By: Paul Solman

Jaron Lanier, the widely regarded father of virtual reality, recounts his early experience introducing virtual reality to Hollywood and how his vision of his own technology differed from what some people wanted. Our interview with Lanier about his book, "Who Owns the Future?", and how technology is widening inequality can be seen here. An excerpted transcript of Paul's conversation with Lanier about virtual reality follows.

Paul Solman: I remember when I first became aware of you in the 1980s. You were pioneering virtual reality and you were suggesting that it was right around the corner. And here we are, 25 years later, and it still hasn't really arrived.

Jaron Lanier: Virtual reality has become an almost universal industrial technology. Every single vehicle you've used in the last 10 years was designed in virtual reality first, so it actually has happened -- just not for consumers. I'd always predicted that around 2020, so I still have a few years to be proven wrong on virtual reality.

By: Carolyn Porco

In 2006, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this backlit view of of Saturn's rings during an eclipse of the sun. Courtesy Cassini Imaging Team/ Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

Editor's note: Carolyn Porco is the leader of the imaging team for the Cassini mission at Saturn and a veteran imaging scientist on the 1980s Voyager mission. She participated in the famous 1990 Pale Blue Dot image of Earth taken from beyond the orbit of Neptune by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft.

More than 50 years of traveling invisible interplanetary highways around our solar system and nearly a decade of orbiting Saturn have brought us to a keen awareness of the celestial bodies in motion around the sun and the series of events responsible for their birth and development. We could hardly claim to know the complexity of the planetary systems that lie beyond the asteroid belt, the chronology of the early solar system, or the wide range of extraterrestrial environments where biological processes might be at work, were it not for the many exploratory expeditions that we have mounted to these far-flung worlds.

But perhaps the greatest, most profound legacy of the quest we have undertaken to understand our origins is perspective: that crystalline, uncorrupted view of our cosmic place that erodes all delusion and confronts us with a powerful recognition of ourselves, a recognition that never fails to move us.

It is surely for this reason that of all the millions of images taken of the worlds in our solar system since the beginning of the space age, those that reach deeper into the human heart than any other are those of our own home, as it might be seen in the skies of other worlds: small, alone in the blackness of never-ending space and awash in the blue of its oceans.

By: Larisa Epatko

Defense attorney Cheryl Bormann, seen in this sketch from May 5, 2012, wears the Muslim hijab when the defendants are in the courtroom. Sketch by Janet Hamlin/AFP/Getty Images.

The pre-trial hearing on the five suspected 9/11 plotters continued Tuesday at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- without the accused present. The day focused on why the International Red Cross opposes requests to disclose its confidential condition reports on Guantanamo detainees.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected architect of the 9/11 attacks, and four accused co-conspirators were in the courtroom on Monday, but they chose not to attend Tuesday's proceedings.

At the hearing, Matthew MacLean, a civilian attorney for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the ICRC must maintain its reputation as a "strictly impartial" entity and, therefore, couldn't release the confidential Guantanamo detainee condition reports to the defense attorneys who requested them.

"The primary method we have to get access to places that nobody else can access" is to keep the information it collects confidential, he said. "Our role is too unique and too important" to compromise on that point.

By: Jenny Marder

A periodical cicada basks in the sun at a cemetery in Lorton, Virginia. Photo by Jenny Marder.

On a hot spring day in late May, I went hunting for periodical cicadas with John Cooley, a veteran expert of the behavior, distribution and unusual courtship rituals of these insects. The trip was for a tape piece we've been preparing on cicadas, which is slated to air on Wednesday's NewsHour broadcast.

As our van pulled into Deep Run Park, just outside Richmond, Va., a noise rose up from the din, first a soft buzzing, like a bike engine from a distance, but rising increasingly in volume and pitch as we drove along a row of tall pine trees lining the road.

"This is a fairly pure chorus of Magicicada septendecim," Cooley said, referring to the specific species of periodical cicada. "I can see one flying right over there."

Sure enough, a cicada was flitting along the treetops. And then another. And another. Cicadas in cicada territory are like stars. The longer your eyes search for them, the more the bugs come into focus, and the more you see.

By: Christina Bellantoni and Terence Burlij

Protesters rally outside the U.S. Capitol against the NSA's recently detailed surveillance programs. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

President Barack Obama is defending his administration's broad collection of information from technology and phone companies, outlining what he deems strict parameters for surveillance programs and saying the debate has "gotten cloudy."

In an interview broadcast on PBS with Charlie Rose, the president compared the "tradeoffs" from surveillance programs to airport security and checkpoints for drunk drivers.

"We say, 'Occasionally there are going to be checkpoints. They may be intrusive.' To say there's a tradeoff doesn't mean somehow that we've abandoned freedom. I don't think anybody says we're no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports," Mr. Obama said.

The president ticked off ways in which the National Security Agency generates reports that lead to the FBI seeking warrants for more information, and noted repeatedly that the content of phone calls are never revealed. "It is transparent," he insisted.

By: Nick Corcodilos

Securing a job, headhunter Nick Corcodilos says, is not about looking for a job opening, but about making connections where you want to work. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Samuel Mann.

Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979, and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community over the past decade.

In this special Making Sense edition of Ask The Headhunter, Nick shares insider advice and contrarian methods about winning and keeping the right job, on one condition: that you, dear Making Sense reader, send Nick your questions about your personal challenges with job hunting, interviewing, networking, resumes, job boards, or salary negotiations. No guarantees -- just a promise to do his best to offer useful advice.

Question: I know someone who plans to return to work in the fall. She has been a stay-at-home mom since 2008. She is a college graduate with about two years of work experience. How do you recommend she begin her job search? She has a degree in history with a Spanish minor but is not interested in teaching.

Nick Corcodilos: Your friend could just start looking for open jobs and then apply to hundreds if not thousands of them, like most people do. Or, she could decide what work she really wants to do, then go after it with motivation and gusto. She could get a job through inside contacts, because that's how most jobs are filled. The following tips are summarized from my PDF book, "How Can I Change Careers?", in particular from the section titled, "The Library Vacation."

By: Meena Ganesan

Functioning as a pilot program up until now, the federal database program E-Verify is set for some changes under a sweeping Senate immigration bill.

E-Verify -- an electronic program run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security contrived to help businesses filter out undocumented immigrants from their pool of new hires -- has garnered renewed attention in recent weeks as the Senate debates a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

E-Verify

(noun)

1. An Internet-based system that compares information from an employee's Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)

The program started in 1996 with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Employers can submit information from a potential employee's Employment Eligibility Verification Form, or I-9, through this multi-step process online, and the Social Security Administration and the USCIS will match it to government records and decipher whether the employee can work legally in the U.S.

On Tuesday's NewsHour, we'll talk to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, and Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, for two points of view on the federal database's potential future under new legislation.

By: Hari Sreenivasan

Watch the "Doubleheader Live" with Mark Shields and David Brooks beginning at 5:15 p.m. EDT Friday. Leave your questions for the guys below or tweet using the hash #doubleheaderlive.

Friday is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, so we thought it would be the perfect time to sit down with our boys of summer. That's right, Mark Shields and David Brooks, NewsHour's one-two political punch. The guys are here in the newsroom most Fridays to do a segment we call the "Doubleheader" where we address the sport of politics and the politics of sport. And this Friday, it will be live.

Is there anything you've ever wanted to ask Mark and David? Now is your chance. Pitch your questions to the fellows for the special "Doubleheader Live." Leave them in the comments section below or tweet them @NewsHour using the hash #DoubleHeaderLive. We will address as many as we can starting at 5:15 p.m. EDT Friday. You can watch the live stream in the player above or on our homepage, pbs.org/newshour.

You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook and Google Plus and follow him on Twitter @Hari.

By: Elizabeth Shell

David Thompson is "semi-retired." After his official retirement, the NASCAR buff decided to take a part-time job at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C.

"I just did not want to totally quit working."

David Thompson didn't want to sit around in retirement. A fan of NASCAR since he was a kid, the 66-year-old now shares his knowledge and passion for the sport with others as a part-timer at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

"It gives me a chance to get out, meet the public, and enjoy life," Thompson told us. "It's just a fun place to come to and work everyday."

Thompson is one of many once-retired Americans who have decided to head back to work because they enjoy it. They want to feel useful and have something to do.

So, is retirement as we know it a thing of the past? How long are we likely to work? We have spent the past year looking at the factors -- demography, economics and just plain personal preference -- that help explain what's happening to the American workforce as it ages in our special project, New Adventures for Older Workers.

By: Paul Solman

There have been dire warnings about future fiscal shortfalls for years, explains Paul Solman. Photo courtesy of Dave Reede/Getty Images.

In his weekly Social Security Q&A, published earlier Monday, Larry Kotlikoff makes the case that Social Security's funding gap is much larger than the 75-year shortfall the government projects. Social Security's fiscal gap for infinity, he argues, more accurately captures the challenges to keeping the system solvent for today's children. His point, which he's made on the Making Sen$e Business Desk before, deserved a response.

Ah yes: the long run. No, I'm not going to parry Larry by quoting Keynes: that in the long run, we're all dead. As Larry rightly points out, there are kids, grandkids, greatgrandkids to think about, as Larry might put it, ad infinitum. Moreover, if you believe Richard ("Selfish Gene") Dawkins and the basic tenets of evolutionary biology, all that really matters is our progeny, our DNA.