Tension in the holy city of Jerusalem has been rising for weeks, amid the attempted eviction of Palestinians and a march by Jewish nationalists. Yesterday it erupted into the worst violence in years, as Hamas rockets fired at Israel from Gaza prompted retaliatory air strikes. A cyber-attack that shut down one of America’s largest fuel pipelines reflects the growing problem of ransomware. And in China, authorities are clamping down on a spurt of grave robbing. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer
Daniel Gallancy is a husband and father to an 18 month old son. He studied electrical engineering and physics in school, but ended up working in finance, doing diligence on tech companies for an investment fund. In 2011, he discovered bitcoin and became enamored with the concept. At that time, he bought 1 whole bitcoin for $4 dollars. Looking back, he obviously wishes he would have bought more. We got into an interesting conversation about ICO's - initial coin offerings - and tokens in general, around how companies drive up the value of said tokens through usage, rather than business profit. In his words, he saw the ICO world as a regulatory arbitrage, which didn't make for a good investment, but did make an interesting story.
In 2013, he decided to leave the hedge fund world - IE his nice cushy job - and pursue something in the crypto world. Ultimately, he realized that some of the more interesting concepts being used in crypto - specifically, distributed key management - could be used in solutions outside of the block chain world. In a discussion with his co-founder, they figured out that solutions like this didn't exist, and that they wanted to build it.
For years people believed that there was a part of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and planes would disappear called the Bermuda Triangle. It turned out that ships and planes didn’t disappear there at any higher rate than they did elsewhere, and it just wasn’t a thing.
However, researchers did find a place where the vessels which traveled into it had a far higher rate of catastrophe.
This area was in outer space.
Learn more about the South Atlantic Anomaly
A complete recount of ballots from the 2020 election is underway in Maricopa County, where Arizona Senate Republicans still question the results of the general election. There’s no timeline or budget for the manual audit, and election experts say this effort is highly prone to errors.
Guest: Andrew Oxford, reporter for the Arizona Republic.
Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Davis Land, Danielle Hewitt, Elena Schwartz, and Carmel Delshad.
In which we study the long history of inspirations getting jotted down on scrap paper, and Ken learns he's too lively to be a rock musician. Certificate #44181.
Concert legend Live Nation has become a slingshot stock with a new calling: Make concerts make money like sports. Darkside is the cyberhacking ransomware crew that may have just jacked up your gas prices. And Blind raised $37M for an office gossip app that your HR team hates so much… they just might pay for it.
$LYV $NET $PANW $UL
Got a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYork
Want a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:
https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9
Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewform
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
A complete recount of ballots from the 2020 election is underway in Maricopa County, where Arizona Senate Republicans still question the results of the general election. There’s no timeline or budget for the manual audit, and election experts say this effort is highly prone to errors.
Guest: Andrew Oxford, reporter for the Arizona Republic.
Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Davis Land, Danielle Hewitt, Elena Schwartz, and Carmel Delshad.
Some colleges and universities have announced that COVID vaccination will be mandatory (with some exemptions) and the FDA has authorized the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 12 to 15. While coronavirus infections are declining in the United States, vaccination rates also appear to be slowing down, so pediatricians and public health officials say they're trying to spread the word to overcome hesitancy, and get the vaccine out to people where they go to school and shop. Emily talks with NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey about this and other topics in the pandemic news.
In this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes (Harper Business, 2021), is about how to disagree better. Ian regularly publishes in The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Economist. He co-hosted the podcast series Polarized and created a BBC radio comedy series.
