Up First from NPR - Eclipse Day, Student Loan Debt, Gaza War At Six Months

We've got everything you need to be ready for today's total solar eclipse. (Except for those glasses...you're on your own there!) The Biden administration is taking another crack at an issue it's struggled to get through the courts. And this weekend marked six months of the war in Gaza — with still no clarity on how it might end.

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Today's episode of Up First was edited by Russell Lewis, Steve Drummond, Mark Katkov, Lisa Thomson and Ben Adler. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Nina Kravinsky. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.

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The Intelligence from The Economist - The Intelligence: Rwanda’s genocide 30 years on

The 1994 slaughter of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis completely reshaped the country. It also produced Africa’s most polarising leader, whose outsized power and regional influence is proving ever more divisive. How a shadow economy of gangs and clans is running Gaza (11:45). And a total solar eclipse is coming to America (20:01).


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The Daily - The Eclipse Chaser

Today, millions of Americans will have the opportunity to see a rare total solar eclipse.

Fred Espenak, a retired astrophysicist known as Mr. Eclipse, was so blown away by an eclipse he saw as a teenager that he dedicated his life to traveling the world and seeing as many as he could.

Mr. Espenak discusses the eclipses that have punctuated and defined the most important moments in his life, and explains why these celestial phenomena are such a wonder to experience.

Guest: Fred Espenak, a.k.a. “Mr. Eclipse,” a former NASA astrophysicist and lifelong eclipse chaser.

Background reading: 

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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Bad Faith - Episode 361 Promo – A Thing Called Destiny (w/ Norman Finkelstein)

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In a conversation sprawling over two hours, friend of the pod and preeminent Gaza historian Norman Finkelstein returns to Bad Faith to unpack his recent debate with Twitch streamer Destiny (Steven Bonnell) and historian Benny Morris on Lex Fridman Podcast, the latest on the sexual assault allegations against Hamas, Norm's mother's experience testifying against Nazi Adolf Eichmann, and, finally, Marianne Williamson's recent comments on this show pertaining to criticisms Norm's made of her in the past. Even two and a half hours of recording isn't enough time when Norm and Brie hop on a mic together -- and Brie regrets not closing her Apple Watch rings before she started recording -- but, as always, it was a rich and stimulating conversation. You won't want to miss this one.

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Produced by Armand Aviram.   Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands)    

Start the Week - Music and poetry

Humankind’s relationship with music can be traced back millions of years and across continents. In Sound Tracks the archaeologist Graeme Lawson unearths some of the oldest instruments, from water-filled pots in Peru from AD700 that chirp like a bird, to bells from a tomb in 5th century China. He argues that music is part of what makes us human.

An ancient horn, played from a watchtower on Hadrian's Wall, is a far cry from the modern version the award-winning trumpeter Alison Balsom plays. She is giving the UK premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ Trumpet Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra (Barbican on the 11th April; Bristol Beacon on the 12th). This is a contemporary piece that showcases the huge versatility of the trumpet, from the opening pre-historic-sounding wild elephant call to ceremonial fanfare and New Orleans jazz.

The celebrated poet John Burnside’s new collection, Ruin, Blossom explores what it is to be human as we contemplate our mortality. But even amidst the ruin and death and decay, his words reveal the beauty and hope in the everyday natural world: ‘first sun streaming through the trees … a skylark in the near field, flush with song’.

(Extract from Wynton Marsalis’ Trumpet Concerto, played by Alison Balsom with the Swedish Radio Orchestra in a concert from 17th February 2024, with permission from the Swedish Radio Orchestra )

Producer: Katy Hickman

The Daily Detail - The Daily Detail for 4.8.24

Alabama

  • Dale Strong presents evidence for Senate to consider re: DHS Sec. Mayorkas
  • 2 bills within AL legislature address sexually explicit books and public libraries
  • AL House passes bill to  stop the rash of "squatters" from entering state
  • Former Dothan pastor charged with stealing money from the church
  • The traveling Vietnam Memorial wall is coming to Baldwin County in May
  • Krispy Kreme offering limited edition "Eclipse" doughnuts

National

  • Israel Defense Forces temporarily leave Gaza Strip for recuperation
  • Trump Campaign pulls in $50M from fundraiser, doubling Biden's haul of $25M 
  • RNC says March brought in new leadership and $65M in donations
  • GA defendant says DA Willis must recuse due to illegal recording of phone call
  • FAA looking into Boeing out of Denver losing engine cowling during takeoff
  • Grant Stinchfield raises questions about Baltimore Bridge collapse

Opening Arguments - Immigrant Workers Died Repairing Bridge Named After Slaveholder

OA10121

On March 26, 2024 a container ship the size of the Eiffel Tower named for the world's most famous surrealist destroyed a bridge named after the author of the U.S. national anthem yards from one of the most notable sites of our country's least popular war. Who was Francis Scott Key anyway, and why has the man who gave the world the phrase "land of the free and the home of the brave" gotten a total pass for writing the world's worst national anthem while owning people and prosecuting abolitionists?

We then honor the memories of the six Latino immigrants who lost their lives in this disaster by taking a closer look at the contributions of both undocumented and "lightly documented" workers to the U.S. economy, including the massive boost of more than $7 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office has predicted the so-called "border crisis" will bring in the coming years. But what about the most recent Republican "solution" to give the world's whitest and wealthiest a chance at the American Dream? Would Thomas be able to immigrate to the U.S. under Sen. Tom Cotton's RAISE Act? We end with a short cruise through maritime law and examine why the owners of the Dali are seeking protection under the same 209-year-old maritime law which was used to severely limit the liability of everyone responsible for the Titanic.

1. "Francis Scott Key Opposed 'Land of the Free,'" Jefferson Morley (2012) 2. Baltimore bridge collapse victims: New info on who they were – NBC4 Washington (3/28/24) 3. Baltimore Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs Key Bridge Emergency Response Fund  4. RAISE Act point system infographic  5. 20 Years Later, Undocumented Immigrants Who Aided 9/11 Recovery & Cleanup Efforts Demand Recognition | Democracy Now! (9/15/2021) 6. Oceanic Steam Navigation Co. v. Mellor :: 233 U.S. 718 (1914) (U.S. Supreme Court's application of the 1851 Limitation of Liability Act to the Titanic disaster) 7. Petition for Exoneration from or Limitation of Liability filed in federal court by the owners of the Dali (4/1/24)

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NBN Book of the Day - Christopher Michael Blakley, “Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World” (Louisiana State UP, 2023)

Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex ways in which enslaved people were thought about and treated as human but also dehumanized to be understood as private property or chattel. The comparison of enslaved people to animals, particularly dogs, cattle, or horses, was a common device deployed by enslavers. The letters, memoirs, and philosophical treatises of the enslaved and formerly enslaved reveal the complex ways in which enslaved people analyzed and fought these comparisons. Dr. Chris Blakely focuses on human-animal relationships to unpack “how, where, and when did such decisions regarding the chattel nature of human captives take place?” 

In Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World (LSU Press, 2023), they argue that slaving and slavery relied on and generated complex human-animal networks and relations. Exploring these groupings leads to a deeper understanding of how enslavers worked out the process of turning people into chattel and laid the foundations of slavery by mingling enslaved people with nonhuman animals.

Efforts to remake people into property akin to animals involved exchange and trade, scientific fieldwork that exploited curiosity, and forms of labor. Using the correspondence of the Royal African Company, specimen catalogs and scientific papers of the Royal Society, plantation inventories and manuals, and diaries kept by slaveholders, Dr. Blakley describes human-animal networks spanning from Britain's slave castles and outposts throughout western Africa to plantations in the Caribbean and the American Southeast. They combine approaches from environmental history, history of science, and philosophy to examine slavery from the ground up and from the perspectives of the enslaved.

Dr. Chris Blakley is a visiting assistant professor in the Core Program at Occidental College and a historian interested in more-than-human relationships with a focus on racialization and empire-building. Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World is their first book and they are just beginning a second project on science, race, and the senses in the nineteenth century. 

Daniela Lavergne served as the editorial assistant for this podcast.

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Everything Everywhere Daily - The Telemark Raids (Encore)

During World War II, one of the biggest concerns of the Allies was the development of a German atomic bomb. 

As such, the allies and various partisan groups in occupied countries made the destruction of anything related to the Nazi atomic program a high priority.

One place, in particular, was subject to allied bombing, commando missions, and partisan sabotage throughout the war. 

Learn more about the Telemark Raids and how Norway became an important front in the Second World War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.


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