Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has become a Republican celebrity for his notably lax coronavirus policies, keeping the state mostly open during the pandemic. But in Miami Beach, tourists are using the lack of restrictions to their advantage, exposing the difficulty of managing a world that isn’t quite done with COVID-19, but desperately wants to be.
Tom Tugendhat MP is the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He tells Andrew Marr that he’s very much focused on British foreign policy priorities after Brexit. But the government’s new Trade Bill is facing opposition from those insisting that human rights abuses must be investigated before any deals are done. The MP for Tonbridge and Malling also highlights the need to be more aware of China’s economic ambitions and global role.
Geeta Tharmaratnam is keen that more focus should be placed on Africa. As a venture capitalist and CEO of an investment company she see huge economic possibilities across the continent, especially in relation to African women entrepreneurs. She looks more closely at the African Continental Free Trade Area which was signed by a majority of countries in Kigali, Rwanda in 2018 and came into force this year.
But the journalist Michela Wrong questions whether the Rwandan government, and especially its much feted leader President Paul Kagame can be trusted. Following the civil war and genocide in 1994 Kagame became vice-President and then leader of his country. He has prioritised national development and been successful in securing international aid, but Wrong follows the story of his rise to power and argues that he has overseen a regime intent on political repression.
NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel takes us to IonQ, one of the companies betting on a quantum computing future. Along the way, Geoff explains what little researchers know about how we might actually use this technology. There are hints though quantum computing could change everything from discovering new drugs to developing advanced materials.
Want us to cover another promising, complicated technology? Email us — we're at shortwave@npr.org.
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Mississippi River, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire followed by the importation of indentured laborers from India and China into the West Indies, the consolidation of British rule in India followed by the so-called Indian Mutiny, and the expansion of settler colonialism in Australia. These processes were all tied together by commerce, empire, and the spread of racial ideologies, yet their histories have largely been written separately. Until now.
Zach Sell’s new book Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital(University of North Carolina Press, 2021) highlights the connections between the “second slavery” in the Deep South of the United States, efforts to socially engineer mono-crop agriculture in India by a British colonial state that lip service to laissez-faire and free labor even as it tried to import plantation management techniques from the US south, how the attempt to create plantation-style agriculture in Queensland, Australia bumped up against the logic of white settler colonialism and attempts to expand plantation agriculture in Belize in the age of so-called “free” labor using indentured labor from Asia. This is a story of racial formation on a global scale, and of the limits of capital’s ability to remake social relations and environments in its own image, despite the capacity for organized brutality that it had at its disposal. This book is particularly important at a time when many American, British and French commentators have tried to downplay the violence of expansion and colonialism and to portray white supremacy as some sort of American peculiarity and relic of the past.
Zach is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Drexel University and was previously Ruth J. Simmons Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Slavery and Justice at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
Dr. Bob teams up with NYU medical ethicist Arthur Caplan to tackle your questions about what exactly vaccine passports are, when they might be a reality in the US, how to make sure they’re handled equitably, where you’d need to show them, and much more. Dr. Bob says vaccine passports will dominate conversations this summer, so get ahead of the curve and dive into the topic right now with this Toolkit!
Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter @Bob_Wachter and check out In the Bubble’s new Twitter account @inthebubblepod.
Arthur Caplan is on Twitter @ArthurCaplan.
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.
the high-profile trial starting today: a jury is set to decide whether Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd
a little progress but a growing traffic jam on one of the world's most critical shipping routes: how it's impacting global trade almost a week after it started
what's being called the most important union vote in decades
New York's first-of-its-kind tech letting people prove they've been vaccinated
what genre is about to get a lot bigger on Netflix
Those stories and more in just ~10 minutes!
Head to www.theNewsWorthy.com or see sources below to read more about any of the stories mentioned today.
The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is set to begin today with opening statements. We explain what to expect and highlight new police reform efforts in cities across the country, including a pandemic decriminalization program in Baltimore that could become permanent.
Covid-19 cases are starting to rise again driven by increasing infection rates in places like New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. And although vaccinations continue to rise, experts still caution the public to wear masks in large settings.
And in headlines: Myanmar’s deadliest day since the February coup, a new bill in Arkansas targets health care for trans youth, and Suez boat gets freed.
Show Links:
NYPD officers are no longer protected from civil lawsuits after city council passes police reform legislation
A direct link exists between criminal organizations and illegal immigration, former federal prosecutor Josh Jones says.
Jones, now senior fellow in border security at Texas Public Policy Foundation, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss his recent report, “Joined at the Hip: Organized Crime and Illegal Immigration." Jones explains how gangs and other criminal groups in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala lead illegal immigrants to the border and often exploit the migrants for their own profit.
Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a "good news story" about a foster child who was adopted by his teacher.
Episode 118 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy” by Manfred Mann, and how a jazz group with a blues singer had one of the biggest bubblegum pop hits of the sixties.
Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
