Jody Avirgan

How athletes—and everyone else—can learn more from failure.

A look at the allegations of sexual harassment and assault against the founder of Bikram yoga, Bikram Choudhury.

From Inspiring to Insidious

Jody Avirgan, host and producer for the FiveThirtyEight podcast "What's The Point," gives awards to the most interesting stories about data this year, silly and serious.

Crazy or brilliant? Jazz legend Charles Mingus came up with a method for toilet training his cat, so we tried it out on a kitty named Dizzy.

It's the most wonderful time of the year for Christmas tree farmers. How much do you spend on a Christmas tree? Fill out our survey here.

The star of Oz and The Wire reads Charles Mingus's secret masterpiece: a guide to toilet training your cat.

Crazy or brilliant? Jazz legend Charles Mingus came up with a method for toilet training his cat, so we tried it out on a kitty named Dizzy.

Check out photos and the full audio of the show's 25th anniversary celebration at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, including the a history quiz, Mo Rocca, and more!

WNYC is taking the tips and tricks of campaign operatives and using them to convince people to vote. Here's a video of what happened when we went door-knocking in the Bronx.

We've crunched the data, learned from the pros, and made some robocalls. Now we're knocking on doors to tell people to just vote already.

Knock the right way. Don't be too funny. Help voters visualize election day. Here's what we learned about getting out the vote -- and how we're putting it to work.

WNYC talked to seasoned campaign operatives to learn the tips and tricks of how to get people to vote. Now, we're launching our own campaign.

The law says stop and wait, but many local bikers adopt their own rules. So, do you stop/wait; stop/look/go; or blow through red lights?

President Obama addressed the country about how the U.S. would lead a coalition to "degrade, and ultimately destroy" ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Read the transcript, watch the video.

This is the 25th year of the Brian Lehrer Show, and all this fall we'll be marking it with a year-by-year look at some of the defining stories from 1989 through 2014. Right now, we're at the brainstorming stage, also known as the "remember that thing that happened that year?" stage. And we need your help!

In the spreadsheet below, the producers of the show are starting to fill in items from each year (thanks Wikipedia!), but we've opened the spreadsheet for you to help remember what really mattered. So join in when you have a few minutes, starting with any year. A few guidelines:

• We're looking for items that had a public impact, both local, national and international. There will be opportunities for you to reflect on your personal memories from each year soon, but for now we're taking suggestions for news/events.
• Anything goes, but we're particularly fascinated by stories that ended up having a bigger impact than anticipated. Our favorite example is the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, which was somewhat overlooked at the time but sowed the seeds for the financial crisis a decade later.
• This is an open spreadsheet, but please don't erase or edit other entries. For now, we're collecting as many ideas as possible!

There's plenty of room on the bandwagon. You might even be able to get shotgun.

We break down the strengths and weaknesses of the players and the teams headed to the quarterfinals.

On today's Brian Lehrer Show we are taking calls and collecting stories from those with connections to 1964's Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Here is Brian Lehrer Show producer Jody Avirgan's contribution.

In August of 1964 my mother, Martha Honey, then a Freshman at Oberlin College in Ohio, traveled to Mississippi as a member of SNCC for the "Freedom Summer" campaign to register Black voters. She attended the funeral of James Chaney, one of three civil rights workers - Cheney was a black Southerner; Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were white Northerners - murded by the Klu Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. That evening she wrote a letter to a classmate. It appears in Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States. Here is an excerpt:

We talk to World Cup obsessives from Japan, Cameroon, Brazil, Mexico, Croatia and Greece about how they cheer (and drink, and curse) their team.