Joshua Lott / Reuters

COST CAP PUT ON PRISON AND JAIL PHONE CALLS : Last week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) capped the exorbitant price of phone calls from the nation’s prisons and jails — a strike against the price gouging by phone-service providers such as Global Tel*Link and Securus Technologies. The FCC ruling is the second in as many years that concerns the high cost of prison phone calls, and was the result of public pressure by prisoner families, including activists from the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, which is led by the Human Rights Defense Center, the Center for Media Justice, and Nation Inside (the last is a project of Narrative Arts). Read the Nation Inside announcement about the decision, the FCC press release, and the New York Times editorial praising the decision and urging continued action.

DON’T BE BORING, AND OTHER STORYTELLING TIPS: Storyteller Margot Leitman — a favorite of the Moth story-slams, then storytelling trainer and author of Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need, offers 6 storytelling tips in an article in Fast Company. The last tip is “Don’t be boring.” The article’s author says, “Leitman doesn’t mean that your story shouldn’t be boring (though that’s true, too). She means you should stop living a boring life…  [W]hy not use your newfound interest in storytelling to reconsider some of your risk-avoidant habits? ‘We get into a groove in life where we get scared of trying new things,’ says Leitman. ‘You have to say yes to things that scare you, otherwise you won’t have a very story-worthy life.'”