HO HO HOOOOOOOOOrribly inadequate stimulus checks! The omnibus spending bill is still in limbo as a result of Trump's veto, but Andrew still has the deep dive on what's in this 5600 page monstrosity! It's not great, but there are reasons to be positive on the improvements made over the last bill.
Also Andrew tells us what's going on with the "Red Slime" lawsuits against some Fox News personalities who spread misinformation about voting machines.
Every Fall NPR asks our critics and staff to pick their favorite books from the past year. Those nominations - there's hundreds of them - are then sorted down to a semi-manageable number. This year is our largest list yet with 383 titles.
The hosts of Consider This all submitted their picks to the list. Here are some of their favorites:
Ari Shapiro recommends Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi. A mythic story about a man who is disoriented and trapped in a mysterious sort of house.
Mary Louise Kelly has a suggestion great for a book club. Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnetexplores the connection between what was arguably William Shakespeare's greatest play, Hamlet, and the death of his only son four years before.
Ailsa Chang's pick is a good read for ages 10 and up. Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri takes you on a journey through myth, youth and cultural clash as a young boy and his family flee Iran and end up in Oklahoma.
Audie Cornish chose to share Just Us by poet Claudia Rankine. It's a collection of essays, photos, poems and conversations that Rankine has been having with friends and strangers about race.
It was the end of December 2019 when reports of a new flu like infection first came out of China. Within weeks millions of people were in lockdown as the virus took hold around the world.
In this programme we look back and revisit the scientists who were ready, those who had been studying bat coronaviruses and warning of their pandemic potential.
The scientific response was immediate. The coronavirus tests now used across the world were being developed within a few hours of news of the outbreak in China, and the vaccines we now have licenced for use began to be formulated just a few days later.
To round off the year, here are some choice cuts from the Allusionist vault of interesting things that guests said that there wasn’t room for in the original episodes. Brace yourself for a vivid name for dust bunnies, the scary side of glamour, another reason to be grateful for bears, and Schrödinger’s Fart.
There’s more about this episode at theallusionist.org/bonus2020. The show will be back with new episodes in late January 2021.
What's the most likely explanation for the recently-revealed photos of pilots encountering UFOs? What can investigators learn from the recent decryption of the Zodiac cipher? Keith from Chicago asks whether Nazis conspired to change our understanding of music. All this and more in this week's listener mail.
Bully Esquire is a Crypto Twitter personality, lawyer, founder of AlphaMarkets and host of the “Bully Esquire” podcast. In this conversation, he and NLW discuss what was good and bad about the DeFi boom of 2020 and more.
President Trump pardons key political supporters. 119,000 Americans are spending Christmas in the hospital with COVID-19. Police body cam footage is released in the Ohio shooting death of an unarmed black man. Correspondent Peter King has the CBS World News Roundup for December 24, 2020.
We thought the holiday season might be just the time of year to walk a mile in the shoes of minority faith traditions, as they navigate both the yuletide season and the broader predominantly Christian culture around them. We’ll hear from a wide range of minority faith communities to better understand the impact in their communities, then we’ll consider how to best handle (and embrace) our diversity inside the public institutions we share. In these shared spaces how do we navigate the things parents would rather not have their kids exposed to — and respect our differences? And we’ll stretch to consider whether there is unexpected common cause between parents taking a pass on the Good News Club and those who say “no thank you” to instruction on evolution and sex ed instead.
Facilitated by Rabbi Michael Shields of Temple Israel.
Saladin had been victorious. In 1187, he defeated the main Crusader army at Hattin and recaptured Jerusalem. Despite his compassionate treatment of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, sparing the entire Christian population, and even allowing most to leave the city on payment of a small ransom, there was horror in the West. The aged Pope Urban III, is said to have died from shock. His successor, Gregory VIII, called for the end of all warfare between the rulers of Christendom for seven years, in order to mount a great offensive to reclaim the Holy Land from Saladin. The Third Crusade had begun.
Please take a look at my website nickholmesauthor.com where you can download a free copy of The Byzantine World War, my book that describes the origins of the First Crusade.
Question: Who is the most dominant athlete of all time?
It’s an interesting question and one which has started endless pub debates. Is that a basketball player like Michael Jordan, a baseball player like Babe Ruth, or a soccer player like Lionel Messi?
Or maybe it’s an athlete in an individual sport like Tiger Woods, or Serena Williams.
My answer to the question of who is the most dominant athlete of all time might surprise you.
