Month: September 2021

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What A Day - Bring It On Holmes

Yesterday marked the beginning of the federal criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos. She and her former boyfriend Sunny Balwani were charged with about a dozen counts that include wire fraud for lying to investors as well as patients about what Theranos technology could actually do. 

The weekly pediatric coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpassed 250,000 this week for the first time since the pandemic began. The uptick in young people testing positive comes during Back to School week for many, and that is NOT a good sign.

And in headlines: the Biden administration announced its plan to expand the use of solar energy, LAPD officers have been instructed to record the social media information of any civilian they stop, and Starbucks is reportedly trying to stop a unionization effort.


Show Notes:

Wall Street Journal: “Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes’s Trial: Prosecutors Must Show Intent” – https://on.wsj.com/3toFZqh

Politico: “Get vaccinated or else: Colleges roll out new punishments for holdouts” – https://politi.co/3toVvSY

See Steve from Blue’s Clues’s heart-felt message for the show’s 25th anniversary – https://bit.ly/3l4pjjX


For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

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The Daily Signal - Recalling Governors: A History of Voters Who Had Enough

Voters in 20 states have the option of tossing their governor out of office before the end of his or her term.


Still, since 1921, gubernatorial recalls have made it to the ballot in only three states—North Dakota, California, and Wisconsin. However, recalling local officials and state legislators has been more common.


The concept of recalling politicians commonly is thought of as part of the progressive movement of the early 20th century. But the debate over recall goes back much further, and states do it differently.


"Some have what's called a political recall law, like California, like Wisconsin, like Arizona, where you could do it for whatever reason you want to," Joshua Spivak, an authority on recall elections, says. "Other states have a very severe limit and those states ... rarely have recalls or have many fewer recalls, and then have almost none on the state level."


Spivak, senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss the history of recall elections just days before California holds another one. Spivak is the author of a new book on the topic, "Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom."


We also cover these stories:

  • America is on track to default on the national debt if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling by mid-October, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns. 
  • Top Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee express concern over the fate of Americans and Afghan allies stranded in Afghanistan.
  • Workers remove a large statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy.


Enjoy the show!


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Tech Won't Save Us - The Creation of a Black Cyberculture w/ André Brock

Paris Marx is joined by André Brock to discuss the history of Black people’s online activity, the internet’s association with whiteness, and what Black Twitter can tell us about the centrality of Black people to digital culture.

André Brock is an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech. He writes on Western technoculture, Black technoculture, and digital media. His award-winning book, Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, theorizes Black everyday lives mediated by networked digital technologies. You can get if from NYU Press, and it’s available through open access. Follow André on Twitter at @DocDre.

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Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

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Short Wave - For Successful Wildfire Prevention, Look To The Southeast

Another destructive fire season has Western states searching for ways to prevent it. As climate correspondent Lauren Sommer reports, some answers might lie in the Southeastern U.S. The region leads the country in setting controlled fires — burns to clear vegetation that becomes the fuel for extreme fires.

Read more of Lauren's reporting on wildfire prevention.
(https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1029821831/to-stop-extreme-wildfires-california-is-learning-from-florida)

And check out our previous episode on cultural burns here.
(https://www.npr.org/2021/07/21/1018886770/managing-wildfire-through-cultural-burns)

Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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It Could Happen Here - The Religious Right’s War on Abortion

Eve Ettinger and Kieryn Darkwater comes on to discuss the (short) history of the evangelical fight against abortion access and birth control.

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This Machine Kills - 99. 9/11 20th Anniversary: Move Fast and Leave Things Broken (ft. Kelsey D. Atherton)

It’s the Never Forget Extravaganza! We’re joined by military tech journalist Kelsey D. Atherton to breach the memory hole of forever war and consider the invasions and occupations, technologies and tactics, abroad and at home, that have defined the post-9/11 era. This is part one of our conversation with Kelsey. Part two – and TMK’s 100th episode – will drop on the Patreon feed on 9/11. We set the scene by casting our minds back to the beginning of the Global War on Terror – then provide something like a bestiary of vehicles, weapons, and surveillance systems – then explore the deep and decades long entanglement between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, along with all the demonic initials like the CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, ICE – then wrap it up with a broader analysis of the forever war machine: how we got here, why it was overdetermined, and what comes next. Follow Kelsey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD Subscribe to Kelsey on Substack: https://athertonkd.substack.com/ Some stuff we reference: • These machines were supposed to help win the war in Afghanistan. What happened? | Kelsey D. Atherton: popsci.com/technology/timeline-us-airborne-tools-of-war-afghanistan/ • This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban | Eileen Guo and Hikmat Noori: technologyreview.com/2021/08/30/1033941/afghanistan-biometric-databases-us-military-40-data-points/ • The Global Garage | Will Meyer: thebaffler.com/latest/the-global-garage-meyer • The MRAP Story: Learning from History | Stephen W. Miller: asianmilitaryreview.com/2018/10/the-mrap-story-learning-from-history/ • Algorithmic War: Everyday Geographies of the War on Terror | Louise Amoore: sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00655.x Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)
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Honestly with Bari Weiss - Courage in the Face of Book Burners

Abigail Shrier is a lawyer, a reporter and author of Irreversible Damage. One way to describe her book would be: controversial. She has been accused of spreading misinformation by GLAAD. A prominent ACLU lawyer called for her book to be banned. A favorable review of the book in Science-Based Medicine ignited an online mob, which led to the journal disappearing that first review and replacing it with a negative one. Amazon and Target have also been pressured to stop carrying Shrier's book.


But it hasn’t worked. Despite being ignored by outlets like the New York Times Book Review, Irreversible Damage is an enormous bestseller. Some readers felt so passionately about this book that they took out billboards advertising it on their own dime.


Both the subject that Abigail writes about and the treatment of her book deserve your attention.

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Consider This from NPR - Delta Surge Slows Recovery As Parts Of Pandemic Safety Net Disappear

Last week's jobs report for the month of August show signs the delta surge is slowing the economic recovery, just as some pandemic safety net programs disappear. The Supreme Court recently struck down a federal eviction moratorium, and supplemental pandemic unemployment benefits expired on Monday.

NPR's chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley explains what that could mean for the pace of the recovery.

With a federal eviction ban no longer in effect, renters could tap into billions of dollars in federal rental assistance authorized by Congress. But there's a problem: states have been slow to get that money into programs that can distribute it to tenants and landlords. NPR's Laurel Wamsley reports on one effort to speed things up in Tennessee.

Additional reporting in this episode from NPR's Chris Arnold, who's been covering evictions during the pandemic.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

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A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - Episode 132: “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops

Episode one hundred and thirty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops, and is part two of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Colours” by Donovan.

Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/

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