By The Next List Staff, CNN
(CNN) - Nalini Nadkarni is a pioneer in tree canopy research and co-founder of the Sustainability in Prisons Project, which aims to teach inmates about ecology. Watch a 30-minute profile of on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on CNN’s “The Next List."
Here's a primer on why she is fascinating enough to make The Next List.
Why you've heard of her: You probably haven't. Unless you're a tree climbing scientist or an inmate in Washington state (more on that soon). Oh - or you may have seen "Heroes of the High Frontiers," an Emmy-winning National Geographic film. She's in that. Or maybe you were one of the lucky few to get your hands on the "Tree Top Barbie Doll" she developed. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Jim Newton’s full 30-minute profile airs on CNN’s “The Next List” this Sunday at 2 P.M. ET. He is the founder and chairman of TechShop, a a membership-based workshop for do-it-yourselfers that provides access to tools, equipment and instruction.
Why you might know him: Newton is a serial entrepreneur, a maker and a hacker. He’s just opened a sixth TechShop, this one in Round Rock, Texas, so more tinkerers, artists, entrepreneurs and lovers of all things handmade can have access to the tools to build whatever they can dream up.
Why he matters: Newton is opening up a world of innovation by giving people the tools, the workspace and the confidence to make things they’ve always dreamed of making. He’s creating hubs for invention and creativity where people can come to inspire and be inspired.
Quotable Newton: “This is kind of innovation as recreation,” he says. “You just do it because it’s fun.”
TechShop by the numbers: There are six TechShops open right now: in Menlo Park, CA, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, Raleigh-Durham, NC, Detroit, MI, and now Round Rock, Texas, near Austin. Three more are planned for Brooklyn, NY, Pittsburgh, PA and greater Washington, D.C. There are currently about 5,000 TechShop members nationwide.
In his own words: “Everybody has creative abilities but people just don’t express them. I mean, I see people come in here that are afraid to try anything. We give them some classes and some encouragement. And they have some success with their projects. And you see them just change. You see them light up. You see them say, 'Wow, I really can do this.' This is stunning. They’re stunned.”
Something you might not know about Jim: He worked as a science advisor on the popular Discovery Channel show "MythBusters." He’s taught robotics and is a former Battle Bots competitor.
What they did on summer vacation: The Newtons (Jim, his wife Barbara and their three children) took a 60-day long car trip across America to visit iconic landmarks.
Surprising Fact: They are still speaking to one another.
Newton’s Dream? To open a TechShop in every major city in the country. That way he’ll have access to a world-class workshop wherever he goes.
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By Jennifer Pahlka, Special to CNN
Editor's Note: Jennifer Pahlka is the Founder and Executive Director of Code for America. Watch The Next List’s full 30-minute profile of Pahlka this Sunday at 2 p.m. ET
Code for America seems to have struck a chord with many people. It’s easy to understand the value of bringing young tech and design folks into government and having them learn from each other because, whether they give it a lot of thought or not, their relationship with government is pretty important.
But beyond the notion of promise, what is the real need for cities to innovate? There are many answers to this question, and the one I hear most often is that the public sector must keep up with the private sector.
When interacting with government feels outdated, it sends a signal to citizens that their government isn’t benefiting from the efficiencies that private companies have found in recent years. It's not taking advantage of the new networks of participation that we see all around us. As the pace of change accelerates in our daily lives, that gap can grow, and it can result in an erosion of trust.
It is what fuels many communities to defund local government, turning off streetlights and no longer maintaining infrastructure. The public is convinced their money isn’t well spent, and the results often guarantee that it’s not.
Cities must also innovate because they are in crisis, at least financially. Multiple revenue sources are being reduced (including support from federal and state programs), need for citizen services is increasing, and their workforce is retiring and leaving them with fewer workers but huge pension liabilities. Twenty-six municipalities have gone bankrupt since 2010, and more are likely to as it becomes harder and harder to push off inevitable financial meltdown.
There’s an upside to this, in that the crisis is forcing conversations about innovation. As Rahm Emmanuel said, “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
I’d argue that cities also are in a renaissance of ideas, growth, and optimism. To me the real reason cities must innovate is that the existing model of providing services doesn’t scale. There are big important things we must fund together; it just doesn’t make sense for everyone to take their own garbage to the dump every week, or for each house to capture and use its own water.
But we ask government to do so much, including things we can do for ourselves, for our neighbors, for our community. When a neighbor helps a neighbor with a trapped animal instead of calling city services, or when a community cleans up a park for a fraction of the cost of having public servants do it, the model starts to scale again.
The trick is figuring out government’s role in encouraging and coordinating these actions, and to the extent that digital technology has gotten pretty good at coordinating collective action, government must get good at technology too. Not the big enterprise technology of the 1990s, but the lightweight, simple technologies that real people actually use. The technologies and interfaces that connect us to our networks and help us do things together.
Governments, and citizens partnered with government, need to learn how technology can teach us how to act like citizens.
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Editor's Note: Joyce Maynard is the author of best selling novels "Labor Day" and "To Die For," as well as the explosive 1998 memoir "At Home in the World." She maintains a home in San Marcos la Laguna, Guatemala.
Susana Heisse is an environmental activist who uses the “eco-brick” to promote recycling and proper nutrition in Guatemalan schools. She will be profiled on CNN's The Next List Sunday, September 30th, at 2 p.m. ET.
By Joyce Maynard, Special to CNN
I first met Susanne Heisse in the fall of 2001, when I traveled to Guatemala with the plan of spending a few months in the astonishingly beautiful little Mayan village of San Marcos la Laguna, on the shores of the clear blue waters of Lake Atitlan.
It would have been hard to miss Susanne: at six feet tall, she towered over every indigenous person in the village, and most of the gringos, striding down the narrow stone paths of the village in her flowing skirts, with her flowing hair, and her big, commanding voice. She'd talk — in somewhat unconventional English, or her native German, or Spanish — about a subject few of the rest of us (at our yoga classes, and drumming circles, or taking our daily swims) chose to think about: The unromantic topic of trash. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Dr. David Eagleman directs the Eagleman Laboratory for Perception and Action at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He is the subject of Sunday's episode of "The Next List," on CNN at 2 p.m. ET.
By David Eagleman, Special to CNN
(CNN) - In the wake of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting, many people are asking the same questions: What kind of derangement is revealed by the alleged acts of James Holmes, who has been charged with murder and attempted murder in a massacre during a showing of "The Dark Knight Rises"? What is wrong with the brain that concocted this plot? How will information about Holmes' mental state play out in the courts?
My goal here is to bring a perspective on this tragedy from the point of view of a neuroscientist.
Few facts are publicly available about Holmes’ mental health background. Despite the dearth of data, however, several issues can be clarified and discussed.
To begin, it’s critical to understand the difference between two words: psychotic and psychopathic. These are two similar-sounding terms that commentators sometimes use interchangeably.
But, in reality, they are entirely different.
A person with a psychosis is disconnected from reality. For example, a homeless person arguing with himself is typically suffering from a psychosis such as schizophrenia. Someone with this sort of mental illness is termed “psychotic.” A person with a disorder of mood such as bipolar disorder (in which one alternates between depression and mania) can also have associated psychotic features such as hallucinations and delusions.
In contrast, a person with psychopathy has low empathy and low remorse. The psychopath can be smart, glib, charming and blend in perfectly with the society around him, but he lacks compassion and guilt. Behind his “mask of sanity” lurks a manipulative creature who can hurt others without compunction. A psychopath (or, synonymously, a sociopath) is someone like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. They are termed “psychopathic”.
Which, if either of these, was Holmes? If convicted of the crimes, did he suffer from a psychosis, or was he instead a cognitively intact but emotionless sociopath? When Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter told the media that Holmes was “a psychotic son of a bitch," it’s safe to guess that his statement stemmed from a confounding of the terms rather than a specific diagnosis.
By The Next List staff, CNN
(CNN) - In 1974, 23-year-old Juan Sostheim was tapped as director of Burger King in Europe. He opened the company’s first franchises on the continent and introduce millions to a phenomenon known as the “Whopper.”
Today, the former fast food king has traded in his crown for a new title: owner of Costa Rica’s first carbon-negative company, a sustainable farm and eco-resort known as Rancho Margot.
“What I’m doing today is basically the sum of my experiences,” say Sostheim. “I understand it’s a little bit crazy, but I think it should give people some hope that we all can change.” FULL POST
Editor's note: Juan Sostheim is owner and founder of Rancho Margot, an eco-resort, educational facility and sustainable farm in Costa Rica. Sostheim is the subject of Sunday's episode of "The Next List," on CNN at 2 p.m. ET.
By Juan Sostheim, Special to CNN
(CNN) - Almost 40 years have gone by since I graduated from the University of Florida and started my professional career. I remember being relieved that the Vietnam War was nearly over and the threat of someone pushing "the button" and starting a nuclear war was becoming an unlikely scenario.
As terrible as these issues were, we always felt that we could somehow it behind us.
Today, we face a very different problem and it’s one which most people feel powerless to do something about on an individual level. I’m referring to climate change.
There have always been and will always be naysayers, but no one can stay on the sidelines and hope someone else will do the right thing. We all must become eco-literate. We all must participate.
In the scientific community, there is no doubt about where we are heading and what is causing it. There is some legitimate debate about how long the devastation due to climate change will take, how much damage we can expect or where, but the situation as a whole is clear; global warming is real and if we don’t change, life will forever be different. I’m an optimist and I know we can change. We must adapt and mitigate but most important of all we must let everyone know where we stand or it will continue to be business as usual.
When I built Rancho Margot, an eco-resort in Costa Rica, I had to make choices. I wanted to have the smallest possible environmental impact - but at the same time I needed to get tourists to come and support what we were doing. How was I going to sell my vision to people who don't believe in climate change? My mission became to get people to realize that small changes in lifestyle can have a big impact. There is no need to sacrifice.
So what is it that we as individuals can do? First and foremost, we must demand that the true cost of all products and services be visible for all to see. This is only possible if we demand that carbon footprints be measured under strict international norms. At Rancho Margot, we chose the PAS 2060 norms from the British Institute of Standards. We emit 115 tons of carbon dioxide per year and, through our mitigation efforts, sequester 1,375 tons. That means we had a minus-1,260-ton carbon footprint in 2011. As consumers, we need to demand this information.
Forget, for the moment, the global picture. This is about us. I want to know how much carbon we emit. I need to know. If this is not consumer protection, I don’t know what is. In the UK, all public companies are now required to report and certify their carbon footprint. It’s a start. It is a slow process and we have little time. In the absence of this consumer protection we need to make common sense choices. We can buy locally produced fruits and vegetables. We can buy quality that lasts and things that can be locally repaired. We need to stop supporting our own destruction. There is a whole sustainable future out there and it’s up to us.
The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Juan Sostheim.
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Editor's note: CNN's "The Next List" will feature Brian O'Hanlon, founder of Open Blue, on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
By The Next List Staff, CNN
(CNN) - The lure of the open ocean has long been the stuff of poetry. For Brian O’Hanlon, it led to his life’s work.
O’Hanlon is the founder and president of Open Blue, the largest open-ocean fish farm in the world. He’s also a pioneer in raising fish far out at sea. O’Hanlon believes that the depth of the water and swift currents make for a much healthier environment to raise fish than traditional farms near shore or on land. Aquaculture in the open ocean also avoids damaging sensitive coastal ecosystems.
O’Hanlon’s team raises the fish from eggs so they control their diet at every stage of development. FULL POST
Editor's note: Taylor Wilson is the subject of CNN's "The Next List" on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
By The Next List Staff, CNN
(CNN) - At 18, Taylor Wilson has probably accomplished more than most people will in a lifetime.
He is the youngest person in the world to build a nuclear fusion reactor. And he won national acclaim for a counter terror device that sniffs out nuclear material in cargo containers. If that’s not enough, he built a prototype for a device that generates medical isotopes - a feat that could make diagnosing and treating cancer cheaper and more widely accessible to patients.
Wilson has won a dozen awards at the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the Super Bowl of science fairs, over the course of his high school career. Not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.
By Laura Ly, Special to CNN
New York (CNN) - On any given day, the vending machine at Ample Hills Creamery in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, may offer anything from books to original artwork to toys. If you see something you want, however, no need to take out your wallet. The ‘Swap-O-Matic’ vending machine allows you to swap and trade items, rather than buy them.
“The Swap-O-Matic recognizes that there is a thrill in getting things. The vending machine satisfies our desires for instant gratification, but it co-ops it and re-appropriates it to something that is a more sustainable method of acquisition, which is through swapping and trading,” said Lina Fenequito, the creator and primary designer of the ‘Swap-O-Matic.’
Fenequito wanted to call attention to issues of overconsumption and needless waste and aimed to find a creative way to encourage trading and reusing. For her senior thesis project at Parsons School of Design, she built an earlier, low-tech model. In August 2011, with the help of visual designer Ray Mancini and electrical engineer Rick Cassidy, Fenequito built upon her thesis project and created a machine with touchscreen capability and digital locks. FULL POST
Each week, CNN's "The Next List" profiles innovators, visionaries and agents of change. They’re not household names just yet, but they’re movers and shakers in their own worlds. We’re introducing them to you because these individuals are steadily mapping the course to the future with their new ideas.
WHO: Host Dr. Sanjay Gupta
WHEN: Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. ET - All new time!
WHERE: Only on CNN
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