It was a big week for conspiracy theories, with two big rumors circulating in the news. First, that the President is secretly not American. Second, that Obama's health care proposal includes plans to euthanize senior citizens, a claim promoted by former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy ...

Computer scientists at Intel have developed Dispute Finder, a program they say can keep you from believing everything you see online. It scans what you’re reading and shows you an article or blog that presents the opposing point of view. Research scientist Rob Ennals explains how ...

The Obama Administration promised that Recovery.gov would make the massive stimulus package transparent and highlight how well (or poorly) it's working. But Eric Umansky, senior editor at ProPublica, says it's hard to track the stimulus money because the numbers on the website just don't ...

Getting a patent is a notoriously slow process and U.S. patent office employees are sometimes ill-equipped to evaluate whether highly technical applications are worthy of patents. A few years ago, Beth Noveck, Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration, came up with a fix: put applications on ...

Last week the AP announced plans to electronically tag their online content so illegal use will be easier to track. The Fair Syndication Consortium, which includes The New York Times and The Washington Post, is trying to get a piece of the ad revenue other sites ...

Two years ago, Netflix offered a $1 million prize to whomever could improve their movie recommendation software by 10%. Now a team has won (though the winning team has yet to be announced.) Writer Clive Thompson tells us why the competition is important and ...

Did you know that Walter Cronkite is so identified with the news business that in Sweden an anchorman is called a "Kronkiter"? And speaking of anchorman, did you know that word was coined in the 1950s to define Cronkite’s role on broadcast TV? Neither did we. ...

On July 23, Stone and Holt Weeks were killed in a car accident. They were the sons of a dear colleague and friend. A foundation has been created in their names and this week's show is dedicated to their memory.