Don't mess with Texas Democrats! Governor Abbott called an emergency session, not to fix the failing power grid or anything else important, but to ban knowledge and to restrict voting. Texas Democrats are not having it. They're playing the kind of hardball many of us have been thirsty for in this era. Andrew explains the situation and why it's a very good strategy. Then, Andrew does a victory lap for his accurate predictions in the hilarious lawsuit filed by Roy Moore against Sacha Baron Cohen!
July is National Ice Cream Month — and Sunday, July 18 is National Ice Cream Day (in the US)! Flavors range from the classics — vanilla and chocolate — to the adventurous — jalapeño and cicada. But for some people, including ice cream scientist Dr. Maya Warren, flavor is only one part of the ice cream allure. So in today's episode, Emily Kwong talks with Short Wave producer Thomas Lu about some of the processes that create the texture of ice cream, and how that texture plays into our enjoyment of the tasty treat.
Starting today, tens of millions of families are beginning to receive monthly payments of up to $300 per child. It’s part of the newly expanded Child Tax Credit under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.
Reset brings on experts to discuss what you need to know about the advance payments and opens the phones to listeners to hear about how the funds will help their families.
For more Reset interviews, subscribe to this podcast. And please give us a rating, it helps other listeners find us.
For more about Reset, go to wbez.org and follow us on Twitter @WBEZReset
Democratic leaders agree to a $3.5 trillion economic plan, President Biden delivers an impassioned speech on voting rights that still doesn’t mention the f-word, a new book reveals that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was actively planning to stop Trump’s attempted coup, and Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown joins to talk about how activists and organizers plan to win the fight against voter suppression.
The protests that erupted in Cuba over the weekend are the biggest the country has seen in decades. Cubans are suffering through a summer of shortages, from food and electricity to medicine. All of which have been made worse by the pandemic. Officials in the authoritarian government are tying to stamp out the unrest quickly.
These demonstrations present a political opportunity for President Biden. NPR's Franco Ordonez reports on how the White House's response could change future Florida votes.
NPR international correspondent Carrie Kahn looks into internet blackouts enacted by the Cuban government in an attempt to stop organizing happening on social media platforms.
And Miami-Herald editorial writer Luisa Yanez explains why a younger generation of Cubans may not buckle under pressure.
This week the UK parliament voted to accept the Government’s continued cap on Official Development Aid. This disappointed many researchers around the world, funded directly and indirectly through various scientific funding structures enabling international collaboration on some of the global challenges facing all of us. These funding mechanisms make for a small fraction of the overall amount, but they have been hit hard, with many projects closing altogether.
There had been hope amongst the scientific community that the cap – from 0.7% down to 0.5% of the UK’s Gross Domestic Income – might have been in place just for a year. But it seems like the criteria set to judge when the level of aid might rise again imply that it is unlikely to happen for several years at the earliest.
What, asks Science in Action, does that mean to the world of scientific collaboration on such topics as climate change, contagious disease, and emergency planning?
Researchers Chris Trisos and Jenni Barclay, with journalist Robin Bisson of Research Professional News, update us on the story.
In Zambia, where covid testing remains scarce, a project run by Boston University’s Christopher Gill has been estimating the prevalence of covid in the capital Lusaka by taking nasal swab samples from the noses of around one in five of those recently deceased, in the morgue of a major hospital. Tantalisingly, his team have seen over the last few months a sharp rise in cases to the extent that in June, nearly 90 percent of the cadavers tested positive for covid. But as Chris describes, unrelated to the UK cuts, their funding has now run out, so where the graph leads from here we may not learn for a long time.
Presented by Roland Pease
Produced by Alex Mansfield.
On this episode of “The Breakdown,” NLW addresses recent shifts in institutional and regulatory discussions on crypto, including:
How BlackRock CEO Larry Fink sees the state of crypto
ShapeShift’s final structural shift
Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s stance against stablecoins
A dissenting letter from two SEC commissioners
BlackRock made headlines when it entered the crypto market because it viewed bitcoin as a hedge play that could no longer be ignored. Now, this investment management company finds itself in a changed landscape as bitcoin prices have fallen from all-time highs. How has CEO Larry Fink’s view of crypto changed with this new price point?
ShapeShift, a global digital asset trading platform, was created with a vision of minimizing user-collected data. That vision was tarnished in 2018 when the platform began requiring basic information, resulting in a 95% loss of its user base. ShapeShift’s tumultuous history has added another chapter today with the announcement that it is converting to a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, owned by the users. Is this one step in a greater trend of fundamentally shedding corporate organizational power structures?
Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell countered Vice Chairman Randal Quarles’ pro-stablecoin stance in a recent testimony before Congress. While Quarles asserted successful stablecoins would make a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) redundant, Powell offered the opposite opinion: “You wouldn’t need stablecoins, you wouldn’t need cryptocurrencies if you had a digital U.S. currency.” Whose stance will win in the growing stablecoin versus CBDC debate?
Two members of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a letter of dissent following a SEC enforcement action against U.K. company Coinschedule for anti-touting provisions. The letter expressed the members’ disappointment at the lack of regulatory clarification following the Coinschedule opportunity and an overarching distaste at a lack of transparency surrounding crypto guidance. Will more members follow in their footsteps and push for a clearer SEC stance?
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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for Bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.
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The Breakdown is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.
The podcast crew expresses skepticism at the notion that Biden and the Democrats have a brilliant strategy to get their $3.5 trillion spending bill passed. And we express skepticism about Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley’s self-portrait as the man Who Saved America from the New Nazis. And we praise Olivia Rodrigo, who’s great. Give a listen. Source
Extra money for parents as tax credits start hitting bank accounts. Scathing report on the Larry Nassar case. Heartbreaking 911 calls from Surfside. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
