The companies behind this wonder of tech are facing allegations of using copyrighted material to build their large language models (LLMs). But will the courts consider it fair use? Why ex-inmates are so likely to die just after they leave prison (10:15). And, the case for booing in sports (16:13).
Today the mayor of Springfield Missouri is declaring April 23rd Kenny DeForest Day. It's Kenny's birthday and in his memory today kicks off the inaugural comedy festival in his honor, DeForeFest. We wanted to honor the memory of our friend by reposting our first episode with Kenny, when we talked about Tyler Childers and his song "All Your'n."
If you haven't heard this episode before, we hope you enjoy it! If you heard it the first time, we hope you'll listen again to appreciate the silliness, wisdom, and joy of Kenny.
Need something new? A new minisode just dropped on our Patreon! If you are interested in supporting the show, we hope you'll check it out!
The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Graetz.
In his book The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America(Princeton UP, 2024), Graetz chronicles the movement from a fringe theory promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric to a highly organized mainstream lobbying force, funded by billionaires, that dominates and distorts politics.
Building on vague and disproven theories about "supply side" economics, the movement has undermined long-held beliefs that taxes are a reasonable price to pay for civil society, sound infrastructure, national security, and shared prosperity.
Leaders have attacked the IRS, protected tax loopholes, and pushed aggressively for tax cuts from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Also known as "trickle-down" or "voodoo" economics, these theories falsely claim that tax cuts will pay for themselves, when in fact they have led to the need for increased debt, including massive foreign debt, to pay for critical national investments.
The antitax movement has expanded to include anti-government ideas and now, as told by Graetz, threatens the nation’s social safety net, increases inequality, saps American financial strength, and undermines the status of the US dollar.
In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails “the power to destroy.” In this book Graetz argues that it is the antitax movement itself that wields this destructive power.
How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such documentary practices and settler colonial ways of seeing be refused?
Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art (Fordham University Press, 2023) by Dr. Danielle Taschereau Mamers investigates how the Canadian state has used documents, lists, and databases to generate, make visible—and invisible—Indigenous identity. With an archive of legislative documents, registration forms, identity cards, and reports, Dr. Taschereau Mamers traces the political and media history of Indian status in Canada, demonstrating how paperwork has been used by the state to materialise identity categories in the service of colonial governance. Her analysis of bureaucratic artefacts is led by the interventions of Indigenous artists, including Robert Houle, Nadia Myre, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and Rebecca Belmore. Bringing together media theories of documentation and the strategies of these artists, Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing develops a method for identifying how bureaucratic documents mediate power relations as well as how those relations may be disobeyed and re-imagined.
By integrating art-led inquiry with media theory and settler colonial studies approaches, Dr. Taschereau Mamers offers a political and media history of the documents that have reproduced Indian status. More importantly, she provides us with an innovative guide for using art as a method of theorising decolonial political relations. This is a crucial book for any reader interested in the intersection of state archives, settler colonial studies, and visual culture in the context of Canada’s complex and violent relationship with Indigenous peoples.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Almost as soon as Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947, people began thinking of ways to transport passengers at supersonic speeds.
However, the challenges in creating a passenger aircraft that could travel at supersonic speeds were much greater than making a fighter aircraft that could do the same.
In 1976, a British/French consortium launched the inaugural flight of the most successful supersonic passenger aircraft in history.
Learn more about the Concorde on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
AJ Jacobs makes The Puzzler podcast, wrote The Puzzler book, and sometimes turns his whole life into a puzzle. He comes bearing word games, explanations of anagrams being used to precipitate wars and were key evidence in trials, tips for writing with a quill, below-the-knee insults, and tales of living constitutionally.
AJ's new book is The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning. Find his work at AJJacobs.com.
Get the transcript of this episode, and get links to more information about the topics therein and the other episodes in the Word Play miniseries, at theallusionist.org/lemon-demon.
Content note: there are mentions of guns, historical punishments and violence, vomiting, and drunkenness. There are also a couple of category A swears, and some category C swears.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
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We're talking about intense protests across several college campuses that have left some students so shaken that at least one university has decided to hold remote classes.
Also, we'll tell you how prosecutors opened their first-ever criminal case against a former American president and what's expected at the trial today.
Plus, which mall staple is now bankrupt, where America's first high-speed rail is now under construction, and who is joining the coveted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year?
Those stories and more news to know in about 10 minutes!
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and attorneys for Donald Trump gave their opening statements on Monday in the former president’s criminal hush-money trial. Prosecutors also called their first witness to the stand: former ‘National Enquirer’ publisher David Pecker. Washington Post federal courts and law enforcement reporter Shayna Jacobs was in the courtroom and details what happened.
Pennsylvania holds its primary election today, and there’s plenty to watch for as returns come in. Pro-Palestinian organizers want Democrats to write in ‘uncommitted’ instead of voting for President Joe Biden. First-term Democratic Congresswoman Summer Lee is also looking to fend off a more moderate challenger and hold onto her seat.
And in headlines: The Supreme Court appeared divided in a case over whether cities can criminalize homelessness, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security are reportedly looking into granting protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, and a new report says Israel hasn’t offered any proof to back up claims that a significant number of workers with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency are tied to terrorist organizations.
Show Notes:
The Washington Post:"Prosecutor: A tabloid pact led to Trump faking business records" - https://tinyurl.com/bz68rrbp
