Sarah McBride made waves at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 as the first transgender person to speak at a major party convention. Three years and many political successes later, McBride is trying to add another win to her résumé. One that would make her the first elected openly transgender state senator in America’s history.
Guest: Sarah McBride, candidate for Senate District 1 in Delaware.
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In Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood (Duke University Press, 2018), Dean Itsuji Saranillio offers a bold challenge to conventional understandings of Hawai‘i’s admission as a U.S. state. Hawai‘i statehood is popularly remembered as a civil rights victory against racist claims that Hawai‘i was undeserving of statehood because it was a largely non-white territory. Yet Native Hawaiian opposition to statehood has been all but forgotten. Saranillio tracks these disparate stories by marshaling a variety of unexpected genres and archives: exhibits at world's fairs, political cartoons, propaganda films, a multimillion-dollar hoax on Hawai‘i’s tourism industry, water struggles, and stories of hauntings, among others. Saranillio shows that statehood was neither the expansion of U.S. democracy nor a strong nation swallowing a weak and feeble island nation, but the result of a U.S. nation whose economy was unsustainable without enacting a more aggressive policy of imperialism. With clarity and persuasive force about historically and ethically complex issues, Unsustainable Empire provides a more complicated understanding of Hawai‘i’s admission as the fiftieth state and why Native Hawaiian place-based alternatives to U.S. empire are urgently needed.
Episode forty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” by the Chuck Berry Combo, and how Berry tried to square the circle of social commentary and teen appeal. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
Solar power has been harnessed by civilisations since the days of the ancient Greeks, but it's now on the verge of being more important than ever. Tim Harford examines how much of a challenge it poses to the energy establishment, and what that could mean for the planet's future.
Months after New York passed an extreme abortion law, one bookstore owner and pastor decided he has had enough. On a visit to Texas, Jon Speed got a glimpse of a better life--and decided to go for it. Plus, we discuss the similar case of a California business owner who's also leaving.We also cover these stories:•New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, are suing the Trump administration over its immigration policies.•President Trump tweets, "I don’t buy Rep. Tlaib’s tears. I have watched her violence, craziness and, most importantly, WORDS, for far too long."•A new report examines whether Facebook is biased against conservatives.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!
College campuses are known for radicalism -- but more and more mainstream colleges are bending to identity politics and woke activism. Recently, Penny Nance, the president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, attended her son’s student orientation at Virginia Tech, where gender ideology was a dominant theme -- pronouns and all. Read the interview, posted below, or listen on the podcast:We also cover these stories:•Attorney General William Barr has removed the acting chief of the Bureau of Prisons in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide. •Planned Parenthood will not follow the new Title X regulations, and so so will no longer receive tens of millions of government funding.•President Trump is calling for a lawsuit against Google.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!
The way hundreds of fish move together may help with the design of wind turbines. Schools of fish appear to move as one - turning, contracting, expanding, even parting and then coming back together again. This is a beautiful sight. Scientists have been studying them to try to make wind farms more efficient.
www.bbcworldservice.com/30animals
With Patrick Aryee.
#30Animals
Scientists this week are on expedition around the volcano Anak Krakatoa, which erupted and collapsed in 2018 leading to the loss of some 400 lives on the island of Java. The scientists, including David Tappin and Michael Cassidy, are hoping that their survey of the seafloor and tsunami debris will allow them to piece together the sequence of events, and maybe find signs to look out for in the future.
Wyoming Dinosaur trove
The BBC got a secret visit to a newly discovered fossil site somewhere in the US which scientists reckon could keep them busy for many years. Jon Amos got to have a tour and even found out a tasty technique to tell a fossil from a rock.
Bioflourescent Aliens
Researchers at Cornell University’s Carla Sagan Institute report their work thinking about detecting alien life on distant planets orbiting other stars. Around 75% of stars are of a type that emits far more dangerous UV than our own sun. What, they argue, would a type of life that could survive that look like to us? Well, just maybe it would act like some of our own terrestrial corals, who can protect their symbiotic algae from UV, and in doing so, emit visible light. Could such an emission be detectable, in sync with dangerous emergent UV flares around distant suns? The next generation of large telescopes maybe could…
Exopants
Jinsoo Kim and David Perry of Harvard University tell reporter Giulia Barbareschi about their new design for a soft exosuit that helps users to walk and, crucially also to run. They suggest the metabolic savings the suit could offer have numerous future applications for work and play.
Listeners Mark and Jess have been watching TV series, The Handmaid’s Tale. It's an adaptation of a book by Margaret Atwood and depicts a dystopian future where many have become infertile. The remaining few fertile women, known as Handmaids, are forced into child-bearing servitude. Why so many have become infertile isn’t clear but the series hints at several possible causes, from radiation to environmental pollutants.
All of which got Mark and Jess wondering… What could cause mass infertility? Would we descend into a political landscape akin to Gilead? Award-winning author Margaret Atwood has left a paper trail for us to follow in the pages of her novel. There’s a ream of possible causes, and so Marnie Chesterton investigates which ring true.
(Photo: Volcano Anak Krakatoa. Credit: Drone Pilot, Muhammad Edo Marshal, ITB university in Bandung, Indonesia)
Over the last week, news reports and business channels have been throwing around the term Inverted Yield Curve. We’ll find out what it means, and what it has to do with a possible future recession or economic downturn.
Then we’ll talk to the folks who run a house on the city’s Southwest Side that serves as transitional housing for men who need to escape emergency situations, like if their life is in danger.
