During World War II, the US Army assigned statistician Abraham Wald the task of statistically figuring out where extra armor should be added to American bombers.
After analyzing the evidence and sharing it with the Army, he recommended the exact opposite of what the Army assumed. The reason was that the Army had engaged in a logical fallacy.
Learn more about survivorship bias and how it manifests itself into everyday thinking, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The news to know for Monday, September 27th, 2021!
We'll tell you about an Amtrak passenger train that went off the tracks and how locals rushed in to help out.
Also, what to know about the candidate Germans elected to be their new leader, and what a Republican-led audit found about the last presidential election here in the U.S.
Plus, the impact of a record backlog of cargo ships off the U.S. coasts, a new law in China that could shake the cryptocurrency market, and how an NFL kicker made history over the weekend.
With the passing of those who witnessed National Socialism and the Holocaust, the archive matters as never before. However, the material that remains for the work of remembering and commemorating this period of history is determined by both the bureaucratic excesses of the Nazi regime and the attempt to eradicate its victims without trace. Dora Osborne's book What Remains: The Post-Holocaust Archive in German Memory Culture (Camden House, 2020) argues that memory culture in the Berlin Republic is marked by an archival turn that reflects this shift from embodied to externalized, material memory and responds to the particular status of the archive "after Auschwitz." What remains in this late phase of memory culture is the post-Holocaust archive, which at once ensures and haunts the future of Holocaust memory.
Drawing on the thinking of Freud, Derrida, and Georges Didi-Huberman, this book traces the political, ethical, and aesthetic implications of the archival turn in contemporary German memory culture across different media and genres. In its discussion of recent memorials, documentary film and theater, as well as prose narratives, all of which engage with the material legacy of the Nazi past, it argues that the performance of “archive work” is not only crucial to contemporary memory work but also fundamentally challenges it.
Lea Greenberg is a scholar of German studies with a particular focus on German Jewish and Yiddish literature and culture; critical gender studies; multilingualism; and literature of the post-Yugoslav diaspora.
As many as one in five people who became ill with COVID-19 have reportedly developed long-term symptoms that last well after they’ve recovered from the initial infection. Informally called “Long COVID,” the condition is associated with chronic fatigue, brain fogginess, headaches, and more. We interview Dr. Ashish Jha from the Brown School of Public Health, who’s launched a new study to look at Long COVID’s effects on people, health care, workplaces and more.
And in headlines: Germany holds a parliamentary election, the World Health Organization resuscitates the investigation into COVID-19’s origins, and Biden gets an even bigger victory margin in Arizona’s GOP-led 2020 election audit.
Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission has been serving the homeless and needy of its community for nearly 90 years. But now, the Washington Supreme Court has given it the Hobson's choice of changing its religious beliefs or closing its doors.
“[O]ur beliefs are everything to us,” Scott Chin, president of Seattle's Union Gospel Mission, says, adding that it is “unimaginable that we would change our beliefs just so that we could continue operating.”
In 2017, Matthew Woods applied for a lawyer position with the organization. The mission requires all of its employees to hold and live by the ministry’s Christian beliefs, but Woods was open about the fact that he does not profess Christianity. Woods sued the homeless ministry after he was not hired for the job.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled against the ministry, but now Chin is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his case and defend the religious freedoms the organization has practiced freely for decades.
“We're hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the Washington Supreme Court and adopt the rule that is prevalent in many other circuits around the country,” says Jake
Warner, an attorney with the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
Chin and Warner join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission is fighting for its right to the free exercise of religion.
Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a couple who adopted two sets of twins on the same day.
Will Stone is a science reporter for NPR. He's been reporting about the pandemic for a while now, so he knows the risks of a breakthrough infection, is vaccinated, and follows COVID guidelines as they change. Nonetheless, he got COVID - and today on the show, Will shares what he learned about his breakthrough infection, and what he wish he'd known before his "mild" case.
Will a ray save the day? It’s inspiring a way to prevent more pollution of our oceans. As sea water enters a manta ray’s large mouth, plankton are captured and other particles are thrown up by whirlpools. Systems are being developed to extract or capture microplastics from water.
Thanks for listening. Get in touch: www.bbcworldservice.com/30animals #30Animals
It's one of the most common and perplexing friend mysteries out there - when friends ghost friends. In this episode of NPR's Invisibilia, they examine a contemporary real-life ghost story to see why we're so haunted. Also, a listener attempts to find the friend who got away. And finally, we offer a new way to think about friendship endings.
