At long last, we dive into the last chapter of The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. We reflect on this odyssey of a book, pulling out its major themes, discussing the baseline freedoms that are essential for society, considering the nihilistic contradictions inherent to the Enlightenment view of humanity, looking back on how we got stuck in static social relations and dead end political developments, plus more!
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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)
Eddie Alterman really likes cars. He is the Chief Brand Officer of Hearst Autos and was the editor-in-chief of Car & Driver. Alterman’s new podcast is called “Car Show! with Eddie Alterman”. He joined Ricky Mulvey to discuss: - Why autonomous cars feel farther away today than in 2017 - One way that Tesla could become the new Standard Oil - Ferrari’s strategy toward electric cars - Why traditional carmakers may not get enough credit from investors - Cadillacs with dry bars and LP record players
Host: Ricky Mulvey Guest: Eddie Alterman Engineer: Dan Boyd
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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsors is “The Now” by Aaron Sprinkle. Image credit: PM Images/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.
In the year 607, the Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty implemented a reform whereby a series of exams would be administered throughout the empire to create a bureaucratic elite that would administer the country.
That reform became one of the bedrocks of Chinese society, throughout every dynasty, for the next 1,300 years. The effects of these exams can still be felt in Chinese society today.
Learn more about the Mandarin class and the Imperial Examination system on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
It's part 2! This time we talk about melatonin, and then go on through the many negative outcomes associated with being a night person in this horrible morning person world. It's a lot. But there's like one good thing so that's cool.
In the last week, teams of astronomers have rushed to report ever deeper views of the universe thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. These are galaxies of stars more than 13.5 billion light years from us and we see them as they were when the universe was in its infancy, less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. As University of Texas astronomer Steve Finkelstein tell us, there are some real surprises in these glimpses of the cosmic dawn. The super-distant galaxy that Steve's group has identified is named after his daughter Maisie.
Also in the programme: a 550 million year old fossil which is much the oldest representative of a large group of animals still with us today. The early jellyfish relative lived at a time known as the Ediacaran period when all other known complex organisms were weird, alien-looking lifeforms with no surviving descendants. Roland Pease talks palaeontologist Frankie Dunn at the University of Oxford who's led the study of Auroralumina attenboroughii.
Did the cultural invention of romantic kissing five thousand years ago lead to the spread of today's dominant strain of the cold sore virus (Herpes simplex 1) across Europe and Asia? That's the hypothesis of a team of virologists and ancient DNA experts who've been studying viral DNA remnants extracted from four very old teeth. Cambridge University's Charlotte Houldcroft explains the reasoning.
And, if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? This is an age-old debate that listener Richard and his family have been arguing about for years. Can CrowdScience settle it once and for all?
Caroline Steel speaks to experts in hearing, biology, philosophy, physics and sound design, which takes her to some unexpected places.
Professor Stefan Bleek is an expert in psychoacoustics who says that sounds only exist in our heads.
Dr Eleanor Knox and Dr Bryan Roberts are philosophers that make her question if anything exists outside our own perception. Professor Lilach Hadany wonders if it’s limited to humans and animals - could other plants hear the falling tree too?
And Mat Eric Hart is a sound designer who says that sound is subjective – it’s always tangled up with our own interpretations.
Things get truly weird as we delve into the strange implications of quantum physics. If there is such a thing as reality, doesn’t it change when we’re there to observe it? Does the tree even fall if we aren’t there?
You may have never heard the phrase abortion doula, but for years they have been working to support people navigating the process and experience of ending a pregnancy.
With Roe overturned, depending on where you live, figuring out how to obtain an abortion has gotten much harder. This could make the role of abortion doulas more critical than ever --- and more risky.
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Vicki Bloom. She refers to herself as a full spectrum doula and provides a range of reproductive health support services, from helping clients create a birth plan, to being present at abortions, to providing information and emotional support.
We discuss what a abortion doula does and how that role might change in a post-Roe world.
From our archives, we listen back to Mike’s 2015 interview with Kim Jong-il’s former poet laureate, Jang Jin-sung. He’s the author of Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee: A Look Inside North Korea. And in this past Wednesday’s Spiel, Mike enlightens us about South Korea’s tradition of Presidential prosecution and revels in a low-hanging pun.
