Conservative politicians have taken to the airwaves to tell us to forget the parties, and just look at the economic growth - but is the UK really growing faster than other leading economies?
The Omicron variant has raised the chance that people are re-infected with Covid - how common is that, and should it change the way we read the statistics that are reported each day?
The great statistician Sir David Cox has died; we remember his life and his contribution to the science of counting.
And does comparing the number of food banks to the number of McDonald?s restaurants in the UK tell us anything about food poverty?
America’s community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree―or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion: Student Success in Community College (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), Robin Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them and help them flourish.
Robin Isserles is a professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York.
Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.
The NAACP is urging the Justice Department to bring federal civil rights charges against Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who murdered 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014. Zooming out, it's not uncommon for people to look to the federal justice system when state courts or local law enforcement decline to hold police officers responsible in cases like these. The same avenues were pursued in the case of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who also was killed by police in 2014, though the DOJ has announced it will not reopen an investigation into that shooting.
Later this week, employees at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama will begin voting on whether to unionize their workplace after the National Labor Relations Board concluded that Amazon’s actions disrupted the process the first time around. To get a sense of where things stand, we hear from Reyn McGuire, an employee at the Bessemer facility that has been actively organizing her coworkers.
And in headlines: Putin publicly addresses the Ukraine crisis, NFL quarterback Tom Brady confirmed his retirement, and Native American tribes reach a settlement with opioid manufactures who precipitated a crisis.
The news to know for Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022!
We'll talk about how Americans are bracing for the latest big winter storm: where flights, classes, and work have already been canceled.
Also, even babies could soon be getting Covid-19 shots: what was found in the data just handed over to the FDA.
Plus, a rough day for the NFL: the league is saying goodbye to a legend and getting sued by a former coach, some Teslas are disobeying stop signs, and Punxatawney Phil is ready for Groundhog Day.
It's no secret nowadays that Hollywood stars and directors slant left. But Hollywood wasn't always so woke. Years ago, actors would star in movies celebrating America. So how did we get here?
Christian Toto has the answer.
Toto is founder of the conservative entertainment site HollywoodInToto.com as well as author of the new book "Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul."
He says Hollywood is just another casualty in the left's dominance of American culture.
"It's the same way the culture went woke and lost its soul," Toto explains. "A few studio executives make a few decisions, a few actors realize if they share some woke virtue signaling on social media, they'll get more attention, more positive press. And it goes from there."
Toto joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to tell the story of Hollywood’s turn to the left and what conservatives are doing to push back.
We also cover these stories:
Russian President Vladimir Putin says America has ignored Russia’s concerns over the West’s position on Ukraine.
Senate Democrats release legislation to amend the law governing the counting of Electoral College votes.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says National Guard troops are required to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Cobalt is the most important mineral of the future. It’s a key part of lithium-ion batteries, which power cell phones and laptops, not to mention electric cars. That demand is giving rise to a mining industry in Idaho, which sits atop a giant cobalt deposit. But the environmental costs of extraction raise questions about what “clean energy” really means.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
What do university students in Britain and Trump voters in the United States have in common? They're lonely. In fact, Noreena Hertz says, loneliness is the defining feature of this century, thanks to a host of drivers ranging from the technological to the economic. The Progress Network founder Zachary Karabell joins Noreena, an economist and author of The Lonely Century, as she elucidates whether we're really more lonely than we used to be, what has led, pandemic aside, to our current state of hyper-loneliness, and which solutions—individual, governmental, and entrepreneurial—she thinks are the best bet for reconnecting us.
We are such stuff as griefs are made on, and our little play is rounded with some swelling music. We're discussing the rest of Station Eleven, and what it says about our relationship to the past.
Author Imani Perry is a child of the South. In her newest book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, she gives the reader a look at the South's complicated history, interwoven with her own personal anecdotes. Even though the South has a difficult history, Perry contends, it provides important context for America today. Perry told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that in order to write this book she had to stop romanticizing the place she calls home – and, instead, look at it starkly.
In part 2 of our special Lunar New Years episode Mia is joined by JN and Jane once again to talk about the difficultly of maintaining Chinese leftist principles in broader left organizing spaces and also whether we should rt year of the tiger art before the Lunar New Year
