Kira Hudson Banks, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the department of psychology at Saint Louis University, and a principal at consulting firm the Mouse and the Elephant. We spoke with her about why managers shouldn't wait for a controversy to start talking about race.

Check out radio's most widely read show-prep resource for topics, commentary, and really stupid remarks, in the ALL ACCESS News/Talk/Sports section. It's updated by Editor and veteran … more

Although the performance of today's speech recognition systems is impressive, the experience for many is still one of errors, corrections, frustration and abandoning speech in favour of alternative interaction methods. We take a closer look at speech and find out why speech recognition is so difficult.

I take a closer look at some unavoidable challenges to effective speech recognition, and I discuss why you may want to think twice before designing dialogue that is 'conversational' and 'natural'. I also offer five important questions that I think should form the basis of any VUI design kick-off meeting.

Over the years, performance evaluation has become essential in computer vision, enabling tangible progress in many sub-fields. While talking-head video generation has become an emerging research topic, existing evaluations on this topic present many limitations. For example, most approaches use human subjects (e.g., via Amazon MTurk) to evaluate their research claims directly. This subjective evaluation is cumbersome, unreproducible, and may impend the evolution of new research. In this work, we present a carefully-designed benchmark for evaluating talking-head video generation with standardized dataset pre-processing strategies. As for evaluation, we either propose new metrics or select the most appropriate ones to evaluate results in what we consider as desired properties for a good talking-head video, namely, identity preserving, lip synchronization, high video quality, and natural-spontaneous motion. By conducting a thoughtful analysis across several state-of-the-art talking-head generation approaches, we aim to uncover the merits and drawbacks of current methods and point out promising directions for future work. All the evaluation code is available at: https://github.com/lelechen63/talking-head-generation-survey.

IF there were belts handed out for unassuming modesty then Ricky Burns would be boxing’s perennial undisputed world champion.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Dr. Art Markman offers some advice on how to talk to your children about the Austin bombings.

Very special guest Matthew Yglesias joins the show to talk about Tim Cook cozying up to Trump for tariff relief and more.

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With social distancing, many people are speaking less and their voices sound raggedy. NPR's Scott Simon talks with speech pathologist Sandy Hirsch, about keeping the voice sounding as it should.

Like sex and birth, death has always been hushed up. Death Cafes are a forum where there are no answers, only questions, says Sigari Luckwell of Bunbury.

A musician with a penchant for nostalgia and 1990s web design has recreated 'George' the Talking Clock, a service recently unplugged by Telstra after 66 years.

A South Australian woman who posted "vile, vicious and vitriolic" comments about sexual impropriety, incest and drunkenness that were directed at another user of an online political forum is convicted of stalking.

A woman has been left in shock and with a deep distrust of cyber security laws after her ex-boyfriend used an app to control her car and stalk her.

Single dad becomes unsung hero of a photographic exhibition championing men's health that is making a difference

Video and transcript of Farron Cousins' discussion of Hillary Clinton's fake populism on Ring of Fire TV, May 18, 2015. Continue reading →

The Solutions to the Climate Crisis No One is Talking About

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by. The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades. Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

First, create green jobs. Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air. The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050. In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

Second, stop dirty energy. A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas. We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics. For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits. The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife. As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed.

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing. 

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage. In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis. The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. 

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before. 

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry. 

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

Michael McEwan speaks to Gerry Tougher, Public Engagement Officer at East Renfrewshire Council about Talking Points, a new approach to providing information and support to people in their local communities.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

A roundtable discussion on Talking Hope, a project exploring to what extent creating safe conversational spaces among diverse stakeholders helps cultivate hope in the context of young people considered to be at high risk.

The conversation involved Katherine Baxter, Research Associate on the project; Natalie Connell, Unit Manager at the Good Shepherd Centre; Eileen Bray, Mental Health Nurse at CAMHS (Ayrshire and Arran); and Liam Slaven, a care experienced young person and member of Star Board which aims to transform secure care in Scotland.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

Talking Social Work was an event held on 13 September 2018 to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 - to celebrate, reflect on the journey so far and look to the future.

Claire Ferrier, social worker with Perth and Kinross Council within the Adult Care Team talks about the risk of not demonstrating care, the risk of not demonstrating trust and the culture of social work and relationships with service users.

Claire won the Jo Campling Memorial essay prize from the journal of Ethics and Social Welfare. The award was for Claire's practice study on 'risk' in social work which was subsequently published in the journal.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

Talking Social Work was an event held on 13 September 2018 to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 - to celebrate, reflect on the journey so far and look to the future.

Jane Martin, Chief Social Work Officer at Dundee City Council reflects on her social work journey, the changes she's seen and her views of the future. Jane is a qualified social worker with over 35 years experience, mainly within children's services and community justice, having worked mostly in Fife and Dundee.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

Talking Social Work was an event held on 13 September 2018 to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 - to celebrate, reflect on the journey so far and look to the future.

Colin Turbett, qualified as a social worker in 1978 and spent the next 37 years in urban and rural front line fieldwork settings in the west of Scotland, finishing his career as a children and family team manager in North Ayrshire.

He is the author of the recent publication, Community social work in Scotland: a critical history 50 years after the Social Work Scotland Act 1968. He reflects on social work work from the early 1960s to the present day.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

The John Lewis and Sainsbury’s ads have kickstarted an earlier-than-ever festive season in which we’ll shop or click our way to bankruptcy chasing 15% off the top Christmas products. But beware of My Friend Cayla …

Hey, remember when Christmas used to last 12 days? Now it’s so bloated it’s virtually an epoch, lasting twice as long as the year it falls in. The early-warning signs keep changing: not so long ago the start of the holiday season was signified by the release of the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. Now it’s the annual unveiling of the John Lewis ad, which this year features a boy arranging for a trafficked overseas bird to be smuggled into the country inside a small container and presented like a gift-wrapped object to the laddish penguin mate who exists only in his troubled mind. They say psychopathic murderers often start their “careers” by doing ghastly things to animals: hopefully they’ll keep the storyline going year after year, as his illusory brain-penguin commands him to carry out increasingly hideous yuletide ceremonies, until eventually the advert consists of nothing but him appeasing the Penguin King by dancing in the moonlight wearing a necklace of ears and eyeballs, all of it seen through the sights of a police marksman positioned on the roof of a neighbour’s evacuated home.

But this year, the John Lewis ad has been overshadowed by gargantuan supermarket and noted humanitarian anti-war campaigner J Sainsbury PLC, and its tear-jerking period piece in which a perfectly good war is ruined by a tragic outbreak of football.

In the late 1970s, a harbor seal named Hoover began catcalling passersby at the New England Aquarium in a thick Maine accent. A new study confirms seals’ uncanny ability to copy human speech.

Though John Moe's podcast, 'The Hilarious World of Depression' centers on mental illness, the conversations are funny. Humor "can bust me out" of a dark place, he says, the way platitudes never would.

Korea's top soccer league will be banning players from talking and excessive spitting on the pitch.

'Attention must be paid': A nation of Willy Lomans can find truth in the "Death of a Salesman" character play by Dustin Hoffman and Brian Dennehy.

They may not be classics, but people are watching and talking about 'Trolls World Tour,' 'The Platform' and 'Onward.'

Brooks Koepka admits talking smack with Michael Jordan backfired on the golf course.

MUSICALS star Layton Williams has opened up about how to keep positive in the lockdown in an exclusive chat with Express.co.uk.

THEATRES are some of the most important aspects of our culture, with theatre fans desperate to see them open once more. When will theatres reopen?

While in Indianapolis, Rob Reiner shared his thoughts on Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and what steps can be taken to stop sexual harassment.

Trash-talking Tony Bellew gets thrashed by Michael Obafemi in the second day of the Premier League invitational Fifa tournament.

Robots are showing up in more and more hotels all over the world. A Washington Post reporter's video captures what it's like to interact with one.

A discussion about the impeachment hearings turned into a showdown between the co-hosts.

Back in college, I took a class on statistics and never forgot the first lesson my professor taught us, which was, “Anyone can manipulate numbers to make them mean whatever they want.” I see this point magnified today by the …

Game designer and publisher Dave Gilbert founded Wadjet Eye Games in 2006.  This interview features conversation about point and click adventure games; digital game development, marketing and publishing; and the relationship between art, passion and real world commerce.

Jeffery Klaehn: How did you first become interested in point and click adventure games?

Dave Gilbert: I played King’s Quest at a very impressionable age! I typed the word “jump” and I saw Graham actually jump, and I was so blown away that I’ve been playing them ever since.

JK: You founded Wadjet Eye Games in 2006 to sell your game, The Shivah, commercially, then moved to pursue game design on a full-time basis and released The Blackwell Legacy, the first in what would become a series of five games.  What are your thoughts on these games and on the market then compared to now?

Dave Gilbert: I am Blackwell Legacy’s biggest critic. It was the first game I wrote with the intention of selling commercially – The Shivah was originally freeware, so I don’t count it – and it shows every inch of my inexperience. The gameplay is clunky, the story is told in three giant infodumps, and the main characters weren’t very likable. But that said, I know with absolute certainty that it was the very best game I could have made with the experience, resources and time I had available. So I stand by it.

As for the market, everything is different. Back in 2006, indie games in general were a very new thing. Read the rest

On the podcast, we’ve talked a lot about the limits of medicine - where treatment doesn’t work, or potentially harms. But in that conversation, we’ve mainly focused on specific treatments. Now a new analysis, broadens that to talk about patients being admitted to a whole ward - intensive care. The authors of that article contend that, often,...

In this special edition of talk evidence, Helen Macdonald and Carl Henneghan talk about creating an evidence base from harms. We hear from a member of the pubic who experienced harm from a drug, and now advises the FDA. A former regulator who explains why reporting harms is so important. And finally, an investigative journalist who explains what...

As editors, we feel like we’re spending a lot of time taking the superlatives out from articles - amazing, novel, important… But new research on BMJ.com suggests that we might not be doing that great a job, and that for some reason, papers authored by men tend to have more of them - because men put more in, or maybe a bias against woman writing in...

K-League soccer resumed with a game behind closed doors Friday in South Korea, with players prohibited from spitting and talking.

Our weekly round-up of the best psychology coverage from elsewhere on the web

Dodd, Reg, 1940-

Miscarriage.

Hear how former Oregon State guard and current member of the WNBA's LA Sparks Sydney Wiese is recovering from a COVID-19 diagnosis, seeing friends and family show support and love during a trying time.