Donald Trump was all but certain to be cleared in his Senate trial, and so it went. But the few Republican votes to convict are telling. What next for the former president? A look into Swiss efforts to track down a missing $230m raises disturbing questions. And why women aren’t getting the laughs as stand-up comedy grows in China.
On this episode, Dr. Josh Packard from the Springtide Research Institute joins contributing editor Mark Bauerlein to discuss Springtide’s recent report “The State of Religion and Young People 2020.”
Mike tells Sarah the real reason Congress called a bunch of rockers to Washington D.C. Digressions include cartoon violence, sleeveless tees and Trixie Mattel. Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" and Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" are dissected at length.
What happens when real life collides with your digital existence – the writer and ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’ Patricia Lockwood talks to Andrew Marr. In her highly original novel, No One is Talking About This, Lockwood’s narrator becomes overwhelmed as drama in the human world encroaches on the life she leads online.
Roisin Kiberd is part of the internet generation and believes the line between online and IRL has become so porous as to become meaningless. From the lure of endless scrolling, to the glamour of self-optimisation and the boundless possibility of connectivity, Kiberd explores the ups and downs of this new reality in a series of essays, The Disconnect.
In a new series on Radio 4, Sideways, Matthew Syed exploits different ways of seeing the world to connect disparate ideas and offer new insights. He examines the online craze of ‘randonauting’ – in which an app sends people on random adventures – to unpick the misunderstanding of probability using digital and real life examples.
What happens when real life collides with your digital existence – the writer and ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’ Patricia Lockwood talks to Andrew Marr. In her highly original novel, No One is Talking About This, Lockwood’s narrator becomes overwhelmed as drama in the human world encroaches on the life she leads online.
Roisin Kiberd is part of the internet generation and believes the line between online and IRL has become so porous as to become meaningless. From the lure of endless scrolling, to the glamour of self-optimisation and the boundless possibility of connectivity, Kiberd explores the ups and downs of this new reality in a series of essays, The Disconnect.
In a new series on Radio 4, Sideways, Matthew Syed exploits different ways of seeing the world to connect disparate ideas and offer new insights. He examines the online craze of ‘randonauting’ – in which an app sends people on random adventures – to unpick the misunderstanding of probability using digital and real life examples.
In honor of Black History Month, Short Wave is focusing on Black scientists and educators — people doing incredible work and pushing for a world where science serves everyone. Enjoy!
What does the birth of babies whose embryos have gone through genome editing mean—for science and for all of us?
In November 2018, the world was shocked to learn that two babies had been born in China with DNA edited while they were embryos—as dramatic a development in genetics as the 1996 cloning of Dolly the sheep. In this book, Hank Greely, a leading authority on law and genetics, tells the fascinating story of this human experiment and its consequences in CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans (The MIT Press, 2021). Greely explains what Chinese scientist He Jiankui did, how he did it, and how the public and other scientists learned about and reacted to this unprecedented genetic intervention.
The two babies, nonidentical twin girls, were the first “CRISPR'd” people ever born (CRISPR, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is a powerful gene-editing method). Greely not only describes He's experiment and its public rollout (aided by a public relations adviser) but also considers, in a balanced and thoughtful way, the lessons to be drawn both from these CRISPR'd babies and, more broadly, from this kind of human DNA editing—“germline editing” that can be passed on from one generation to the next.
Greely doesn't mince words, describing He's experiment as grossly reckless, irresponsible, immoral, and illegal. Although he sees no inherent or unmanageable barriers to human germline editing, he also sees very few good uses for it—other, less risky, technologies can achieve the same benefits. We should consider the implications carefully before we proceed.
Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.
Dr. Bob calls up Brown economist Emily Oster to discuss one of the most complicated and controversial issues of the pandemic: what to do about schools. Emily created the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard, a database that indicates that schools aren't a significant source of COVID-19 spread. She also talks about how the school debate ended up getting politicized, what it's like doing real-time data analysis, what elements need to be in place for successful school reopening, and how she’s managed her own kids during the pandemic.
Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @Bob_Wachter and check out In the Bubble’s new Twitter account @inthebubblepod.
Follow Emily Oster on Twitter @ProfEmilyOster.
Keep up with Andy in D.C. on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.
In the Bubble is supported in part by listeners like you. Become a member, get exclusive bonus content, ask Andy questions, and get discounted merch at https://www.lemonadamedia.com/inthebubble/
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.
