World Book Club this month talks to the award-winning French writer Maylis de Kerangal about her remarkable and haunting novel Mend the Living.
After a horrific car accident on the Normandy coast surfer Simon Limbeau is rushed to hospital where his devastated parents are later told that he is on life-support, but is brain-dead. His heart, however, is still beating perfectly and could be donated to save someone’s life. They are faced with an agonising choice.
Mend the Living is the story of Simon Limbeau’s heart – and the story of all the lives that are turned upside down in the 24 hours between the accident that cuts short his life and offers hope of new life to another.
(Picture: Maylis de Kerangal. Photo credit: Philippe Quaisse.)
American President Joe Biden has said the war in Afghanistan cost more than $2 trillion. Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic International Studies helps us unpick what?s included in this figure.
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A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.
The Supreme Court's conservative majority allowed a Texas law banning most abortions to go into effect. Almost immediately, abortion providers had to begin turning people away.
NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on the court's interpretation of the Texas law and its controversial enforcement provision, which allows any private citizen to sue someone who helps a person get an abortion — with the plaintiff due $10,000 in damages and court costs.
Kathryn Kolbert, co-founder of the Center for Reproductive Rights, explains how abortion rights activists are responding.
Additional reporting in this episode came from stories by NPR's Wade Goodwyn and Ashley Lopez of member station KUT.
Illinois lawmakers hold a one day session in Springfield where they redraw legislative maps, charge forward with changing energy policy and reject an ethics bill.
Reset goes behind the headlines of the week’s news.
Our connection to the night sky spans cultures and millennia: observing the stars and planets helped our ancestors navigate the world, tell stories about the constellations, and understand our place in the universe. But these days, for the vast majority of us, seeing the stars is getting harder. 80% of people live under light polluted skies, and in many cities you’re lucky to see a handful of stars at night.
This state of affairs is bothering CrowdScience listener and keen stargazer Mo from Salt Lake City in the USA, who wonders if there’s anything we can do about light pollution. Of course, we could simply turn out all the lights, but that’s unrealistic. So what are smarter ways of lighting our communities to preserve our view of the cosmos?
Increasingly worried by the effect of artificial lighting on the ability to observe stars, astronomer Dr Jason Pun set up a series of monitoring stations to continuously measure ‘sky glow’. By comparing sky glow across the world, he wants to figure out which approaches work best.
One community taking an active approach is the South Downs National Park in South East England, one of a number of Dark Sky Reserves around the word. We visit the park and speak to the Dark Skies Officer there, to find out how people are coming together to turn down their lights and keep the night dark.
And it’s not just stargazing that’s threatened by light pollution. Artificial light at night disrupts the circadian rhythms of wildlife. We visit a project in rural Germany looking into the benefits of dark-sky-friendly lighting on insect populations there.
With contributions from Dr Jason Pun, Paulina Villalobos, Dan Oakley, Doug Jones, Dr Sibylle Schroer and Sophia Dehn.
Presented by Anand Jagatia with additional reporting by Felix Franz
The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones Industrial Average have each risen more than 15% so far this year. How should investors feel about the rest of 2021? Which stocks should be on a short leash? What capital allocation strategies should Berkshire-Hathaway and Chipotle be considering? Andy Cross and Jason Moser answer those questions, make business predictions about acquisitions and CEO changes, and share two stocks on their radar: Digital Ocean and PayPal.
Plus, as the trial of Elizabeth Holmes begins we revisit our conversation with Alex Gibney about the rise and fall of Theranos and his documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.
On this special episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at what we learned over the summer and what the fall holds for different parts of the crypto industry and surrounding spaces, including:
The macroeconomic landscape
Regulatory battles
Bitcoin
NFTs
Layer 1 battles
CBDCs and stablecoins
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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 and executive producing by Adam B. Levine. Our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Evgen Zaitsev/iStock/Getty Images Plus, modified by CoinDesk.
