What Next | Daily News and Analysis - California’s Wildfire Problem Goes Beyond PG&E

In California, thousands of people have evacuated their homes in yet another season of dangerous wildfires. Thousands of other residents have had their power shut off in an effort to help prevent incidents along power lines that could trigger yet more wildfires across the state. How has Gov. Gavin Newsom’s tone changed when it comes to talking about PG&E, the utility company responsible for many past fires and current power outages. Plus, how does California’s affordability problem factor into the state’s wildfire problem?

Guest: Taryn Luna, reporter at the Los Angeles Times

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The Intelligence from The Economist - Facebooklets: breaking up Big Tech

Few politicians are as ambitious about dismantling the tech behemoths as Elizabeth Warren, one of America’s Democratic presidential contenders. What she is proposing, though, would be neither easy nor quick. We dive into the myriad threats faced by corals, and by the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on them. And a new book considers the likes of Genghis Khan as manager material.

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The Best One Yet - Google gets a Fitbit, AIG’s anti-catastrophe quarter, and Quip flips the razor/razorblade model

Remember when we mentioned Google could acquire Fitbit last Friday? It did. So we’re looking to understand why Google’s paying almost double the normal stock price. Insurance giant AIG doesn’t like catastrophes, and last quarter had fewer than expected. And electric toothbrush startup Quip just launched a floss that turns the razor/razorblade pricing model on its head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

San Antonio Storybook - Chapter 7: The Flying Schoolgirl

On the south side of San Antonio sits Stinson Municipal Airport. You may have heard of it, but you probably haven’t heard the story of Katherine Stinson. Like Davy Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt and Manu Ginóbili, she is part of a long line of fascinating characters who have passed through San Antonio and helped make it the place that it is today.

 This episode concludes the first season of the San Antonio Storybook. 

Start the Week - Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics this autumn for her work in the developing world. In her latest book, Good Economics for Hard Times, the French economist turns her attention to the thorniest issues of our time, from global immigration to climate change. She tells Tom Sutcliffe how the lessons from the world's poorest countries can be applied to Western economies, and why we should be wary of complacency.

One of the worst economic crises imaginable struck Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Hyperinflation led to prices in 1923 that were astonishingly a billion times higher than they had been in 1914. But historian Richard J Evans explains that the chaos and suffering caused by sky-high prices did not affect all Germans equally. The middle classes saw their mortgages and rent fall to practically nothing, while many businesses expanded rapidly. Evans explores the fracturing of society that followed this hardest of times.

The Booker prize-winning author Julian Barnes looks back at France’s Belle Epoque, an era known for luscious Renoir and Monet paintings, for flamboyant nights at the Moulin Rouge, and for widespread glamour and wealth. In The Man in the Red Coat, Barnes looks beneath the surface of this glittering era, and instead finds rampant prejudice, nativism, hysteria and violence. He depicts an era of enormous social change, with striking parallels to our own time.

Producer: Hannah Sander.

Start the Week - Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo

Esther Duflo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics this autumn for her work in the developing world. In her latest book, Good Economics for Hard Times, the French economist turns her attention to the thorniest issues of our time, from global immigration to climate change. She tells Tom Sutcliffe how the lessons from the world's poorest countries can be applied to Western economies, and why we should be wary of complacency.

One of the worst economic crises imaginable struck Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Hyperinflation led to prices in 1923 that were astonishingly a billion times higher than they had been in 1914. But historian Richard J Evans explains that the chaos and suffering caused by sky-high prices did not affect all Germans equally. The middle classes saw their mortgages and rent fall to practically nothing, while many businesses expanded rapidly. Evans explores the fracturing of society that followed this hardest of times.

The Booker prize-winning author Julian Barnes looks back at France’s Belle Epoque, an era known for luscious Renoir and Monet paintings, for flamboyant nights at the Moulin Rouge, and for widespread glamour and wealth. In The Man in the Red Coat, Barnes looks beneath the surface of this glittering era, and instead finds rampant prejudice, nativism, hysteria and violence. He depicts an era of enormous social change, with striking parallels to our own time.

Producer: Hannah Sander.