The abortion debate is top of mind as we enter 2022, with a pending supreme court decision that could radically change the legality and availability of abortion in this country. So, we thought we’d revisit my conversation with writer Caitlin Flanagan.
The most honest thing I’ve ever read about abortion is by Caitlin Flanagan. It’s called “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate: Why We Need to Face the Best Argument From the Other Side.” You can read it here.
Jon, Jon, Tommy and Dan answer your questions and give us their resolutions for 2022. Then they go through the worst takes of 2021 (including their own) for Pod Save America's second-annual Pundies.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
László Polgár was born just after World War II in Hungary. His field of study was the nature of human intelligence. After studying the lives of over 400 great intellectuals from throughout human history, he came to a startling conclusion: geniuses weren’t born, they were made.
So he set about conducting an experiment on his own children. The results were astonishing.
Learn more about Judit, Susan, and Sophia, the incredible Polgar sisters, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In this lively, unexpected look at the hearts of animals—from fish to bats to humans—American Museum of Natural History zoologist Bill Schutt tells an incredible story of evolution and scientific progress.
We join Schutt on a tour from the origins of circulation, still evident in microorganisms today, to the tiny hardworking pumps of worms, to the golf-cart-size hearts of blue whales. We visit beaches where horseshoe crabs are being harvested for their blood, which has properties that can protect humans from deadly illnesses. We learn that when temperatures plummet, some frog hearts can freeze solid for weeks, resuming their beat only after a spring thaw. And we journey with Schutt through human history, too, as philosophers and scientists hypothesize, often wrongly, about what makes our ticker tick. Schutt traces humanity’s cardiac fascination from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, who believed that the heart contains the soul, all the way up to modern-day laboratories, where scientists use animal hearts and even plants as the basis for many of today’s cutting-edge therapies.
Written with verve and authority, weaving evolutionary perspectives with cultural history, Pump: A Natural History of the Heart(Algonquin Books, 2021) shows us this mysterious organ in a completely new light.
Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.
The news to know for Tuesday, December 28th, 2021!
We'll explain how President Biden is counting on governors to get Covid-19 under control, as well as new recommendations about quarantines and New Years' celebrations.
Also, we'll update you about air travel troubles and winter storms out west that keep coming.
Plus, the types of foods expected to get more expensive in 2021, the device from nearly 20 years ago that's said to be making a comeback, and how one rock star's NFT collection is promising to be different from any other.
Top 5 of 2021 Day 2: During this Christmas season, we're sharing some of our favorite interviews of the year to allow our team to take time off for the holidays.
What does it mean to be an American citizen today?
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor emeritus at California State University, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about citizenship and other topics covered in his new book “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.”
A bestselling author and one of The Daily Signal’s most popular columnists, Hanson’s latest book serves as a wake-up call for citizens to take their responsibility seriously.
“I think we have to just take a deep breath and say, ‘We have to reassert citizenship,'” Hanson says. “We’re starting to see it with local school boards, where somebody, somehow, thought that either school bureaucrats or locally elected people are not responsible for the will of the voters who either elected them or they were hired by elected officials through that vote. And yet parents are starting to object and hold them accountable.”
Hanson also reflects on historical comparisons to the tumultuous year 2020. And he explains why, despite the challenges we face today, he remains optimistic about America’s future.
We’re re-running some of our favorite episodes from the past year. This episode originally aired in October 2021.
Colin Powell, known as a “trailblazer” and “pathbreaker” in his military career, leaves behind a complicated legacy. The four-star general became a household name during the first Gulf War as the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later the first Black secretary of state.
Thirty years after his rise to national prominence, Powell’s death has prompted reflections on the Iraq War and his role in using false intelligence to justify the U.S. invasion.
Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate’s War Stories columnist.
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Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Danielle Hewitt, Elena Schwartz, Davis Land, and Carmel Delshad.
Dwyane Wade's new memoir is not a traditional one. He wanted to show the reader a lot of his cherished memories instead of just writing about them. His new photographic memoir, Dwyane, visually wraps up his basketball career with a series of pictures from his time at Marquette to his 16 years with the Miami Heat. Wade talked to Here & Now's Tonya Mosely about when he knew it was time to step away from the game he loves.
That's right — Day 2 of Short Wave's Favorite Episodes Week is pure math goodness! This encore episode, we revisit a conversation with mathematician Ranthony Edmonds. She reminds us that the idea of a lone genius scribbling away and solving complex equations is nothing more than a myth — one she actively tries to dispel in her classroom at The Ohio State University. Instead, Ranthony focuses on the community aspects of math: the support systems behind each mathematician and the benefits of a collaborative, inclusive environment for math innovation.
Think we should consider math more? Let us know by emailing shortwave@npr.org.
Amanda Holmes reads Chinua Achebe’s poem “Vultures.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
