President Biden hits the road to go on offense against rising prices and falling poll numbers, Senator Elizabeth Warren joins to talk about passing the Build Back Better plan, and Elijah Cone offers up the week’s worst punditry in another round of Take Appreciator.
Migrants from faraway countries are stuck in Belarus, just across its border with Poland. They've traveled there to seek asylum in the EU. But Poland has refused to accept them.
How did they get there? They were invited — and in some cases, their travel facilitated — by the regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. EU leaders say Lukashenko and his backers in Russia are 'weaponizing' migration in retaliation for sanctions placed on Belarus last year. Those sanctions came after the EU accused Lukashenko of rigging his most recent election.
Now, many hundreds of migrants are stuck on the Belarus side of the border. There have been at least nine recorded deaths, but observers think there have been many more. Migrants were reportedly moved from makeshift camps outdoors to a government-run shelter on Thursday, though it's unclear what Belarus plans to do with them next.
NPR international correspondent Rob Schmitz has seen the crisis up close. This episode is a collection of his reporting. Find more of it here, and see photos from the border on NPR's Picture Show.
The political message from the COP meeting was a fudge over coal, but what does the science say? Surprisingly India seems to be on track to switch away from coal to renewables. We explore the apparent contradiction with Lauri Myllyvirta of the thinktank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Also a synchrotron for Africa, how such a project would give a boost to scientific development across the continent, with Marielle Agbahoungbata from the X-tech Lab in Seme City in Benin.
Moriba Jah, who leads the Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies Group, at the University of Texas, in Austin, tells us what he saw when an exploding Russian satellite sent a shower of debris into the path of the International Space Station.
And the animals that carry SARS-Cov-2, an analysis from Barbara Han of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York shows there are many more than previously thought.
Image: A coal-fired power station in Nanjing in east China
Credit: Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Yesterday’s show was a global regulatory roundup, but today’s is all about the U.S. The Joint Economic Committee held an event this week all about “Demystifying Crypto.” In this episode, NLW looks at:
The overall shift in tone in government crypto hearings
The specific questions and topics that JEC members asked
The beginnings of a partisan hardening of the crypto discourse
New legislation to undo the problematic provisions of the infrastructure bill
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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.
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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Michele Musso & Adrian Blust, research by Scott Hill and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Dark Crazed Cap” by Isaac Joel. Image credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoinDesk.
Linguist John McWhorter is the author of the new book, "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America." He joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky for a discussion on a new kind of leftist who clings to the new religion of race where the original sin is “white privilege," and why they can't be […]
It could be the clean fuel of the near future- for homes and for heavy machinery. Lord Bamford, head of JCB, is betting that it will power the next generation of emission-free tractors, diggers and loaders. Tom Heap meets the JCB team and discusses the pros and cons of hydrogen with climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Researcher: Sarah Goodman
Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Mickella Dawkins at Loughborough University and from the University of Edinburgh, Dr Katriona Edlmann, Dr Romain Viguier and Dr Ali Hassanpouryouzband.
Did Paul Gosar deserve to be censured for tweeting out an anime video that appeared to threaten his colleagues? Does Lauren Boebert have a point about Eric Swalwell “sleeping with the enemy?” Did Ilhan Omar go too far with her semi-literate attack on Boebert? Or have we just elected ourselves a nightmarish reality show with no redeeming value? Also, an update on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Source
Last month, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen revealed she had released thousands of documents that showed how the company knew yet did little to curb harmful content for its billions of users. Those documents also showed that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, knew disinformation on its platforms was particularly corrosive to Latino communities — yet the company did little to stop it. Today, we talk about the damage and what activists are doing to try to stop it.