When Facebook goes public this week, the company will be valued at roughly $100 billion.
It will be the highest valuation ever for an initial public offering of a tech company. Is Facebook really worth this much money?
One way to frame the question is to consider a single fraction.
The number on top of the fraction is the total value of the company. The number on the bottom is the company's profits over the past year. This fraction is called the price-to-earnings ratio. It's widely used by investors in stocks.
Lisa Marie Presley is a curiosity. Famous from birth, she is rock's only real princess. Her face is a stunning combination of her parents' best features. Her marriages have been, well, unusual. Who could forget her awkward television kiss with then-husband Michael Jackson? Or the few months of wedded bliss to actor and Elvis fanatic Nicolas Cage? She has led a colorful life — one that overshadowed her music career when she started making records in 2003.
India's Supreme Court is now weighing arguments by opponents and proponents of legal homosexuality. Same-sex relationships were decriminalized in 2009, but a number of political, social and religious groups are fighting to reinstate a colonial-era law that punished homosexual acts with prison time. Public health workers say legal recognition of India's gay community is critical in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
Garth Knox was born to play the viola. As a youngster, he already had two sisters who played violin and a brother who played cello. "So for the family string quartet," Knox says, "it was very clear from the start which instrument I would play."
Fifty years ago, Johnny Carson became the host of TheTonight Show. During his 30 years as host, he reached a nightly audience of 15 million people and became one of the most trusted and famous men in America.
But Carson was intensely private off-screen, and very few people — including members of his own family--really knew him. Documentary filmmaker Peter Jones wanted to try and change that. Once a year, for 15 years, Jones sent Carson a letter, begging him for permission to make a documentary on his life.
In 2002, Rafe Sagarin was working in Washington, D.C., as a science adviser. It wasn't long after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Sagarin started paying attention to the security measures on Capitol Hill.
"I'd watch these other Capitol Hill staffers and I noticed that they'd just put their hand over the keys in their pockets so they didn't have to waste 30 seconds putting it on the conveyer belt though the security screening — and that didn't set off the alarm when they did that," Sagarin tells host of weekend All Things Considered Guy Raz.
Weekends on All Things Considered continues its "Why Music Matters" series with stories of music fans, told in their own words. Today's story is about Amy O'Neal, a choreographer who took on the challenge of dancing in complete silence.
Football is a violent game, but a century ago it used to be a lethal pastime. NPR's Tom Goldman explains how President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and forced the establishment of new rules that made the game safer.
President Obama's change of position this past week on the subject of same-sex marriage has prompted news analyst James Fallows to think back to similar moments in civil rights history. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz speaks with Fallows about everything from FDR's facilitating Marian Anderson's performance at the Lincoln Memorial to LBJ's address to Congress after racial violence in Selma, Ala.
