Jon Kalish
Manhattan-based radio reporter Jon Kalish has reported for NPR since 1980. Links to radio documentaries, podcasts & stories on NPR are at www.kalish.nyc. Find him on Twitter: @kalishjon
-
Why are we parting with BlackBerry Classic and VCR — but not fax or QWERTY keyboard? We ask you to nominate outdated tech for phase-out and visit Tekserve, the closing cult Mac store in Manhattan.
-
American-made violins are often regarded as inferior to European ones, but guitarist David Bromberg knows their value. So does the Library of Congress, which is acquiring his impressive collection.
-
Tired of his crooked teeth, 24-year-old Amos Dudley made a mold of his teeth and fabricated a set of aligners using orthodontics reference books, a 3-D printer and other digital fabrication tools.
-
A college student in New Jersey figured out how to straighten his crooked teeth using his school's 3-D printer.
-
A college student in New Jersey figured out how to straighten his crooked teeth using his school's 3-D printer.
-
In 1954, Folkways Records released an album that sold so poorly, the royalties to date total less than a thousand dollars. Today, five of the top names in klezmer have gathered to recreate it.
-
The bread that Jules and Helen Rabin have made in their fieldstone oven for four decades has a cult following in central Vermont. But this may be the last summer they sell it at the farmers market.
-
The preservation of Yiddish as a spoken language gets more attention, but Yiddish once had a vibrant written tradition as well, filled with plays, poetry, novels and political tracts.
-
Inventing a new product is hard if you can't afford to build a prototype. Enter maker spaces, workshops boasting shared high-tech tools. Entrepreneurs love them, and big backers are taking notice.
-
Remember the Sears kit houses from the early 1900s, ordered from a catalog and assembled on-site? Now, online designers around the world are building WikiHouses out of plywood pieces that fit together like a puzzle. No nails, no fasteners, no adhesives. Just slot-together joints and the Internet.