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Commentator Douglas Rushkoff says we need to consider a new way to view the relaionship between human beings and their machines. Most companies, he argues, ignore the way people actually use technology. How else can you explain what's taking place on cell phones or the web. Wireless companies are attempting to shrink the web onto tiny cell phone screens...streaming media companies is trying to make the computer a TV or movie screen. Rushkoff says technology makers need to brings technology to the human being and not the other way around.

Int he third part of the series "What Makes a City Great," NPR's Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg offers an unlikely candidate.

President Biden outlined a framework that he said would win support from all 50 Senate Democrats and pass the House. But it's unclear whether that is true.

Peter Payette of Interlochen Public Radio reports on biotech companies' efforts to grow potentially toxic plants in controlled environments. One such place is an abandoned copper mine in Michigan, where plants are grown 200 feet underground.

NPR's David Molpus reports on a recent study that looks at the global diversity practices of U.S.-based multinational companies. The study suggests that while companies are becoming more sensitive to diversity issues, they must walk a fine line between American practices and local customs.

NPR's Doyenne of Dirt, Ketzel Levine, talks to us about how to order and how NOT to order flowers this Valentine's Day. She tells us how to "talk florist" and get the best and most beautiful bang for our buck. To learn more, check out Talking Plants.

The NFL legend says he never knew the money he received came from welfare funds. The Mississippi attorney general could still sue Favre if he doesn't pay interest owed on the amount.

NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on a possible wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Really. Physicists measuring the fundamental characteristics of a subatomic particle, the muon, have come up with some very puzzling results that could punch a hole in the long-standing "standard model" of how matter is put together. And that could help usher in a completely new theory of matter, time and space. Unless, of course, some scientist has made a mistake. (4:30) (It was later revealed this was a mistake: "Well, I would say I'm responsible for the mistake. My collaborator did most of the work, but I am equally guilty of making mistakes." Toichiro Kinoshita, a physicist at Princeton University. Kinoshita's sin was to have a minus sign where he should have had a plus or maybe the other way around. He can't quite remember, though it ended up having gigantic consequences. Kinoshita and his colleague were calculating how a particular subatomic particle behaves when it's stuck in a magnetic field. The particle, it turns out, wobbles like a toy top at a particular frequency. Kinoshita enlisted hundreds of computers and, after a decade of heroic work, had precisely predicted how fast it should wobble according to the laws of physics. Last winter, other physicists who were out measuring the wobble found it differed significantly from Kinoshita's prediction. In the clockwork world of physics, this was potentially a huge finding, signaling something new and mysterious, except that it wasn't. Kinoshita traced his error to a tiny quirk in a computer program he was using. He hadn't checked that bit, in part because other physicists using a different approach had gotten the same answer."

NPR's Kathy Lohr reports on the national debate over minors' access to abortions. Many states have passed parental involvement laws. One mother says if the state had informed her, she could have talked her daughter out of having an abortion. Other parents say they should NOT be notified because the law forces some minors to go underground, where they get illegal and unsafe abortions.

Tamara Keith reports from Half Moon Bay in Northern California about how the energy crisis is affecting flower growers working up the rose crop for Valentines Day.