On the NPR TED Radio Hour, Sunday 30th November, Newstalk FM:

Why We Collaborate: "The world has over a trillion hours a year of free time to commit to shared projects," says professor Clay Shirky. But what motivates dozens, thousands, even millions of people to come together on the Internet and commit their time to a project for free?  What is the key to making a successful collaboration work? In this hour, TED speakers unravel ideas behind the mystery of mass collaborations that build a better world.

Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers", gave them tools for collaborating to create the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

Computer programmer Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. He put CAPTCHAs, those online puzzles to verify you're not a robot, to work by digitizing books and teaching foreign languages. 

Social media guru Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" - the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy contributing to the web in our small ways, we're building a better, more cooperative world.

Software entrepreneur Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. In his talk, he lays out the main problems and offers three suggestions to make work work.

Can government be run like the Internet, permissionless and open? Coder and activist Jennifer Pahlka believes it can and that apps, built quickly and cheaply, are a powerful new way to connect citizens to their governments and to their neighbours.

The NPR TED Radio Hour on Newstalk 106-108 FM, this Sunday at 6pm.

Listen back to TED Radio Hour 'Why We Collaborate' here.