Millions of people in Texas have gone three or more days without power, water or both. Texas has had winter weather before, so what went so wrong this time?
Reporter Mose Buchele of NPR member station KUT in Austin explains why the state's power grid buckled under demand in the storm. And Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, explains the link between more extreme winter weather and climate change.
Additional reporting in this episode from NPR's Camila Domonoske, who reported on the Texas power grid, Ashley Lopez of KUT, Laura Isensee of Houston Public Media, and Dominic Anthony Walsh of Texas Public Radio.
In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.
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Pod Save America - “Flyin’ Ted.”
The MAGA vs. Mitch McConnell battle heats up with Trump’s return to public life, Joe Biden and progressives debate how much student debt to cancel, and Texas suffers from freezing storms and rolling blackouts while Ted Cruz jets off to Cancun. Then Dr. Anthony Fauci talks to Jon about variants, vaccination timelines, and what he’s learned from this pandemic.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica.
For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com.
Cato Daily Podcast - The Costs of Biden’s Big Minimum Wage Boost
The minimum wage debate is rekindled as the Biden Administration plans its push for $15 an hour. Chris Edwards and Ryan Bourne discuss the side-effects and drawbacks.
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Science In Action - Weird weather
A paper in the BMJ shows that deaths from Covid 9 are being massively overlooked in Zambia. The new data come from post-mortem tests at the University Hospital mortuary in Lusaka, showing that at least 1 in 6 deaths there are due to the coronavirus; many of the victims had also been suffering from tuberculosis. Chris Gill of Boston University’s Department of Global Health, and Lawrence Mwananyanda, chief scientific officer of Right to Care, Zambia, discuss their findings with Roland Pease.
New variants of concern continue to be reported, such as the one labelled B 1 1 7 in the UK, or B 1 351 identified in South Africa. Geneticist Emma Hodcroft, of the University of Bern, talks about seven variants that have been found in the US. Although all these variants are evolving from different starting points, certain individual mutations keep recurring – which suggests they have specific advantages for the virus. Her co-author Jeremy Kamil, of Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, explains how he can watch the viruses replicating inside cells.
Much of the United States, as far south as Texas, and Eurasia, has been gripped by an extraordinary blast of Arctic weather. Roland hears from climatalogist Jennifer Francis, of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, about the Arctic’s role in this weird weather.
Life, in the form of sponges, has been discovered hundreds of metres under the thick ice surrounding Antarctica, where it’s dark, subzero and barren. The British Antarctic Survey’s Huw Griffiths reveals how it was spotted unexpectedly in pictures colleagues took with a sub-glacial camera.
(Image: A man walks to his friend's home in a neighborhood without electricity as snow covers the BlackHawk neighborhood in Pflugerville, Texas, U.S. Credit: Reuters)
Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Deborah Cohen
CoinDesk Podcast Network - BREAKDOWN: How 2,000 Years of Monetary History Led Us to Bitcoin, Feat. Nik Bhatia
A conversation with the author of the new book “Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies.”
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io.
Nik Bhatia is a financial researcher, a CFA charterholder and an Adjunct Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.
Nik’s new book “Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies” puts the rise of bitcoin into a larger historical context - from the first coinage of Rome to the introduction of credit in Renaissance Florence to the beginnings of interest rate trading in Antwerp to the genesis of the central bank system that shapes money today.
In this conversation, he and NLW do a rapid tour across those two millennia of economic history, ultimately helping reframe what it means when we say that bitcoin is the new “digital gold.”
Find our guest on Twitter: @timevalueofbtc
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Earn up to 12% APY on Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD, EUR, GBP, Stablecoins & more. Get started at nexo.io.
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Audio Poem of the Day - Last Love
By Mary Karr
The Commentary Magazine Podcast - Here Comes the Overreach
Congressional Democrats haven’t even passed their proposed $2 trillion COVID relief package and they’re already talking about teeing up a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. Are Democrats repeating the mistakes of Barack Obama’s first term? Also, the delusions of Ben Rhodes and Rush Limbaugh’s legacy.
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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know - Listener Mail: Parler and Social Media, Mattress Firm Update, the (Potentially Terrifying) Future of Augmented Reality
A caller asks the gang to explore more of the larger dilemmas posed by social media censorship. A listener writes in to shed more light on the ongoing Mattress Firm enigma. An email about more augmented reality games inspires the gang to speculate about the increasing role of AR outside of gaming -- what happens when it becomes part of everyday life? All this and more in this week's listener mail.
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Misery continues in Texas with no heat or power for millions. President Biden's immigration plan. Mars landing this afternoon. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
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The Intelligence from The Economist - Watts the problem: Texas’s energy failings
Crippling blackouts can be explained in part by the state’s unique energy market, but the disaster exposes wider failures that must be confronted amid a changing climate. Today’s landing of another Mars rover broadens the hunt for evidence of extraterrestrial life—an effort that is expanding faster and farther than ever before. And soft rock shakes off its milquetoast manner.
For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer
Listen and subscribe to “The Jab from Economist Radio”, our new weekly podcast at the sharp end of the global vaccination race.