The pandemic has led to a drop in ship traffic around the world, which means the oceans are quieter. It could be momentary relief for marine mammals that are highly sensitive to noise. NPR's Lauren Sommer introduces us to scientists who are listening in, hoping to learn how whale communication is changing when the drone of ships is turned down.
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Policy
NBN Book of the Day - R. K. Jefferson and H. B. Johnson, “Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court” (NYU Press, 2020)
Before Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, nine highly qualified women were on the shortlist. What do the stories of these women tell us about the judiciary? Gender? Feminism? Race?
In Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (NYU Press, 2020), Renee Knake Jefferson (professor at the University of Houston Law Center) and Hannah Brenner Johnson (Vice Dean and a law professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego) demonstrate how highly (and often overly) qualified woman are shortlisted by presidents -- from Herbert Hoover to Donald Trump -- to create the appearance of diversity before a (white) man is selected to preserve the status quo. Short-listing isn’t success but symptom of a problem.
Jefferson and Johnson’s research in presidential libraries, private papers, oral histories, the Nixon tapes, and biographies reveals that presidents as early as Herbert Hoover began discussing female candidates – though presidents set aside overly qualified women for decades. The first half of this nuanced book explores the first woman considered (Florence Allen), five judges who were on the short lists of JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford, and female judges who were short-listed alongside Sandra Day O’Connor (including the first Black female judge, Amalya Lyle Kearse). The histories of each candidate map onto the waves of feminism, reflect on the role of marriage, motherhood, and sexuality, and allow the authors to identify the harms of short-listing.
The details are revealing about both past and present and the second half of the book addresses how to apply the lessons learned from these decades of paying lip-service to diversity. How can candidates transition from shortlisting to selection? Jefferson and Johnson discuss tokenism, the burdens of being a gender spokesperson, racism, ageism, and the binds of femininity and “respectability.” The authors demonstrate how the selection of women for the Supreme Court impacts other aspects of the legal system and beyond. Although the number of men and women entering law school and entry-level legal positions are equal, the rate at which men reach leadership positions is considerably faster than women. This phenomenon can be seen in many fields where there is a pursuit of professional advancement. The authors conclude with strategies such as “collaborating to compete” to reform the American legal system.
Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.
Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013) and, most recently, “Retreat from the Rule of Law: Locke and the Perils of Stand Your Ground” in the Journal of Politics (August 2020).
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
What A Day - Jobless This Mess
Florida has now passed New York in total known coronavirus cases, making it the second worst-hit state behind California which is nearly twice its size. In Europe, the UK is imposing a two week quarantine on anyone who’s been in Spain after an uptick in virus spread there.
Republicans are set to propose their bill for the next round of coronavirus relief today. As federal unemployment benefits expire, we examine how we got to $600 per week in federal aid, and why Republicans want to reduce that going forward.
And in headlines: the 30th anniversary of the ADA, a reduced-capacity Hajj, and more info on a government UFO program.
In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt - Toolkit: Safe or Not Safe?
It's time for another Monday Toolkit episode! This week, Andy feeds your questions and real-life situations to Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers and former New York City epidemiologist Farzad Mostashari. This conversation aims to help us bring normality back into our lives, and they'll offer up advice about traveling, kids, school, socializing and more. You will need to vote after the episode: Team Caitlin or Team Farzad?
Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.
Follow Caitlin Rivers @cmyeaton and Farzad Mostashari @Farzad_MD on Twitter.
In the Bubble is supported in part by listeners like you. You can become a member, get exclusive bonus content, ask Andy questions, and get discounted merch at https://www.lemonadamedia.com/inthebubble/
Take a brief listener survey and get a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card at https://www.lemonadamedia.com/survey
Check out today’s terrific sponsors:
- Good Life Project is a podcast that shares inspirational, intimate and disarmingly-unfiltered conversations about living a fully-engaged, fiercely-connected and purpose-drenched life. https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/
Check out these resources from today’s episode:
- Here are some FAQs on travel from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/faqs.html
- Davidson College is keeping track of the Fall 2020 plans for academic instruction for around 3,000 colleges, community colleges, and universities in the United States here: https://collegecrisis.shinyapps.io/dashboard/
- The New York City Health Department issued this guidance on Safer Sex and COVID-19: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-sex-guidance.pdf
- Check out OSHA’s Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19: https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3990.pdf
- Here’s how to file a safety and health complaint if you believe there is a serious hazard or if you think your employer is not following OSHA standards: https://www.osha.gov/workers/file_complaint.html
- A Cleveland Clinic doctor offers advice on how to determine what activities are safe and what are with skipping: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/covid-19-how-to-determine-what-activities-are-safe-and-whats-worth-skipping/
To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/in-the-bubble shortly after the air date.
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
array(3) { [0]=> string(184) "https://www.omnycontent.com/d/clips/796469f9-ea34-46a2-8776-ad0f015d6beb/202f895c-880d-413b-94ba-ad11012c73e7/8d5710b0-e8cd-4b6b-b0a2-ad110131ff2e/image.jpg?t=1619030050&size=Large" [1]=> string(10) "image/jpeg" [2]=> int(0) }The Daily Signal - Kurt Schlichter Wants You to Know ’21 Biggest Lies About Donald Trump (and You!)’
Lawyer and commentator Kurt Schlichter's new book, "The 21 Biggest Lies About Donald Trump (and You!)," goes straight to the heart of why the political left has such a disdain for the president.
Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, joins the podcast to discuss his motivation for writing the book, why he always has been a conservative, and the bias of the left-wing media.
Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a New York couple's cosmic engagement, which captured the attention of NASA.
Enjoy the show!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Everything Everywhere Daily - The Julian and Gregorian Calendars
If you answer that question, most likely you are giving an answer based on a calendar that goes all the way back to one put in place by Julius Caesar.
Caesar’s calendar, aka the Julian Calendar, was pretty good, but it developed problems over time, so it was modified in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
This calendar, the Gregorian Calendar, what we’ve been using for the last several hundred years, and it works pretty well.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
CoinDesk Podcast Network - ANNA: The Future for Unregulated Bitcoin Exchanges
To KYC or not to KYC? In this episode, CoinDesk’s Anna Baydakova talks to Hodl Hodl and Bisq, two non-custodial, no-KYC bitcoin exchanges.
This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.
One year ago, the Financial Action Task Force, the global anti-money laundering watchdog, ruled that crypto transactions data should be controllable, and ever since the question has been not if you KYC your users but how you do it.
However, not all bitcoiners have surrendered to this norm. Hodl Hodl and Bisq don’t provide centralized custody and don’t check user’s identity. They also don’t employ the blockchain tracing tools to block the “tainted” coins (blacklisted as coming from illicit activities), which became a must for major exchanges these days.
What comes with this? A chance to buy and sell bitcoin without revealing your identity, as well as much more responsibility over how you buy and store your crypto. Max Keidun, the CEO of Hodl Hodl, and Steve Jain, contributor to Bisq, dig into why in the times of crypto-compliance people still might need (or maybe just lawfully want) to keep their bitcoin deals to themselves.
See also: P2P Exchange Hodl Hodl Takes First Step in Bringing Private Bitcoin Trades to BlueWallet Users
There are more questions to arise from such an old-school-cypherpunk situation: how can you make sure you don’t get scammed at these p2p platforms? What do you do if you buy “tainted” coins blacklisted by the FATF-abiding exchanges and vendors?
Max and Steve share their takes on this, and the main explanation is probably: “everything has a price.” Including freedom from surveillance and data leaks.
We also touch the matter of decentralization that is important to both Hodl Hodl and Bisq. Hodl Hodl is planning to open-source itself, so that everyone can clone and run their own p2p bitcoin exchange in case the regulators go after Keidun and his team. And Bisq has gone full decentralized last year when it turned all its decision making over to a DAO.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Lex Fridman Podcast - #111 – Richard Karp: Algorithms and Computational Complexity
Richard Karp is a professor at Berkeley and one of the most important figures in the history of theoretical computer science. In 1985, he received the Turing Award for his research in the theory of algorithms, including the development of the Edmonds–Karp algorithm for solving the maximum flow problem on networks, Hopcroft–Karp algorithm for finding maximum cardinality matchings in bipartite graphs, and his landmark paper in complexity theory called “Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems”, in which he proved 21 problems to be NP-complete. This paper was probably the most important catalyst in the explosion of interest in the study of NP-completeness and the P vs NP problem.
Support this podcast by supporting our sponsors:
– Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/lex
– Cash App – use code “LexPodcast” and download:
– Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe
– Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w
If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
03:50 – Geometry
09:46 – Visualizing an algorithm
13:00 – A beautiful algorithm
18:06 – Don Knuth and geeks
22:06 – Early days of computers
25:53 – Turing Test
30:05 – Consciousness
33:22 – Combinatorial algorithms
37:42 – Edmonds-Karp algorithm
40:22 – Algorithmic complexity
50:25 – P=NP
54:25 – NP-Complete problems
1:10:29 – Proving P=NP
1:12:57 – Stable marriage problem
1:20:32 – Randomized algorithms
1:33:23 – Can a hard problem be easy in practice?
1:43:57 – Open problems in theoretical computer science
1:46:21 – A strange idea in complexity theory
1:50:49 – Machine learning
1:56:26 – Bioinformatics
2:00:37 – Memory of Richard’s father
Unexpected Elements - Making a Covid-19 vaccine for two billion people
There's been encouraging news about the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine this week from a trial involving about 1,000 people. But how great is the challenge in scaling up from making a few thousand doses of the vaccine to manufacturing two billion by the end of this year? Sandy Douglas of Oxford's Jenner Institute explains how they plan to mass-produce the vaccine safely given the speed and magnitude of the scale up.
A new kind of treatment for Covid-19 may come from an unlikely source: llamas and alpacas, the South American relatives of the camel. Camelids produce unusually small and simple antibodies against viruses, including the coronavirus. This feature may make these molecules an effective Covid-19 therapy. Jane Chambers reports on research in Chile and the UK.
Also in the programme: what has made just a few mosquito species evolve a preference for biting humans, and the theory that 800 million years ago the Moon and the Earth were bombarded by a shower of asteroids which plunged the Earth into a global ice age - an event which changed the course of the evolution of life.
These days we're more acquainted with soap than ever before, as we lather up to help stop the spread of coronavirus. And for CrowdScience listener Sharon, this set off a steady stream of soapy questions: how does soap actually work? How was it discovered in the first place, long before anyone knew anything about germs? Are different things used for washing around the world, and are some soaps better than others?
We set up a CrowdScience home laboratory to explore the soap making process with advice from science-based beauty blogger Dr Michelle Wong, and find out what it is about soap's chemistry that gives it its germ-fighting superpowers. Soap has been around for at least 4000 years; we compare ancient soap making to modern methods, and hear about some of the soap alternatives used around the world, like the soap berries of India.
And as for the question of whether some soaps are better than others? We discover why antibacterial soaps aren't necessarily a good idea, and why putting a toy inside a bar of soap might be more important than tweaking its ingredients.
(Image: A team of experts at the University of Oxford are working to develop a vaccine that could prevent people from getting Covid-19. Credit: Press Association)
CoinDesk Podcast Network - BREAKDOWN: Is this China’s Century or the US’s? Maybe It’s Both
This Long Reads Sunday is a reading of Adam Tooze’ recent review of four books on the growing conflict between the U.S. and China.
This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Crypto.com.
This week on Long Reads Sunday, our selection is “Whose Century?” by Adam Tooze in the London Review of Books.
Nominally a review of four recent scholarly works on the conflict between the U.S. and China, Tooze main argument is that the central problem with viewing this as a new Cold War is the idea that it is new.
Instead, we need to understand that, contra Fukuyama’s famous essay, history didn’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall – at least not for the Chinese. What’s more, the narrative of having “won” the Cold War fails to take into account the West’s spectacular failures in Asia.
Only by reframing our understanding can we make sense of the most important geopolitical conflict of the coming century.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.