In a break from our normal format, Virginia Heffernan of Trumpcast is here with Mike to analyze the most aggressive anti-mask rants out there. From across the nation, people who suffer from a touch of the QAnon are unleashing their unsound mask fears on us all, blaming anything from the Deep State to 5G. We’re going to figure out what makes for the most entertaining version of these conspiracy theorists, and what, if anything, we should take seriously.
The Jones Act, little studied but incredibly costly to Americans, has been on the books for 100 years. A new Cato Institute book, The Case against the Jones Act, takes aim at this destructive protectionist policy. Colin Grabow and Inu Manak are the book's editors.
Dan and Tommy talk about the new tone that President Trump is not adopting now that daily White House coronavirus briefings have resumed, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling out a culture of misogyny after a Republican accosted her on the steps of the Capitol, the latest on the negotiations over pandemic relief in Congress, and the new plan Joe Biden has proposed to help caregivers and parents.
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: Roland talks to Noah Rose and Lindy McBride of Princeton University about what has made just a few mosquito species evolve a preference for biting humans, and the theory that 800 million years ago. He also talks to Professor Kentaro Terada of Osaka University and David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in the USA about evidence that the Moon and the Earth were bombarded by a shower of asteroids which plunged the Earth into a global ice age – an event which may have changed the course of the evolution of life.
(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)
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker
More than 50% of COVID-19 related business closures in the US are now permanent. Can tech platforms provide a new avenue for small biz entrepreneurship?
On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court affirmed the power of the states to regulate the decisions of presidential electors in Chiafalo v. Washington and its companion case Colorado Department of State v. Baca. The Court held that States may fine--or even replace--electors who vote for a candidate other than the winner of the statewide popular vote.
Joining us today to discuss this decision and its implications is Derek Muller, Professor of Law at University of Iowa College of Law.
Update! This episode posted on Tuesday per usual, then somehow un-published itself! Weird. Harrumph!
It’s been a rough week for ol' Dadward VonPodcast, including a technical difficulty that left her behind, so she asked listeners if they would rather have a bizzaro minisode that involved a 30-40 minute rant about raw tomatoes or an AMA, and guess what: here’s both, sort of. There was quite a bit of rambling an editing to make it a minisode, but we hope you enjoy.
This is just a weird summer porch hangout, answering your most asked questions about everything from relationships to work process, procrastination, tips to younger selves, potato recipes and more. So sit back and enjoy this, a big glass of lemonade made from the lemons that bonked Alie in the face.
A donation will go to a soon-to-be-announced science grant project.
Everyone knows who Neil Armstrong is and why he is famous.
Being the first person to set foot on the moon has placed him in a unique position in world history, and he is a name that people will probably remember for thousands of years.
But Apollo 11 was not his first spaceflight.
His first flight aboard Gemini 8 was, in many respects, far more exciting and impressive than his exploits on Apollo 11.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Chicago police officers routinely tortured criminal suspects in their custody, while fellow cops, state attorneys and elected officials looked the other way. In his book, Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements For Police Accountability in Chicago (University of Chicago Press), Andrew Baer explains how the eponymous detective and others hid their violence, and the arduous struggle to get Burge fired and win reparations for survivors.
He blends legal and social history with ethnography to chronicle the labyrinthine legal system that concealed this torture, and the challenges of political coalition-building across class, race, and prison walls. The result is a history of the fraying reform discourse with which we live.
Andrew S. Baer is assistant professor of history with a secondary appointment in African American studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Patrick Reilly studies US history, race, and civilian cooperation with police at Vanderbilt University.
What's the deal with those secret train stations rumored to exist beneath various cities? Could the upcoming US election be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic? Do gas manufacturers intentionally mix in additives to limit the shelf life of petrol? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they explore these questions and more in the first installment of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know's new listener mail segment.
