Have you ever spoken with a spy? How do you use critical thinking to cut past the noise of mass media and propaganda? In today's interview, Ben, Matt and Noel welcome special guest Jordan Harbinger to discuss his incredible adventures in North Korea, his deep-dive conversations with everyone from celebrities to spies and defectors, as well as his approach to critical thinking -- and much, much more. They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.
Nick Lane is a biochemist at UCL and author of Transformer, The Vital Question, and many other amazing books on biology, chemistry, and life. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:45) – Origin of life
(19:31) – Panspermia
(25:05) – What is life?
(38:20) – Photosynthesis
(41:55) – Prokaryotic vs eukaryotic cells
(51:56) – Sex
(59:39) – DNA
(1:06:51) – Violence
(1:17:25) – Human evolution
(1:23:21) – Neanderthals
(1:26:53) – Sensory inputs
(1:37:43) – Consciousness
(2:09:17) – AI and biology
(2:38:36) – Evolution
(2:59:07) – Fermi paradox
(3:12:27) – Cities
(3:20:14) – Depression
(3:22:50) – Writing
(3:30:49) – Advice for young people
(3:37:57) – Earth
Sex work is a broad umbrella that encompasses various forms of labor. Similar to workers in other fields who push for unionization, sex workers often experience unsafe situations, like overpolicing and physical violence. However, sex workers have long been excluded from unions because of the stigma attached to their line of work.
Reset checks in with activists who are working to change the paradigm.
GUESTS: Rebelle Cunt, a writer, activist, and founder and director of Heaux History, a multimedia archive that explores the history of Black, Brown and Indigenous sex workers and erotic labor
Audrey Winn, trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor
Today’s podcast takes up the leak about a highly sensitive document found in the Mar-a-Lago search and the Washington Post’s characterization of it. Then we go after Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters with a rhetorical two-by-four. Give a listen. Source
Today's podcast looks at the politics of the judge's decision to appoint a special master to deal with the documents taken from Donald Trump's home and who will be helped or hurt by that. Plus, can it really be true that Democrats are viewed more favorably on COVID response than Republicans? Give a listen.
There’s a Gold Rush right now happening in Wyoming — for wind. Billionaire developers are putting up wind turbines to help power California and turn the American West, long a place where fossil fuels ruled, into a green energy powerhouse.
But not everyone is happy. Today, we get into the challenges around what’s planned to be the largest wind farm in the country. Read the full transcript here.
Record heat wave stresses California's power grid. Seized Trump documents reportedly include details on a foreign government's nuclear capabilities. Historic vaping settlement. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
This week, Tammy is joined by Debt Collective organizers Ann Larson and Eleni Schirmer to reflect on the movement that won historic relief from student debt.
But first, we remember the great Barbara Ehrenreich, who passed last week. Ehrenreich was an author and activist best known for her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed, a hard-hitting yet beautifully written dive into the low-wage economy.She also made incredible contributions to leftist movements, from DSA to domestic workers, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and In These Times, as well as her often-misunderstood warning about the “professional–managerial class.” And Ann reminds us that Ehrenreich wrote about more than just labor!
In our main segment, we celebrate and dissect a rare victory on the left. Ann and Eleni talk about their personal journeys toward calling b******t on all kinds of debt—and trace Biden’s recent debt-cancellation announcement to its Occupy Wall Street origins and a decade of painstaking organizing. We reflect on the path forged by the Corinthian debt strikers, the public sector’s broader reliance on debt, the “proof of concept” in Biden’s nowhere-near-enough cancellation policy, and the way that framing debt as a shared economic condition opens up new organizing opportunities. (A real-life case study in solidarity on the basis of class!) Plus: how all of us can get involved to make the debt announcement a reality.
Gary Marcus is the author of Rebooting AI and an artificial intelligence entrepreneur who's a loud critic of many of the field's biggest promises. Marcus joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the high profile breakthroughs such as LaMDA and Dall-E, and explain why putting too much faith in the field's ability may be dangerous. We begin with a discussion of the AI-generated art piece that won a competition in Colorado last week.
Our model, built to predict the outcome of this year’s midterm elections, tips Republicans to take the House and Democrats to retain control of the Senate. The model’s architect discusses how and why he built it, and our polling guru explains why polls matter. Why there’s no nuclear-arms race in Asia—yet. And Egypt wants the Rosetta Stone back, but it’s not that simple.
