Month: January 2017

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Slate Books - ABC: Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

Slate's Katy Waldman, Aisha Harris, and Laura Bennett discuss Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge, a novel inspired in part by the author's own struggles with drug abuse and experiences as an actor in Hollywood.  

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The Gist - Trial by Firing Line

You didn’t have to agree with William F. Buckley to marvel at his intellect, his swiftness, and his wit. Starting in 1966, Buckley got to show off his skills every week on Firing Line, his pioneering television show devoted to debate. Heather Hendershot watched nearly 1,500 episodes of the show, and though she still doesn’t agree with Buckley, she admires how he created a place for high-minded argument. Hendershot is the author of Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line. For the Spiel, is the circus shutting down or will confirmation hearings be going for a bit longer?

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African Tech Roundup - Fintech News Dominates Holiday Headlines + Insights From CES 2017

The team at the African Tech Round-up has returned from the Festive break, and so we’re officially back to our normal programming. At the tail-end of this episode, Andile Masuku chats with Nicholus Steward, founder and CEO of the Swazi Bridge Project. He attended the world’s biggest tech show, CES 2017 in Las Vegas two weeks ago, and he’ll be sharing insights he gleaned from the event. We’re also catching up on some biggest stories that broke while we were on holiday, including Standard Bank acquiring Firepay— the company behind the SnapScan payments app, the George Soros-backed VC, Leapfrog raising $800 million to invest in Africa's finance scene, and the Nigerian fintech startup, Paystack, closing a $1.3 million seed investment round involving Tencent, Comcast Ventures and Singularity Investments. There's no doubt about it, folks. Fintech is definitely a hot ticket at the moment! Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution
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The Gist - Can The Democrats Obstruct Everything for Four Years?

On every major piece of legislation in the Obama era, congressional Republicans have thrown up roadblocks and been reluctant to compromise. Can Democrats do the same in the age of Trump? Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and The Atlantic looks at the options facing the Congressional opposition and the future of everyone’s favorite obstructionist tool, the filibuster. 

In the Spiel, why we don’t judge presidents based on their inauguration’s Nielsen ratings. 

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