TED Radio Hour

In big-time college football or basketball, money is everywhere. From giant TV contracts, to million-dollar coaches' salaries, to deals with shoe companies. But it's against NCAA rules for colleges to pay athletes. On today's show, we ask: Is the NCAA's ban on paying athletes legal?

In Nigeria, millions of gallons of oil are stolen all the time. There are advertisements for stolen oil on the Nigerian version of Craigslist, and not JUST small containers. The advertisements are for giant tankers full of oil.   Today on the show, how to steal hundreds of thousands of oil every single day. To steal oil takes an entire global system. Lots of people are in on it. Small time crooks and criminal bosses, the owners of oil tankers and corrupt officials...

Note: Today's show is a rerun. It originally ran in September 2012.  A decade ago, the Barilla pasta factory in Foggia, Italy, had a big problem with people skipping work. The absentee rate was around 10 percent.  People called in sick all the time, typically on Mondays, or on days when there was a big soccer game.  Foggia is in southern Italy. Barilla's big factory in northern Italy had a much lower absentee rate...

Today on the show, a Republican governor lives the dream. He cuts taxes dramatically in his state, and he promises good times ahead. But the good times do not come. Now he's fighting for his political life. For more: http://n.pr/1pBNfq7

Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Most of the big names in technology are men. But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged. Today on the show, what was going on in 1984 that made so many women give up on computer science? We unravel a modern mystery in the U.S...

Note: Today's show is a rerun. It originally ran in June 2012.  A few years ago, Jestina Clayton started a hair braiding business in her home in Centerville, Utah. The business let her stay home with her kids, and in good months, she made enough to pay for groceries. She even put an ad on a local website. Then one day she got an email from a stranger who had seen the ad.  "It is illegal in the state of Utah to do any form of extensions without a valid cosmetology license," the e-mail read...

The popularity of fondue wasn't an accident. It was planned by a cartel of Swiss cheese makers, which ruled the Swiss economy for 80 years. On today's show: Swiss cheese. A story about what happens when well-meaning folks decide that the rules of economics don't apply to them. And got the world to eat gobs of melted fat.

Today's show is the story of a guy who tried to make something of himself by getting into a rough business: debt collection. It's also the story of the low-level, semi-legal debt-collection economy that sprung up in Buffalo, New York. And, in a small way, it's the story of the last 20 or so years in global finance, a time when the world went wild for debt. For more: http://n.pr/1ndvYHL

Prices of new textbooks have been going up like crazy. Faster than clothing, food, cars, and even healthcare. Listeners have been asking for years why textbooks are getting so expensive. On today's show, we actually find an answer.  

Today on the show: Stories about the secrets of jewelry stores, the problem with World's Fairs and a law signed by Abraham Lincoln that's being used today to go after the largest banks in the world. For more: n.pr/1prjqYP