Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are now in their eighties. A new generation is learning to tell their tales, in hopes of preventing more atomic tragedies. Belarus’s president of 26 years will probably win in Sunday’s election, but an invigorated—and unexpected—opposition has him on the back foot. And the horror movie that will make you nervous to use Zoom.
Additional archive courtesy of Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee. Additional sounds by InspectorJ at Freesound.org.
Over the past five months, city blocks have been slipping away. Bars are closed; restaurants are half-empty; retail is shuttered. As the country returns to varying states of lockdown, how long can these blocks hold on?
This week: how one commercial strip on Chicago’s South Side is weathering the pandemic.
Guests:
Nedra Sims Fears, executive director of the Greater Chatham Initiative
It's another Micro Wave! Today, what happens in your brain when you notice a semantic or grammatical mistake ... according to neuroscience. Sarah Phillips, a neurolinguist, tells us all about the N400 and the P600 responses.
Plus, we dive into some listener mail — which you can send to us by emailing shortwave@npr.org.
New York’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association. AG Letitia James alleges that the NRA has engaged in years of corruption.
In the absence of a federal testing strategy, seven governors have formed a purchasing agreement in attempts to get faster COVID antigen tests. In California, problems with the state’s data system may be creating inaccurate coronavirus data.
And in headlines: Minneapolis won’t vote to dismantle the police department, an exiled Saudi intelligence officer says MBS tried to kill him, and Nintendo reports a huge earnings boost.
Three L.A. comedians are quarantined in a podcast studio during a global pandemic. There is literally nothing to be done EXCEPT make content. These are "The Corona Diaries" and this is Episode #66. Our guest today is comedian Katrina Davis! Follow Katrina on all forms of social media @KatrinaSivad. Music at the end is "Mas Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66.
At the end of June, the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to "defund" the city's police. Now crime is on the rise.
John Hinderaker, president of the Minnesota policy organization Center of the American Experiment, joins the show to explain what the future may hold for the Minneapolis Police Department and what his organization is doing to support local law enforcement.
We also cover these stories:
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, moves to shut down the National Rifle Association.
The votes of more than 84,000 New York City residents weren't counted during the summer’s Democratic primary.
A Secret Service report reveals that many shootings are carried out with illegal guns.
In a HUGE breaking news story, the New York Attorney General has sought to dissolve the NRA over rampant corruption! The complaint is nearly a couple hundred pages, but our esteemed Andrew has already read it and has the breakdown for us in a truly rapid response Friday! Questions he answers include: what are the alleged facts? Can NY actually do this? Could LaPierre simply re-form the NRA somewhere else? And more!
Is there any more fitting end to a day of working from home, deep into months of a fully remote world, than using your smartphone to finish up a little Python code with your head resting on your pillow? Paul has no regrets. If you look at that big, bright, shiny computer monitor late at night, you'll never fall asleep.
Sara helps us trace the origin of the word software. It was originally meant as a joke, a clever play on computer "hardware" used in casual conversation, not as an iron clad piece of marketing. Over time, as it was used in correspondence - at public talks, and eventually in academic papers - it began to take on serious weight as a term of art for the product you produce with computers and code.
Ben would prefer to be Less Wrong, and is starting to use the podcast to put his deference to a supreme AI into the historical record, just in case Roko's basilisk rears its ugly head.
Our lifeboat this week is about an error in some non-standard syntax. Who among has not missed a paren, but hey, sometimes you just need another pair of eyes. Two kind members of our community answered this question, elaborated on how to improve the code, and earned a lifeboat. Congrats!
And finally, a bit of recommended reading on just how much power is consumed by the data centers that make cloud computing run 24/7, and what that means for our planet.
On the Gist, New York’s elections are not unlike Georgia’s.
In the interview, our resident vexillologist Ted Kaye is back to talk about the latest in flag news. He fills Mike in on what’s happening in Mississippi as they try to swiftly get a new flag design added to the ballot in November, and the recent proliferation of the ‘thin blue line’ American flag. Kaye’s book is Good Flag, Bad Flag.
