The World Health Organisation unveiled preliminary findings, suggesting the coronavirus probably jumped to humans via an intermediary animal and all but ruling out a laboratory leak. We examine the many remaining questions. Nefarious regimes find it ever easier to reach across borders, subjecting dissidents to repression and surveillance abroad. And why it’s so hard to buy a car in Algeria.
Fresh after a 5-second Super Bowl ad, Reddit doubles its valuation to $6B. DoorDash just acquired a sushi and salad-making robot because it hates humans. And we’re about to get another stimulus, but it all comes down to 1 conversation between the Hawks and the Doves.
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As soon as the Democrats won a slim 50-50 majority in the senate, the jokes about President Joe Manchin started flying. The Senate's self described “conservative Democrat” from West Virginia is in a key position to influence legislation during the Biden administration. How will he wield that power?
Guests: Jim Newell, senior politics reporter for Slate
Ken Ward Jr., co-founder of Mountain State Spotlight and distinguished reporting fellow for Pro-Publica
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Are exports to the EU from the UK down 68% since Brexit? This apocalyptic statistic is being widely reported, but does it really tell us what?s happening at Dover and Folkstone?
Ministers are tweeting reassuring numbers about flammable cladding on high rise buildings. We?re not so sure.
Is it really true that one in five people are disabled?
Plus, if you assembled all the coronavirus particles in the world into a pile - how big would it be?
Global Witness documented that 212 environmental and land activists were murdered in 2019. Over half of those documented murders took place in Colombia and the Philippines, countries where intensive mining and agribusiness has transformed the environment. NPR Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong speaks with three activists about the intersection between natural resource extraction and violence, and what keeps them going in their work.
A scientist assesses the potential of stem cell therapies for treating such brain disorders as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.
Stem cell therapies are the subject of enormous hype, endowed by the media with almost magical qualities and imagined by the public to bring about miracle cures. Stem cells have the potential to generate new cells of different types, and have been shown to do so in certain cases. Could stem cell transplants repair the damaged brain? In his book The Future of Brain Repair: A Realist's Guide to Stem Cell Therapy (MIT Press, 2020), neurobiologist Jack Price assesses the potential of stem cell therapies to treat such brain disorders as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal cord injuries.
Certainly brain disorders are in need of effective treatments. These disorders don’t just kill, they disable, and conventional drug therapies have not had much success in treating them. Price explains that repairing the human brain is difficult, largely because of its structural, functional, and developmental complexity. He examines the self-repairing capacity of blood and gut cells—and the lack of such capacity in the brain; describes the limitations of early brain stem cell therapies for neurodegenerative disorders; and discusses current clinical trials that may lead to the first licensed stem cell therapies for stroke, Parkinson’s and macular degeneration. And he describes the real promise of pluripotential stem cells, which can make all the cell types that constitute the body.
New technologies, Price reports, challenge the very notion of cell transplantation, instead seeking to convince the brain itself to manufacture the new cells it needs. Could this be the true future of brain repair?
You can find more about Jack’s work here and here.
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.
The second impeachment trial began yesterday, with Senators voting 56 to 44 to uphold the trial as constitutional and move forward. House managers presented video of the siege on the Capitol paired with Trump’s inflammatory speech to rally-goers beforehand, while Trump’s lawyers tried and failed to frame Trump’s impeachment after leaving office as a “slippery slope.”
A team from the World Health Organization has been in China investigating the origins of the coronavirus and they released preliminary findings yesterday. One prominent conspiracy theory they ruled out was the idea that the virus emanated from a Chinese lab, and they also said the virus had been circulating in Wuhan before its discovery at a seafood market.
And in headlines: hate crimes committed against Asian-Americans in the US is skyrocketing, the CEO of Riot Games faces a lawsuit for gender discrimination and misconduct, and the world’s first 3D printed T-bone steak.
Show Links:
"WATCH: Rep. Raskin presents graphic video timeline of Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otfPps9s8HM
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday
Comedian Rivers Langley is back in his hometown in Alabama for the rest of 2020 and a bit of 2021. Also, there's a global pandemic still happening. This podcast is him catching up with his funny friends; sometimes on the phone, sometimes socially-distanced outside. These are "The Corona Diaries" and this is Episode #119. We've got TWO very special guests on this episode in our middle segment: Narado Moore and Nick Thomas! Follow Narado on all forms of social media @Rod4Short. Follow Nick on Twitter @OneDumbBoy and all the rest of his stuff at https://linktr.ee/NickThomas034 Listen to Carter Glascock's new album 'The Crystal Pistol' now streaming on all platforms! Music at the end is "The Hustler" by Beachwood Sparks!
In June of 2019, journalist Andy Ngo was attacked and beaten by Antifa. Ngo, the author of the new book "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy," joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the book, the agenda behind Antifa, the five months of Antifa riots in Portland during the summer of 2020, his on-the-ground investigations in which he actually goes inside the “black bloc” with Antifa members, and much more.
We also cover these stories:
Former President Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial began Tuesday with a debate on the constitutionality of the trial itself.
During her confirmation hearing Tuesday, Neera Tanden, President Joe Biden's choice to head up the Office of Management and Budget, apologized for attacks she has made on Twitter on Republicans.
COVID-19 is likely to have originated in animals, according to a World Health Organization team tasked with finding the origin of the pandemic’s outbreak.
