Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on 5/6 counts. Andrew takes us through it, as well as how the BBC made an absolutely colossal blunder in inviting Alan Dershowitz on to comment. Then, we go through an update on the Trump lawsuit over documents. It's headed to the Supreme Court!
Both our interviews today deal with the pressures we put on ourselves. First, Olympic runner Alexi Pappas on her memoir, Bravey. On the outside, Pappas was living what looked like a great life; she was breaking Greek Olympic records and her movie got a distribution deal. But, she told NPR's Ari Shapiro, she was still deeply sad. Next, an interview from early in the pandemic when women were disproportionately feeling the burden of our new reality. Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, told former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that "every woman on earth needs to lower her expectations for herself."
In 2011, influential Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was secretly detained by Chinese authorities.
While in detention, he thought often about his father – who had also been punished by the Chinese government – and how incomplete his understanding of his father was.
Ai spoke to Ailsa Chang about his new book, which explores his time in detention, his relationship with his father, and his attempt to avoid a similar disconnect with his own son.
In our first programme of the year, we gathered a group of scientific experts directly involved in analysing the structure and impact of the SARS- Cov-2 coronavirus. There were concerns over the emergence of two new variants, Alpha and Beta, especially whether these variants might spread more quickly, or outmanoeuvre the suite of new vaccines that were about to be rolled out.
Now the same questions are being asked about the Omicron variant’s ability to spread and overcome our defences.
We’ve invited the same scientists back to give us their assessment of our journey with Covid-19 over the past year, and discuss their findings on Omicron.
The programme features:
Ravi Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Cambridge
Tulio de Oliveira, Professor of Bioinformatics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Dr Allie Greaney from the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Washington School of Medicine
Professor Jeremy Luban from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Julian Siddle
Image: Local residents queue to receive a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in Parkhurst, Johannesburg (Credit: Luca Sola/AFP via Getty Images)
What exactly is China doing on the African continent? How can we best interpret near-death experiences? Why did one listener happen to come across a ghostly episode of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know on the radio? All this and more in this week's listener mail.
Though the podcast hosts have chosen nothing from the year 2021 to highlight as the best holiday fare of 2021, we nevertheless have some timeless seasonal recommendations for you to check out.
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is found guilty of sex trafficking. A COVID explosion ahead of New Year's. President Biden and Russia's Vladmir Putin are set to discuss Ukraine. Correspondent Peter King has the CBS World News Roundup for Thursday, December 30, 2021:
It's easy to imagine trade is entire countries making big decisions. As Scott Lincicome and Alex Nowrasteh explain, it's individuals making millions of small decisions to benefit themselves through voluntary exchange. Curtailing trade violates that liberty. They spoke at the 2021 Cato Club event.