We’re covering Florida breaking a national record when it comes to COVID-19, the president's recent decision that prompted a rare reaction and a big announcement from the Washington Redskins following years of controversy.
Plus: which platform may ban political ads, the Ford Bronco getting a makeover, and why the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is making history again...
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It's the Monday Toolkit episode of In The Bubble that people have been waiting for. Today, Andy and Zach get answers to the most important questions we all have about vaccines from two of the world's foremost experts, Drs. Mark McClellan and David Agus. There is incredibly promising news and some news that is likely to be fairly surprising. You'll learn when we can expect to see a vaccine and how life will -- and won’t -- be different with a vaccine.
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The American Constitutional Rights Union just began a petition to ask America’s policymakers to put an end to the toppling and defacing of the nation's monuments. Statues of George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and Albert Pike are among those vandalized since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Lori Roman, president of the American Constitutional Rights Union, joins the podcast to explain how her organization is working strategically to activate political leaders to protect history and end mob rule.
Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about one North Carolinian who went out of his way to show local police officers that he appreciates and supports their service.
Every weekday afternoon, Kelly McEvers and the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered — Ailsa Chang, Audie Cornish, Mary Louise Kelly and Ari Shapiro — help you consider the major stories of the day in less than 15 minutes, featuring the reporting and storytelling resources of NPR.
Major League Baseball has a long history of bad marketing ideas. From 10 cent beer night to baseball bat night, to giving fans balls they can throw on to the field as they entered the stadium, baseball has a long list of horrible ideas to bring people into the stadium.
However, the absolute worst idea, by far, occurred on July 12, 1979, when the Chicago White Sox decided to blow up a crate of disco records on an evening which would forever be known as Disco Demolition Night.
As a cofounder of the Israeli Women in Mathematics Association, Shikhelman has been researching complex math problems for nearly a decade. But she said bitcoin offers especially interesting puzzles to solve because this technology may have the potential to change the world. She’s one of many young researchers who identify with the cypherpunk movement.
“There are a lot of people like me, their main thing is academic,” Shikhelman said. “They are not the classic cypherpunk people, but …[t]hey believe in privacy, in political change.”
Until recently, most people associated with the cypherpunk movement were technologists in the 1980s and 1990s who circulated mailing lists about encryption and other privacy tech topics. The term was created by feminist hackitvist Judith Milhon, although it is widely associated with software engineers such as bitcoin veteran Adam Back. Many of the original cypherpunks are still active in the cryptocurrency space today. However, they’ve also inspired a new generation of self-identified cypherpunks with different skills now also exploring the subculture’s proverb that “cypherpunks build things.”
In Shikhelman’s case, she’s focused on mathematical research to make bitcoin’s Lightning Network reliable. Like her predecessors, she shares a love of cypherpunk literature, such as novels by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. These fantasy worlds help her think outside the box and apply math to ideas with cypherpunk potential, meaning the potential to use privacy tech to promote social change. Such solutions-oriented research is a fundamental part of building technology, just as valuable as adding open source code to a Github repo.
Lightning-fast cypherpunks
“Let’s talk big. Let’s think huge. Let’s talk about thousands of years in the future, changing humanity,” Shikhelman said.
In order to build privacy into the bitcoin ecosystem, technologists first must understand the mathematical aspects of the system. Just as safety equipment works best when it fits the person (an oversized helmet can be more dangerous than none at all), software works best when designed with both the details and holistic value flow in mind.
“Lightning will need more than just onion routing for good privacy guarantees going forward,” said cypherpunk journalist Janine Roemer, who writes a newsletter about bitcoin privacy tech. “Lightning is one of many adaptations that will expand Bitcoin's ability to carry larger and larger portions of the global economy.”
Similar to Shikhelman, Roemer is a researcher who views herself as part of the broader cypherpunk movement.
“A lowercase ‘c’ cypherpunk,” she joked, acknowledging she was never involved with the movement’s founding fathers.
This social movement is not preoccupied with overthrowing or altering governments, in stark contrast with Bitcoin Twitter’s anarchist undertones. Instead, Roemer said, rather than seizing power the movement is focused on “working to make things un-take-over-able." In short, unseizable assets, self-sovereign data and other types of independence in a digital world.
“I prefer the term ‘informational self-determination,’ which is used in the German constitution,” Roemer said.
As for bitcoin, Shikhelman described Bitcoin Core as “pretty much stable and running,” meaning her focus has now turned to privacy-centric usability for the Lightning Network. With regards to bitcoin’s reliability so far, Roemer agreed.
“I hope bitcoin will become/keep being something that survives under adversity, and gives the people who use it at least enough privacy that they can escape from whatever preys on them. Whether that's the state, banks, corporations, abusive family or partners,” Roemer concluded.
Plywood boards on storefronts became canvases during the protests over the killing of George Floyd. One Chicagoan wonders what will happen to the art now.
African scientists have developed a reliable, quick and cheap testing method which could be used by worldwide as the basis for mass testing programmes.
The method, which produces highly accurate results, is built around mathematical algorithms developed at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali. We speak to Neil Turok who founded the institute, Leon Mutesa Professor of human genetics on the government coronavirus task force, and Wilfred Ndifon, the mathematical biologist who devised the algorithm.
The virus is mutating as it spreads, but what does this mean? There is particular concern over changes to the spike protein, part of the virus needed to enter human cells. Jeremy Luban has been analysing this mechanism. So far he says ongoing genetic changes seem unlikely to impact on the effectiveness of treatments for Covid -19.
And Heatwaves are increasing, particularly in tropical regions, that’s the finding of a new analysis by climate scientist Sarah Perkins – Kirkpatrick.
Worms are not the cutest of creatures. They’re slimy, often associated with death and tend to bring on feelings of disgust in many of us. But listener Dinesh thinks they’re underrated and wants to know whether earthworms could be the key to our planet’s future agricultural success? He’s an organic farmer in India’s Tamil Nadu province who grows these annelids to add to the soil, and he wants Crowdscience to find out exactly what they’re doing.
Anand Jagatia dons his gardening gloves and digs the dirt on these remarkable creatures, discovering how they can help improve soil quality, prevent fields from becoming waterlogged, and improve microbial numbers, all of which has the potential to increase crop yield.
But he also investigates the so-called ‘earthworm dilemma’ and the idea that in some parts of the world, boreal forest worms are releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, which could have dangerous consequences for climate change.
Main image: People stand in white circles drawn on the ground to adhere to social distancing in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 4, 2020, Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty Images
