FDD's Jonathan Schanzer joins us to discuss the prospect of an Iranian uprising, as well as negative media reports on the progress of the war after two major strikes on Israeli population centers and an American ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz. Plus, the current state of Iran's missile arsenal, and what potential steps can the U.S. take next?
In Sarvat Hasin’s novel Strange Girls, a Pakistani woman and an American woman meet at a London-based university in the 2010s. There, they quickly become close, bonding over a shared dissatisfaction with the definition of femininity available to them. In today’s episode, Hasin joins NPR’s Juana Summers for a conversation about the intense relationship that forms between the two protagonists, the way friendships can be strained in the post-college years, and what makes this novel a kind of “period piece.”
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Live from London, it’s Saturday Night? Saturday Night Live made its UK debut over the weekend after a well-hyped promotional campaign. Will this all-American sketch show translate to British audiences? We examine SNL’s multi-million dollar gamble.
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Music
Drywall from Johann Johannson's score to Sicario.
Castle Song by Green-House
Tea by Resevoir
La Valse du Progres by Delphine Dora
Arrival by Domenique Dumont
Sarah in Bath from Kryzystof Komeda's score to Fearless Vampire Killers
Thread of Light by Golden Retriever
In Some Spirit World by Geotic
Notes
This one was pulled together with tiny threads of information, much provided by the NCRA's website itself.
You can find links to three fascinating (really!) studies on the brains of transcribers here, here, & here.
Jen Psaki, Joe Biden's former White House Press Secretary and host of MS NOW's The Briefing with Jen Psaki, talks to Dan about the ways the Trump administration is trying — and failing — to sell its war with Iran to the American people. The two discuss the White House's meme-forward messaging campaign, MAGA media's break with the president over the war, and how Trump's cell phone interview habit is shaping media coverage. Then, Dan and Jen discuss how a series of contentious Senate primaries are reshaping the Democratic Party and whether "fuck Trump" is a strong enough message heading into the midterms.
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.
Paul Ehrlich’s bestselling book The Population Bomb opens with an apocalyptic paragraph.
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it states. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Professor Ehrlich, who died last week, made a simple argument. The global population was outrunning our capacity to produce enough food to feed everyone. Famine, disease and nuclear Armageddon would follow if the population was not controlled.
The book made him a celebrity, and he regularly spoke in public, warning of the imminent threat to humanity.
Sometimes his warnings were quite vague in terms of the timescale, but other times not - he was reported as saying in 1968 that if current trends continued, by the year 2000, the UK would be a “small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people".
"If I were a gambler," he was quoted as saying, "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000".
But the UK did not collapse, the global death rate did not increase, and we have more food per person now than when he wrote the book.
So, what went wrong with Paul Ehrlich's predictions of a population apocalypse?
If you’ve seen a number or claim that you think More or Less should look at, email moreorless@bbc.co.uk
CONTRIBUTORS
Vincent Geloso, Assistant Professor of economics at George Mason University
Darrell Bricker, global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and co-author of Empty Planet, the Shock of Global Population Decline
Peter Alexander, Professor of Global Food Systems at the University of Edinburgh
CREDITS:
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Sound mix: Dave O’Neil
Editor: Richard Vadon