Colin Falconer

Author, 'The Beginner's Guide to Fatherhood'

Buy a live octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out. Time allowed: 5 minutes.

Akoshia Yoba

Co-author, 'Please Return My Phone Call: Preventing the Demise of Personal and Professional Relationships'

When his aunt's blood pressure spiked, doctors knew Anthony Brown's aunt could not be a candidate to donate a kidney. He watched my mom go home from the hospital that day so dejected. At that point, he knew he 'kind of had to man up.'

Ann Brenoff

For the past 35 years or so, I have been part of a wolf pack. Don't panic, it's just what I call my collection of close women friends.

John Rampton

Entrepreneur, online marketing guru and startup addict

Unless you're a millionaire, don't plan on buying a nice home in the San Francisco area anytime soon. The high number of technology workers making million-dollar salaries is driving up the cost of real estate far beyond what most individuals and families can dream of paying.

Lauren Taylor Shute

Publishing professional and freelance writer

So yes, I am dying a slow and painful death, especially since according to the Farmer's Almanac this is going to be a "bitterly cold" winter. But when faced with adversity, are we to give up and freeze to death, or do we create a plan of action and obliterate the enemy?

Craig Lewis

Executive Director, Clean Coalition

Dropping costs and increasing consumer demand are expanding the market for renewable energy. Policy is shaping it.

Daniel Maidman

Artist

Hicks, with her nearly lunatic manufacture of sculptures out of, in part, straw. She is not unique with regard to her materials or her general aesthetics. But she is one of the best I have seen in reconciling the furious antagonisms of the territory she inhabits.

Adrian Benepe

Senior Vice President and Director of City Park Development, The Trust for Public Land

The experience of having a bike to use when and where I want, for unlimited use, and for a yearly cost of just $95, defied the notion that nothing can get done that works well in a city as complicated as New York.

Richard Brodsky

Senior Fellow, Demos

Last week it was Atlanta's suburban communities subsidizing moving the Braves out of downtown. This week it's an audacious move by departing Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the New York Yankees for a few hundred million dollars in subsidies for a new soccer stadium.

Jon Eig

Lecturer in Screenwriting and Film History, Montgomery College

When I see two kids who are as obviously meant for each other as Frances Halladay and Llewyn Davis, I just have to speak up. Sure, there are obstacles to this relationship. But if any city could make it happen, New York is the place.

Christopher Murray

Psychotherapist

The last time I saw Ben Wheeler, he and his big brother Nate were eating chocolate-chip pancakes and being terribly silly. Nine months after the pancake breakfast, I got a strange voicemail: There had been another school shooting, this time in Connecticut.

Michael Giltz

Freelance writer

Five final shows to see before the holidays take over. They ranged from a marvelous breathing-to-life of a poem more than 200 years old, a so-so take on the Scottish play, a one-man homage to a master via August Wilson's biographical piece and two new works from talented writers.

June Haynes

Founder, June Haynes Luxury Retailing

There used to be a time, not so long ago when visiting the holiday windows after Thanksgiving was an activity just like going to see a show on Broadway.

Ainissa G. Ramirez, Ph.D.

Materials Scientist; Author 'Newton's Football'

If introducing a helmet that's not as protective as it seems caused the game's head injury epidemic, then maybe eliminating helmets might have the opposite effect.

Robert C. Cantu, M.D.

Clinical professor of neurology and neurosurgery, Boston University

I would argue that removing helmets from football players would reduce the incidence of concussion but would replace it with an epidemic of skull fractures and subdural hematoma deaths.

Sandi Bachom

Filmmaker, Author, Digital Journalist

When Time Out discovered us... next thing you know there were 10,000 Santa's. The name and the meaning changed. When I told Sandra, Santacon is now known as a Santa Convention, she was mortified.

Lisa Duggan

CEO and Founder, The Modern Village

It was the realization that this man -- who lived day to day, in the cold, hard landscape of Manhattan, without knowing where he would sleep next, or where his next meal would come from -- was, in that moment, offering me half of all he had.