Ali Smith talks to Andrew Marr about Summer, the finale to her ambitious, ground-breaking Seasonal quartet of novels. Since 2016, the prize-winning writer has been working on a cycle of novels that not only explore the changing seasons, but reflect the times we are living in. With the tightest turnaround from manuscript to book, Smith’s ambition was to create real contemporaneous ‘state of the nation’ works. She reflects on a country voting on its future, people and families on the brink of change, and now living through a pandemic, while also understanding how art, nature and landscape speak of a deeper truth.
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
-Isaiah 2:4
The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject, not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity.
Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us(Random House, 2020) explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control?
Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.
Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com.
A city of modest size, Providence, Rhode Island, had the third-largest Native American population in the United States by the first decade of the nineteenth century. Patricia E. Rubertone's Native Providence: Memory, Community, and Survivance in the Northeast (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) tells their stories at this historical moment and in the decades before and after, a time when European Americans claimed that Northeast Natives had mostly vanished.
Denied their rightful place in modernity, men, women, and children from Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pequot, Wampanoag, and other ancestral communities traveled diverse and complicated routes to make their homes in this city. They found each other, carved out livelihoods, and created neighborhoods that became their urban homelands—new places of meaningful attachments. Accounts of individual lives and family histories emerge from historical and anthropological research in archives, government offices, historical societies, libraries, and museums and from community memories, geography, and landscape.
Patricia E. Rubertone chronicles the survivance of the Native people who stayed, left and returned, who faced involuntary displacement by urban renewal, who lived in Providence briefly, or who made their presence known both there and in the wider indigenous and settler-colonial worlds. These individuals reenvision the city’s past through everyday experiences and illuminate documentary and spatial tactics of inequality that erased Native people from most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history.
We'll update you on the hunt for survivors and victims in what may end up being the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history.
Also, a historic prison sentence for the ex-cop who killed George Floyd and why his legal battles don't end there.
Plus, findings from the government's big UFO report, Google's newest step to fight misinformation, and some of the most talked-about moments from last night's BET awards.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki joins Andy fresh off a press briefing to talk about rebuilding public trust in the government, working with President Biden, and what it was like becoming a household name overnight. Andy shares his thoughts on the ultimate COVID-19 question: bat or lab? Plus, In the Bubble field correspondent Dr. Lisa visits a federal vaccination site to see what a government in action can do.
Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt. Follow Dr. Lisa on Twitter @askdrfitz.
Jen Psaki is on Twitter at @PressSec.
Check out In the Bubble’s Twitter account @inthebubblepod.
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A 12-story residential building collapsed in Miami last week, resulting in the deaths of at least 9 people, with more than 150 people still missing. An engineering report from 2018 found major structural damage to the building, and it was supposed to undergo repairs this year. There’s a climate change connection, too, with some suggesting that rising temperatures and sea levels might have accelerated the building’s erosion.
Republicans in several states have been trying to audit the results of the November election to prove there was some kind of fraud that led to Trump’s defeat. We talk through some recent L’s state-level Republicans have taken, and the tactics they’re still trying to deploy.
Plus, Liz Plank fills in for Gideon. And in headlines: a historic heat-wave in the Pacific Northwest, Turkish police crack down on a pride march, and a woman with a sign causes a pileup at the Tour de France.
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday.
Growing up in Silicon Valley, Martin Avila taught himself how to be a computer programmer and started a website development company when he was in high school. Even then, his politics didn't mesh with the dominant far-left ideas of California's tech hub.
Today, he's offering customers an an alternative in the marketplace of internet services—from application development to web hosting. His company is called RightForge, and it's a much-needed alternative at a time when Americans increasingly find themselves deplatformed and censored by Big Tech.
"I've got friends who are like, 'We need to rebuild Salesforce. We need to rebuild MailChimp.' And I said, 'That's exactly right. We do.' But in order to stand up those things, we needed the hard infrastructure," Avila says. "And that's what RightForge is. It's the ability for those companies to be created on the hard assets distributed across the globe."
Avila spoke to The Daily Signal about his plans for RightForge and why he's optimistic about marketplace solutions to Big Tech behemoths.
Early in the pandemic, contact tracing was viewed as one of the best options to quell the spread of coronavirus infections. The idea was to have public health workers track down people who tested positive, figure out whom they'd been in touch with and quickly get those people to quarantine. Places like Hong Kong and Singapore made headlines for their success stories. The U.S. aimed to replicate this, but came up short. Today, health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin explains what went awry and the lessons learned.
OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:57) – Discovery of phosphine on Venus
(20:34) – Phosphine gas
(30:47) – Searching for molecular fingerprints
(41:44) – What does a quantum astrochemist do?
(56:48) – Spectroscopic networks
(1:01:13) – Biosignature gases
(1:04:06) – UFOs and aliens
(1:17:24) – Alien civilizations
(1:34:59) – Programming
(1:42:15) – Why science is beautiful
(1:46:07) – How to be productive
(1:56:27) – Books
(1:57:59) – Meaning of life
An elephant’s trunk is amazing. Imagine a robotic arm with the same capabilities. Not only does a trunk have the strength to topple trees and lift hundreds of kilograms in weight, it can also perform precise and delicate movements. These unique capabilities inspired engineers to create a ‘bionic handling assistant’, which can be used for all sorts of complex tasks. Thank you to Pranav, a 7-year-old listener from India, for suggesting the first story of the new season.
Thanks for listening. Let us know what you think. #30Animals
Get in touch: www.bbcworldservice.com/30animals
