Short Wave - Brood X: The Rise Of The 17-Year Cicadas

The cicadas are coming! After 17 years, Brood X is emerging this spring to mate. If you're in the eastern part of the United States, get ready to be surrounded by these little critters! Host Maddie Sofia talks with entomologist Sammy Ramsey, aka Dr. Buggs, about what cicadas are, where they've been for the last 17 years, and — of course — why they're so loud.

Email Short Wave at ShortWave@npr.org.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Python Bytes - #226 Teaching Python podcast on the podcast!

Topics covered in this episode:
See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/226

The NewsWorthy - More Severe Storms, Giant Shipping Mishap & Olympic Torch Relay- Thursday, March 25th, 2021

The news to know for Thursday, March 25th, 2021!

We're talking about:

  • the southern U.S. bracing for another tornado outbreak just eight days after the last one
  • Vice President Harris' first major task: she's taking on the border surge
  • how one stuck ship could disrupt trade all over the world
  • what part of the Olympics has just begun 
  • where you can now buy a car with bitcoin
  • the ins and outs of vaccine passports

All that and more in around 10 minutes...

Head to www.theNewsWorthy.com/shownotes to read more about any of the stories mentioned.

This episode is brought to you by Rothys.com/newsworthy and Ritual.com/newsworthy 

Support the show and get ad-free episodes here: www.theNewsWorthy.com/insider

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Another Tornado Outbreak Possible: NBC News, WaPo, USA Today, NWS

Harris to Lead Border Efforts: Politico, Axios, AP, NBC News

First Senate-confirmed Transgender Official: NY Times, ABC News, NPR, Vox

Suez Canal Blocked: BBC, NY Times, WaPo, WSJ

Olympic Torch Relay Begins: Reuters, NBC Sports, CNN, WSJ, Olympic Games, Watch the Live Stream

Facebook: China Hacked Uyghurs: WSJ, AP, NBC News, Facebook

Uber Expands Prescription Deliveries: Stat, WSJ, Reuters, Uber

Buy a Tesla with Bitcoin: CNBC, Elon Musk, Tesla

Disney+ Price Hike: Variety, The Verge, Deadline

Thing to Know Thursday: Vaccine Passports: AP, Smithsonian, Cnet, Newsweek

What A Day - Standing Up For Sex Workers

In light of the Georgia shooter's claim that his attack was intended to "eliminate" "temptations," activists have talked about the killings in the context of violence targeted at Asian migrant sex workers, an often dehumanized and stigmatized community of AAPI women.

We spoke with Yves Tong Nguyen, an organizer with Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and massage parlor workers. She told us about the harmful repercussions of criminalizing sex work, why policing isn't the answer, and more.

And in headlines: an elderly Chinese woman who was the victim of a recent racist attack in San Francisco will donate nearly a million dollars to fight anti-AAPI racism, a cargo ship gets stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, and Montana's governor gets in trouble for shooting a wolf.

Show Links:

Red Canary Song

https://www.redcanarysong.net/


Follow What A Day on Instagram at instagram.com/whataday

For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday.

The Daily Signal - What This Former NYPD Detective Has to Say About Attacks on Police

Rob O’Donnell, a former detective with the New York Police Department, was among first responders to the terrorist attacks that brought down the towers of the World Trade Center in 2001 as well as to the terrorist bombing there eight years earlier.


O'Donnell joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about what that was like.


"A few days before 9/11, I had a homicide [investigation], which probably helped me not be there as soon as I would have been because I ended up working on 9/10 to about 2 in the morning, where I normally would have been at work at 7," O’Donnell recalls.


"I responded straight down to ground zero on 9/11," he says. "And if I would have been at the police station, I would have been there that much sooner."


O'Donnell also discusses the violent attacks on police and other law enforcement across the nation, especially over the past year, related racial tensions, and potential reforms in police departments.


We also cover these stories:


  • Republican and Democrat lawmakers clash during a Senate hearing on Democrats' bill to nationalize elections.
  • Senate Democrats Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois say they won’t oppose Biden administration nominees. 
  • Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says the Biden administration is responsible for the influx of migrants to America’s southern border. 



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech Won't Save Us - Elon Musk Isn’t Saving Humanity w/ Manu Saadia

Paris Marx is joined by Manu Saadia to discuss the roots of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ visions for space, and why they serve the billionaires’ need for control, not the betterment of humanity.

Manu Saadia is the author of “Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.”

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

  • Elon Musk said he’s accumulating wealth to make life multiplanetary. Jeff Bezos said he can only think to spend his Amazon “winnings” on space.
  • In “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity,” Daniel Deudney outlines the two space paradigms discussed in the episode. You can also read a review of it.
  • Werhner von Braun, who was key to the US Apollo Program, was a Nazi scientist who came to the US after World War II.
  • Carl Sagan said “there is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. … For the moment, Earth is where we make our stand.” Elon Musk laughed at this and claimed Mars is the alternative, but Shannon Stirone explained why he is very wrong.
  • Salvage published an editorial on the immediate need to repair the damage done by capitalism.
  • Science fiction mentioned: Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed,” Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein.

Support the show

Curious City - The Environmental Impacts Of The Chicago River Reversal

We dug into the Curious City archives and pulled out one of our favorites, a story about the Chicago River. Chicago’s bold maneuver to reverse the Chicago River diverted sewage away from Lake Michigan, allowing Chicago’s continued growth. But it was hardly a perfect solution. The effects of the groundbreaking engineering feat are still being felt today -- even as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Reporter Carson Vaughan has that story.

NBN Book of the Day - Phil Zuckerman, “Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment” (New York UP, 2020)

Phil Zuckerman's book, Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment (2nd ed.) (New York University Press, 2020), points out that religious conservatives around the world often claim that a society without a strong foundation of faith would necessarily be an immoral one, bereft of ethics, values, and meaning. Indeed, the Christian Right in the United States has argued that a society without God would be hell on earth.

Zuckerman, however, challenges these claims. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with more than 150 citizens of Denmark and Sweden, among the least religious countries in the world, he shows that, far from being inhumane, crime-infested, and dysfunctional, highly secular societies are healthier, safer, greener, less violent, and more democratic and egalitarian than highly religious ones.

Society without God provides a rich portrait of life in a secular society, exploring how a culture without faith copes with death, grapples with the meaning of life, and remains content through everyday ups and downs.

Phil Zuckerman is an Associate Dean and Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is also a regular affiliated professor at Claremont Graduate University, and he has been a guest professor for two years at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In 2011, Phil founded the first Secular Studies department in the nation, he regularly writes for Psychology Today, Huffington Post, and numerous scholarly journals, and his books have been translated and published in Danish, Farsi, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Italian.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day