TOP FOUR

Inside NCAA’s $2.75B Settlement To Pay College Athletes
SPORTS, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Inside NCAA’s $2.75B Settlement To Pay College Athletes

5 questions after the NCAA’s $2.75B settlement to pay college athletes. As part of a US$2.75 billion class action settlement struck in May 2024 between former student-athletes and several dozen universities involved in big-time sports, schools will be allowed to pay future players with something more than scholarships. They can give them cash. That’s about all we know. The rest is uncharted territory. There are many more questions than answers. In House v NCAA, about 14,000 former college athletes enrolled between 2016 and 2020 sued over lost opportunities and profits in the era before 2021. That’s the year that the NCAA changed its rules to permit active student-athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness – referred to as NIL. The plaintiffs in House argued that they...
Popcorn — A Tasty Snack Or A Useful Way Of Preserving And Storing Food
SCIENCE, TOP FOUR

Popcorn — A Tasty Snack Or A Useful Way Of Preserving And Storing Food

How was popcorn discovered? An archaeologist on its likely appeal for people in the Americas millennia ago. You have to wonder how people originally figured out how to eat some foods that are beloved today. The cassava plant is toxic if not carefully processed through multiple steps. Yogurt is basically old milk that’s been around for a while and contaminated with bacteria. And who discovered that popcorn could be a toasty, tasty treat? Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. How was popcorn discovered? – Kendra, age 11, Penn Yan, New York These kinds of food mysteries are pretty hard to solve. Archaeology depends on solid remains to figure out what ha...
Lessons In Dealing With AI And The Disability Community
TECHNOLOGY, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Lessons In Dealing With AI And The Disability Community

Disability community has long wrestled with ‘helpful’ technologies – lessons for everyone in dealing with AI. You might have heard that artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize everything, save the world and give everyone superhuman powers. Alternatively, you might have heard that it will take your job, make you lazy and stupid, and make the world a cyberpunk dystopia. Consider another way to look at AI: as an assistive technology – something that helps you function. With that view, also consider a community of experts in giving and receiving assistance: the disability community. Many disabled people use technology extensively, both dedicated assistive technologies such as wheelchairs and general-use technologies such as smart home devices. Equally, many disabled people re...
Vice President Kamala Harris Traveling Throughout July For Targeted Outreach To Black Women Voters
POLITICS, TOP FOUR

Vice President Kamala Harris Traveling Throughout July For Targeted Outreach To Black Women Voters

Kamala Harris adds trips to speak to Black women voters in July. Vice President Kamala Harris will be traveling throughout the month of July for targeted outreach to Black women voters, the White House shared exclusively with The 19th. In addition to a previously announced appearance at the 30th annual ESSENCE Festival of Culture this weekend in New Orleans, Harris will be giving the keynote address during the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority’s 71st annual Boulé, or gathering of total membership, in Dallas on July 10. Harris is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. Then on July 24, she will have a moderated conversation during the Zeta Phi Beta sorority’s Grand Boulé in Indianapolis. The appearances at the annual meetings of two of the “Divine Nine” historically Black fraternities and sororities are...
Exploring The Lessons Of Economic Boycotts Of The Civil Rights Era
SOCIAL JUSTICE, TOP FOUR

Exploring The Lessons Of Economic Boycotts Of The Civil Rights Era

Black economic boycotts of the civil rights era still offer lessons on how to achieve a just society Signed into law 60 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the U.S. based on “race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.” Yet, as a historian who studies social movements and political change, I think the law’s most important lesson for today’s movements is not its content but rather how it was achieved. As firsthand accounts from the era make clear, the movement won because it directly hurt the interests of white business owners. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 boycott of Birmingham businesses and many lesser-known local boycotts inflicted major costs on local business owners and forced them to support integration. The conventional narr...
The Olympics So Good At Making People Root For Sports And Athletes That They Tune Out Most Of The Time
SPORTS, TOP FOUR

The Olympics So Good At Making People Root For Sports And Athletes That They Tune Out Most Of The Time

Fandom usually means tracking your favorite team for years − so why are the Olympics so good at making us root for sports and athletes we tune out most of the time? Every four years, millions of Americans join billions of their fellow humans across the globe to celebrate the astonishing athletic feats at the Summer Olympics. Warm-weather sports such as swimming and track that usually don’t capture much attention in U.S. media suddenly vault to the forefront. National teams compete in world championships every year, but it is only at the Olympics that casual fans root on the red, white and blue. Why do the Olympics capture our attention in a way that nothing but soccer’s World Cup can approximate? And why does our nationalist rooting extend to sports that are otherwise obscure? As a...
Based On A Study Of Federal Compensation To Farmers, Fishermen, Coal Miners, Radiation Victims And 70 Other Groups — Paying Reparations For Slavery Is Possible
SOCIAL JUSTICE, TOP FOUR

Based On A Study Of Federal Compensation To Farmers, Fishermen, Coal Miners, Radiation Victims And 70 Other Groups — Paying Reparations For Slavery Is Possible

Paying reparations for slavery is possible – based on a study of federal compensation to farmers, fishermen, coal miners, radiation victims and 70 other groups. As Americans celebrate Juneteenth, legislation for a commission to study reparations for harms resulting from the enslavement of nearly 4 million people has languished in Congress for more than 30 years. Though America has yet to begin compensating Black Americans for past and ongoing racial harms, our new research published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal in June 2024, refutes one of the key arguments against making reparation payments – that they would be too difficult and expensive for the federal government to administer. We discovered hundreds of cases and analyzed more than 70 programs in which the federal gover...
Supreme Court Just Upheld Camping Bans Effectively Making Homelessness A Crime
SOCIETY, TOP FOUR

Supreme Court Just Upheld Camping Bans Effectively Making Homelessness A Crime

How camping bans − like the one the Supreme Court just upheld − can fit into ‘hostile design’: Strategies to push out homeless people. If you have no shelter and are arrested for sleeping outside, are you being punished for something you did – or for being homeless? On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the Oregon city of Grants Pass may prohibit camping, even if there are no free shelter beds in the area. Critics have argued that this policy was a form of “cruel and unusual punishment,” in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A lower court agreed, saying it is unconstitutional to arrest people for a normal and necessary human behavior – sleeping – if there is nowhere else to go. But Friday’s decision reversed that ruling. Such laws do not ...
With Ruling To Narrowly Define Law Used Against Trump And Jan. 6 Rioters, Supreme Court Makes Prosecution On Obstruction Charge More Difficult
IMPACT, TOP FOUR

With Ruling To Narrowly Define Law Used Against Trump And Jan. 6 Rioters, Supreme Court Makes Prosecution On Obstruction Charge More Difficult

Supreme Court makes prosecution of Trump on obstruction charge more difficult, with ruling to narrowly define law used against him and Jan. 6 rioters. The indictments – and in some cases, the convictions – of hundreds of people charged with participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, will have to be reconsidered, and possibly dropped, because of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 28, 2024. Among those charged using a broad interpretation of the obstruction law now narrowed by the high court: former President Donald Trump. In its decision in Fischer v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a federal statute that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding may not apply to three defendants who were charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol riot. Al...
Was It A Campaign-Defining Presidential Debate
POLITICS, TOP FOUR

Was It A Campaign-Defining Presidential Debate

Biden crashes, Trump lies: A campaign-defining presidential debate. With four months to go until Election Day, the earliest-ever general election debate featured two presidents – one current, one former – and a lot of bitter personal attacks. Joe Biden’s universally acknowledged poor performance surprised and even panicked Democrats; Donald Trump gave a more forceful – if not truthful – performance. The Conversation asked two scholars, Mary Kate Cary and Karrin Vasby Anderson, to watch the debate and analyze a passage or a moment that stood out to them. Anderson is a communications scholar with a specialty in gender and the presidency, as well as political pop culture. Cary teaches political speechwriting and worked as a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, for wh...