A scientific tribute to to the successes and potential of Kelvin Kiptum, the best marathon runner to ever take to the roads. Marnie and the team take time to reflect on the tragic loss after Kelvin's death and looks at the science behind his record breaking performances.
Why do East African long distance runners continue to dominate the world stage? Can one group of indigenous people in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, really run 100km without getting tired? And what makes you fall off the back of a treadmill when you just can't keep going? Is the limiting factor in endurance sports found in the body or the mind?
We also hear how one small insect is having a mighty impact on African ecosystems, and Marnie ponders the future of AI. What happens when we are no longer able to trust our eyes and ears in a world of deepfakes.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Philistian Mwatee and Tristan Ahtone
Producer: Harrison Lewis, with Dan Welsh, Tom Bonnett, Katie Tomsett and Jack Lee
"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsiders, and, in spite of other differences, they share fragments of a common ethic in their working life, and a kind of moral complicity."
– Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict.
There are many more examples of professional solidarity, however fragmented and tentative, sharing the link of a common ethic that helps make systems, and the analysis of them, possible in the larger political economy. Writing from a law professor’s vantage point, Katharina Pistor, in her new book, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2019) explains how even though law is a social good it has been harnessed as a private commodity over time that creates private wealth, and plays a significant role in the increasing disparity of financial outcomes.
As she points out in this interview, and her chapter ‘Masters of the Code’, it is ‘critical to have lawyers in the room’, and they clearly have the lead role in her well-researched and nuanced thesis centered on the decentralized institution of private law. Professor Pistor builds on Rudden’s ‘feudal calculus’ providing the long view of legal systems in maintaining and creating wealth and draws on historical analogies including the enclosure movements as she interweaves her analysis of capital asset creation with a broader critique of professional and institutional agency. Polanyi and Piketty figure into Pistor’s analysis among many others, as does the help of the state’s coercive backing as she draws on the breadth of her own governance research and analysis of the collapsed socialist regimes in the 1990s, and a research pivot toward western market economies following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Professor Pistor is a comparative scholar with a keen interdisciplinary eye for the relationship between law, values, and markets, dovetailing larger concepts with detailed descriptions of the coding of ‘stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets that exist only in law.’ All of which informs her inquiry into why some legal systems have been more accommodating to capital’s coding cravings and others less so, as she describes the process by which capital is created. She moves beyond legal realism’s less granular critiques, and as reviewers such as Samuel Moyn have suggested – this book ‘deserves to be the essential text of any movement today that concerns itself with law and political economy’.
Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law, and the Director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia Law School.
Keith Krueger lectures at the SHU-UTS Business School in Shanghai.
We're telling you about a controversial immigration policy that's reportedly being floated within the Biden administration.
Also, the latest way the White House has been able to cancel student loan debt, despite last year's Supreme Court ruling.
Plus, how to sign up for NASA's next fake mission to Mars, what to expect from Apple's first sports app, and why the era of school buses seems to be disappearing.
Control Body Odor anywhere with Lume Deodorant and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code NEWSWORTHY at LumeDeodorant.com! #lumepod
The University of Alabama health system became the first organization in the state to pause IVF treatments following the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that said frozen embryos can legally be considered “children.” Meanwhile, the future of IVF in the ten other states remains unclear as well because, like Alabama, they say life begins at fertilization. To learn more about how this fits into the larger fight for reproductive rights, we spoke with Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice.
Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student in Oklahoma, died earlier this month one day after a fight in a school bathroom. The circumstances of Benedict’s tragic death are still coming into focus. But one thing’s for sure: the efforts of anti-LGBTQ lawmakers in Oklahoma, as well as influential right-wing social media accounts like Libs of TikTok, have helped create an extremely hostile environment for trans youth and LGBTQ people in the state.
And in headlines: the White House wiped out another $1.2 billion in student debt, the latest on the sputtering Republican-led Biden impeachment inquiry, and the Boeing executive in charge of 737 Max’s is out.
China’s economy is struggling: Many young people can't find jobs, the nation’s real estate market is in trouble after two major property development companies failed, and China's stock market has seen a $7 trillion decline in just a few years. But Beijing has a plan to do something about it.
When the “green energy” movement began, China recognized an opportunity, Erin Walsh explains. Beijing saw an “opening because they don't have oil, so they had to come up with something else,” said Walsh, senior research fellow for international affairs in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation. “Because, how do you electrify and grow, and become No. 1 in the world, which is their goal; how do you do that if you don't have energy,” she asked. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
China has “hijacked the agenda” of the green movement, because the Asian giant is on the forefront of developing electric vehicles, batteries and solar energy, according to Walsh.
Walsh joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the factors that have led to China’s economic challenges and how Beijing is seeking to overcome its economic woes by further dominating the energy market.
American Airlines increased their checked bag fee by 33%, but economics shows they should do the opposite — Airlines should kill overhead compartments… kill the carryon.
Liquid Death is selling the space on their boxes as an ad to Coinbase – It’s a “tiny billboard” and it’s the dumbest idea you can think of (and that’s the point).
Nvidia just announced that revenues nearly quadrupled last quarter — Because they price their chips like Hermès prices their handbags.
And Apple debunked the “rice will save my phone” theory — So we dug into the origin of the rice myth, and explain what to actually do if your phone gets wet.
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark has scored more points than any other NCAA women’s basketball player in history, but her impact extends even further than her substantial range on the court.
Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Around Chicago, there are ribbons of paint on utility boxes that look like little doodles. But there’s much more to these paint splotches. The street artist and graffiti writer behind this and much larger work says painting has been a lifesaver.
