public-radio station WNYC, presided over by Manoush Zomorodi. I've been paying on-and-off attention all week, since the particular addiction at issue here, compulsive smartphone use, doesn't happen to be one of my addictions.

It's all explained in the introductory segment far better than I could try to re-explain it, so I'm not going to try. There are, in addition to the bare-bones challenges as I'm presenting them here, not only lotsa links onsite, but also a constellation of collateral supportive and amplifying posts. You are frequently exhorted to sign up and receive e-mails and goodness only knows what else. You can even "subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed" -- and I don't even know what half of that means.

But you don't need any further guidance from me to check all of those out. Let me see . . . um, yes, right, check -- I think that's all I need to say, except that you'll find Challenges 1-2 in this post and Challenges 3-6 in the following post, at 3pm PT/6pm ET.


Introduction: The Case for Boredom



This episode kicks off the biggest project New Tech City has ever done: Bored and Brilliant. Our goal is to get you rethinking your relationship with technology. We've partnered with the apps Moment and BreakFree for a week of podcasts and challenges.

We would love to have you join us.

SIGN UP HERE

Here's the issue: It goes back to when Apple introduced the first iPhone in 2007 — that's less than a decade ago. Fifty-eight percent of American adults have a smartphone today. The average mobile consumer checks their device 150 times a day, and 67 percent of the time, that's not because it rang or vibrated. Forty-four percent of Americans have slept with their phone next to their beds.

Statistics aside, all you really have to do is go outside and see how many people can't even walk without staring at a screen. We counted them!



When we asked for your stories, many of you told us smartphones make you feel like you have the power to be connected all the time, organized beyond measure, and never, ever without entertainment while you're waiting for coffee. But you've also told us they make you feel dependent, exhausted, and addicted — some of you say you're actually relieved when you lose or break your phones for a day.

There's a paradox here. But one thing is clear: Paying attention to our smartphones through so many of our waking moments means our minds don't spend as much time idling.

And that matters! We talked to boredom researcher Sandi Mann of the University of Lancashire of the U.K.

"You come up with really great stuff when you don’t have that easy lazy junk food diet of the phone to scroll all the time," says Sandi Mann.

Mann's research finds that idle minds lead to reflective, often creative thoughts (we discuss her projects in depth in this week's show). Minds need to wander to reach their full potential.

During bouts of boredom our brains can't help but jump around in time, analyzing and re-analyzing the pieces of our lives, says Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of York in the UK. He says inspiration strikes in the shower because it's a moment when we're not really looking at or focusing on anything else.

Researchers have only really started to understand the phenomena of "mind-wandering" — the activity our brains engage in when we're doing nothing at all — over the past decade or so.

"There’s a close link between originality, novelty, and creativity... and these sort of spontaneous thoughts that we generate when our minds are idle," Smallwood said.

But when mental stimulation is a touch of the phone away?

"That’s where daydreaming and boredom intersect," Smallwood says. "What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are in terms of our goals."

And that's where Bored and Brilliant comes in. Let's do it together. Sign up here.


Challenge 1: Keep It in Your Pocket



Your instructions: As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight. Better yet, keep it in your bag.

While you're boarding the train, walking down the sidewalk, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car, we're asking you to look at your phone only when you have reached your destination. You can do it [link = "18 Places Where You Can Survive Without Your Phone"].

And when you do pick up your phone today: Here are five basic phone hygiene tips to make that screen time really count. They come from the mind of Dr. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of The Distraction Addiction

Phone Freedom 101
[Read about the "basic phone hygiene tips" onsite. -- Ed.]

1. Remember to breathe.
2. Turn off non-vital notifications.
3. Make sure you do get the notifications that matter to you.
4. Fight "phantom phone syndrome:" Practice not answering messages right away.
5. Carry your phone in a bag, rather than in your pocket or in your hand (this one's extra credit!)

Challenge 2: Phone-Free Day



Your instructions: See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures today. Not of your lunch, not of your children, not of your cubicle mate, not of the beautiful sunset. No picture messages. No cat pics.

We want you to start actually seeing that phone-free world around you. 

A recent study found Americans take more than 10 billion photos every month, and mostly on our phones. The thing is, each time we snap a quick pic of something, it could be harming our memory of it. This podcast is about psychology, creativity, and perception.

Meet the man who inspired it here:


[Watch the video onsite.]

"They’re not even looking at the painting sometimes, they’re scrolling; they’re just scrolling away, looking at their phones... They’ll say I was checking and you can tell when they’re taking photos."

— Greg Colon, security guard at NYC's Guggenheim Museum

COMING UP: "Bored and Brilliant" Challenges 4-6

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Fund-Raising Tonight: The funniest damned fund-raising video I've ever seen

Yes, it's those baking fools from WNYC!

by Ken

Oh man, I love this video! WNYC, in case you don't know, is our local public radio station here in NYC, and that means they're in more or less perpetual begging mode. What's great about this video, apart from its being hilarious, is that most of us listeners have never seen any of these people, not even luminaries like Leonard Lopate and Brian Lehrer. Heck, until now I didn't even know how to spell "Soterios." (I hear Soterios Johnson every morning doing local inserts on Morning Edition.)

By the sheerest stroke of good luck, I just this week did my membership renewal. (Phew!) I may actually be inspired to kick in a little extra now, in accord with the video's message:

"Pledge $20 now to keep WNYC on the air and out of the kitchen."

If you're inspired, bake-sale-themed contributions are being accepted here:

https://www.wnyc.org/epledge/wnycbakesale

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Is classical radio in New York saved? Here's what the new boss of WQXR has to say

WNYC chief exec Laura Walker writes about the New York

public radio station's plans for all-classical station WQXR.

by Ken

I'm on record voicing substantial skepticism about the deal whereby New York City's last all-classical radio station, WQXR, is being sold by the New York Times Company and shifted to the stratospheric FM frequency 105.9, where it will be operated by public radio station WNYC as a public radio station -- i.e., basically listener-supported.

My problem isn't the involvement of WNYC, which is in a position to substantially upgrade the listenability of what goes out over the air on the new WQXR, which I and most of the people I know have considered mostly unlistenable for a long time now. (I wondered in particular whether the bright, personable, and music-loving WQXR morning guy, Jeff Spurgeon, might not be able -- liberated from all the mindless commercial babble of the current format -- to do the kind of show that not only services but creates classical-music lovers.)

No, my biggest problem is whether anybody will be able to hear the new WQXR, since under the terms of the deal it will be giving up one of the strongest FM signals on the dial for one of the feeblest: a 600-watt signal that maybe 27 people in the tristate metropolitan area will be able to receive well enough to listen to classical music. Also, it has been known for some time that WNYC was looking for a "spare" channel on which it could dump the remaining classical music it broadcasts off the too-precious-for-classical-music 93.9 frequency. That mission too seems to have been accomplished.

None of this was intended as a reflection on the seriousness or good will of WNYC's chief exec, Laura Walker. Clearly WNYC could never have afforded to pay the Times the $33.5 million that Univision is reportedly paying to move its Spanish talk-and-music station WCAA into WQXR's choice 96.3 frequency and 6000-watt broadcast capacity. (WNYC's announced price tab is $11.5 million. A $15 million fund-raising effort has already been launched, to cover the purchase price plus "transition costs," which I imagine will indeed be considerable.)

In fairness to Laura Walker and the WNYC people, I thought it only appropriate to pass on the statement Ms. Walker sent out yesterday to WNYC listeners, without further comment. (You'll note that she does deal with the question of the new WQXR's receivability: "We will look for ways to enhance the signal and add repeater signals throughout the metropolitan area.")

Dear WNYC Listener,

I am delighted to share the news that WNYC will preserve classical music radio on the New York radio dial through an agreement with The New York Times to acquire WQXR radio, which we will operate as a public radio station.   Because we feel very strongly that New York needs a full-time station dedicated to classical music, when the New York Times decided to sell WQXR, we worked with them to develop an agreement that will preserve classical music on the radio dial in New York for years to come. 

WQXR (currently broadcast on 96.3 FM) will move to its new frequency on 105.9 FM, in October. Univision Radio, which currently broadcasts on 105.9 will move to 96.3 FM.  Although the 105.9 signal is weaker than the 96.3 signal, we will look for ways to enhance the signal and add repeater signals throughout the metropolitan area.

Under the stewardship of WNYC, WQXR will continue to be a trusted curator of classical music, rooted in and reflecting New York’s vibrant classical music community.  We’ll continue and even enhance the on-air connection to the most diverse and talent-filled concert halls in the world, and the presence of their artists and impresarios on-air alongside live concerts.  Through digital streaming, WNYC will also extend a great classical music station’s reach not just to all parts of the City, but throughout the United States, and the world. 

By joining the WNYC family, WQXR will be preserved and will benefit from our stewardship.  Pianist Emanuel Ax, called preserving WQXR as a classical station “the sonic equivalent of saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker’s ball.” I am delighted and honored that WNYC will be part of this exciting venture.

Please visit click here for more details about the acquisition, and information about what you as a listener can expect to see and hear in the coming months.  We also look forward to hearing your thoughts - you can click here to join the conversation about this news.

With regards and thanks for your support,






Laura Walker
President and Chief Executive Officer
WNYC Radio

UPDATE: ALAS, THOSE SIGNAL ENHANCEMENTS
LIKELY WON'T HAPPEN ANYTIME SOON, IF EVER

Personally, I was kind of dubious about the prospects for the kind of signal enhancements Ms. Walker promises to look into, but what do I know? I wondered even about the economics of WQXR being able to retain the "independently owned 'repeater' signals in Poughkeepsie and Asbury Park, N.J.," of which Richard Perez-Pena and Daniel Wakin's original NYT report said, "It was not clear on Tuesday what would become of those arrangements." In any case, I thought it would be nice to let Ms. Walker just have her say.

Alas, however, in an important comment, our friend Balakirev, writing "as someone who wrote the grant and secured the extra local funding for four translators and repeaters in a West Coast public station," outlines what's actually involved in doing what she suggests -- "a very long term project that is extremely resource intensive," adding that here in the Northeast, where our radio frequencies (which the FCC won't allowed to be interfered with in such an undertaking) are that much more tightly packed, the whole thing becomes that much more difficult.

After describing what the process actually entails, he concludes: "I'm not suggesting this is impossible, or that the new manager doesn't have the best of intentions. But given the likelihood of this having in a reasonable timeframe, she might as well have stated that they're looking into the option of delivering caffeinated mocha directly to the mouths of listeners during their morning drive time. Ingenuous at best, her comments deal with something that is years away, if at all possible."

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Hooray, classical-music radio is saved despite the sale of WQXR! Or is it? Well, the NYT pockets a bagload o' cash

Once upon a time, WQXR mattered.

by Ken

I started out yesterday afternoon writing this as an "Open Letter" to (1) the Head Scumbag at the New York Times Company and (2) Laura Walker, president and chief executive of listener-supported public radio station WNYC, congratulating them on the deal that was then just-announced, and was being passed off as having "saved" classical radio in New York City: the Times Company's sale of WQXR (currently the tristate metropolitan area's only all-classical radio station) to WNYC (which continues to broadcast a certain amount of classical music only because it hasn't dared to dump it, for fear of the uproar that would result from the portion of its donor base that remains unaccountably attached to that broadcast-spectrum-wasting crap).

It turns out that the Times Company didn't exactly "sell WQXR to WNYC," and somewhere along the line, perhaps in sorting out the strands of the deal (which has a certain complexity but isn't all that complex), I discovered I had abandoned the "open letter" format. Hmm, too peeved for sarcasm?

The Times has owned WQXR since 1944. Since the sudden demise of its commercial rival WNCN in 1993, WQXR has been the city's only all-classical station. Juilliard School president Joseph Polisi is quoted in the NYT article: "“WQXR has been in so many ways a symbol of New York’s culture for decades.” (Is it necessary to resurrect the irony that classical music was once master of the FM band? Those are the days when commercial broadcasters scorned FM, while classical-music broadcasters and listeners relished its vastly superior sound quality, all the more so when FM went stereo. Yes, I think it is necessary. Pointless but necessary.)

It turns out that while the Times apparently has indeed sold WQXR, it wasn't all sold to WNYC. Oh yes, the call letters were sold, and presumably all the physical crap associated with, which you assume the Times regards as just a cheaper alternative to having to have it all carted off to the dump. But the station's most valuable asset, the 96.3 FM frequency and powerful 6,000-watt signal and transmitting equipment, ah, that's a different story.

That prime chunk of FM real estate, it turns out, is going to Univision, which is swapping the next-to-useless 105.9 frequency, with its FCC-limited 600-watt signal, now occupied by its station WCAA. According to the NYT report by Richard Perez-Pena and Daniel Wakin:

The deal gives Univision a stronger signal and a coveted spot near the middle of the FM band for WCAA, reflecting the region’s growing Hispanic population and the increasing prominence of Spanish broadcasting. WCAA’s mix of talk and music includes the morning show of Luis Jimenez, one of the most popular Spanish-language radio hosts.

At the heart of the deal is the Times Company's urgent need for money, more apparently than it could likely raise by putting NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger to work as a male escort. Obviously even if WNYC had actually wanted to "buy WQXR," the price in today's commercial radio market would have been prohibitive. According to the plausible-looking NYT account (Perez-Pena and Wakin are both excellent reporters), the Times is coming out of the deal with $45 million, $11.5 million from WNYC (the station has already mounted a $15 million fund-raising drive to cover the purchase price plus "transition costs"), and $33.5 million from Univision.

So everybody comes out ahead, right? The Times gets its money, WCAA gets that great 96.3 frequency, and WNYC gets to get all that goddamned classical music the hell off its precious 93.9 frequency. (Finally!) And classical radio in New York is saved, hurrah!

More or less.

Now I don't begrudge WCAA's Hispanic listeners a better frequency for their station. From their old perch atop the FM band with that mighty 600-watt transmitter, they're lucky to have listeners at all. However, the number of listeners in the tristate metropolitan area who will be able to receive a good enough signal from the "new" WQXR -- once the switch happens (date unknown; it depends on FCC approval) -- to reproduce classical music is about 27.

I'm not concerned, as many people apparently are, about the change in WQXR from a commercial to a listener-supported format. Or indeed about such other format changes as are likely to occur. Partly because of the commercials the station has been all but unlistenable for 20-30 years. But that's only partly because of the commercials. In what was no doubt considered a necessity for commercial survival, the old management has dumbed down the format to the point of parody.

THE CURRENT WQXR PEOPLE AREN'T A TOTAL LOSS

There are some good people at the station. Back when I was looking desperately for a morning TV or radio replacement to help get me out of the house after Air America Radio abandoned morning programming in New York, I discovered that WQXR's current morning guy, Jeff Spurgeon, is quite good. He's bright and personable and clearly loves music (it's a pleasure to hear a classical-music announcer who can actually pronounce names and titles in the standard foreign languages), and might even be able to do a real radio show if he wasn't enmired in all the yawping crap that has afflicted WQXR. Assuming he's interested in staying with the station, the new management would be crazy not to see what he can do. Heck, I'd give it a shot.

Assuming I can tune the new WQXR in.

WNYC president Laura Walker is assuring institutions like the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic that they don't have to worry about being dumped from WQXR. Of course they will be included in the new format ("We will not only look to continue those relationships, but to extend and expand and deepen them,” says Ms. Walker.) But I don't think those great institutions are so much worried about being included as being heard. Because it seems to me that while no, the plug hasn't literally been pulled on classical radio in New York, as soon as the FCC approves the frequency swap, it's going to fall off the end of the broadcast spectrum.

HELLO, POUGHKEEPSIE AND ASBURY PARK!

The Times reporters note: "WQXR is broadcast even farther afield on independently owned 'repeater' signals in Poughkeepsie and Asbury Park, N.J. It was not clear on Tuesday what would become of those arrangements."

I wouldn't hold my breath regarding the "repeater" signals. Who would pay for them?

Oh yes, while I'm bitching, in fairness I would be remiss not to mention: "Listeners will still be able to go online to hear WQXR, which will retain a Web site of its own." So even after classical radio effectively disappears from New York radio, it'll still be on the Internet.

Noted.

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