On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, one of the people who revels in their dream jobs, Jim Benya, explains the care and attention details that goes into lighting the great outdoors. His job is to provide enough light so people feel safe at night, but without obscuring the dark skies and brilliant stars.

It would be difficult to transition back to written letters and delivery times of days to weeks, but as a result our e-mail habits can quickly get out of hand. IEEE Spectrum looks at why e-mail can be like opening Christmas packages, and why people over use e-mail.

Two rapidly aging technologies, amateur radio and credit cards, are facing renewed development and interest. Because of its ability to be the only way of communicating outside of disaster areas, HAM radio is slowly transitioning from a declining hobby to a public service. While the tradition credit and debit cards are having their pitfalls overcome by replacing pin codes and signatures with biometric authentication.

This program was originally broadcast on IEEE Spectrum Radio.