October 12, 2007
If you haven’t played a video game since Ms. Pac-Man, you probably have some catching up to do. Kurt has this quick guided tour of the state of the art. Produced by Curtis Fox.
Clive Thompson was ten years old when Pong was unleashed in "rec rooms" across America, and he has been a passionate gamer ever since. Thompson writes about technology and culture, and contributes regularly to Wired and New York Magazine.
In the mid-90s, the U.S. military discovered that Marines were customizing the videogame Doom to practice warfare, which prompted the Marine Corps to develop its own version of the game as an actual training tool. Now they've added another level of realism for a videogame that helps soldiers navigate the complexity of real urban warfare -- it's called Full Spectrum Warrior. Produced by Rachel McCarthy.
American kids spend an average of seven hours a week gaming. But what about the grown-ups inside the industry, who play eight to ten hours -– and then leave the office and go home to play some more? Jonathan Mitchell asked game producer Marc Nesbitt about living almost full-time in the simulated world.
The novelist was three years old in 1980, when her family fled post-revolutionary Iran. She is 29 now, and her memories are woven into her lyrical, witty debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects. Kurt talks with her about the book's loosely autobiographical portrait of a family like hers, adjusting to life in 1980s California and then post-9/11 America.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
Public
Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
Ken and Lucy Lehman, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and
DK Eyewitness Travel. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
