It's easy to overlook the soil beneath our feet, or to think of it as just dirt to be cleaned up. But soil wraps the world in an envelope of life: It grows our food, regulates our climate, and makes our planet habitable. "What stands between life and lifelessness on our planet Earth is this thin layer of soil that exists on the Earth's surface," says Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil scientist at the University of California-Merced.
Just ... don't call it dirt.
"I don't like the D-word," Berhe says. Berhe says soil is precious, taking millennia to regenerate. And with about a third of the world's soil degraded, according to a UN estimate, it's also at risk. Prof. Berhe, who is also serving as Director of the U. S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Science, marks World Soil Day by telling Aaron Scott about the hidden majesty of soil and why it's crucial to tackling the climate crisis.
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NPR's Book of the Day - ‘How to Stand Up to a Dictator’ dissects how disinformation can kill democracies
Journalist and Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa thinks the world is facing a sort of World War III – especially as it relates to information. Her new book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, details the relationship between trust, truth and democracy, and how social media's pull to inflammatory falsehoods can threaten that delicate balance. In this episode, she tells NPR's Scott Simon how the Philippines have become "a testing ground for attacks against America," and how investigative reporting on the matter is worth the risks it poses.
It Could Happen Here - New York Antifascists Confront the Far Right
Robert sits down with two New York City Antifascists to talk about the strategy behind different actions to counter far right organizing in the city.
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Will talks to Ross Grooters, co-chair of Railroad Workers United, Deven Mantz of BMWED Teamsters, and Jonah Furman of Labor Notes about the tentative agreement being forced on railroad workers, the demands of the unions, and where organizing goes from here.
Visit www.railroadworkersunited.org to support the union.
Audio Poem of the Day - Like a Real Flame
By Melissa Broder
Motley Fool Money - Indra Nooyi on Leadership, Culture, and Steve Jobs
During her 12-year run as CEO of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi helped the company grow sales by 80%. Despite her success as one of the most powerful women in business, she's happy to be out of the world of “bits and bytes.” Motley Fool co-founder and CEO Tom Gardner caught up with Nooyi to discuss: - Other CEOs she's learned from - Building a culture of ownership - Decision-making as an art and a science
Companies mentioned: PEP, AAPL, AMZN, PFE
Indra Nooyi's best-selling book is "My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future".
Host: Tom Gardner Guest: Indra Nooyi Producer: Ricky Mulvey Engineers: Heather Horton, Dan Boyd
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Unexpected Elements - COVID spreads in China
Hong Kong health expert Professor Malik Peiris relates the lessons from the devastation there earlier this year.
UK virologist Dr Tom Peacock reveals the unusual origins and evolution of omicron, and explains the risks of dangerous new variants.
New studies from China are revealing further SARS-like viruses in the wild; Professor Eddie Holmes says they underline the risk of further pandemics.
What are the clouds like where you are? When you look upwards can you see great tufts of cotton wool, or do they stretch off into the distance, flat like sheets. Are they dark greys and purples, bringing the promise of rain or maybe there aren’t any at all. For listener John from Lincolnshire in the UK clouds looking up at the clouds is a favourite pastime and he wants to know why they look the way they do and why they are so different from one day to the next.
Join Presenter Marnie Chesterton as we turn our gaze skyward to discover what gives clouds their shape. Join us for a cloud spotting mission with Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the cloud appreciation society as he helps us de-code the shapes across the sky to reveal what they can tell us about our atmosphere. Dr Claire Vincent at the University of Melbourne introduces us to one of the superstars of the cloud world, Hector the Convector to explain where thunderstorms come from. And we learn how people like you can help NASA to understand the clouds better with Marilé Colón Robles project scientist at the GLOBE programme.
(Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
CoinDesk Podcast Network - BREAKDOWN: Bitcoin and Opting Out of the IMF & World Bank
How the IMF and World Bank funnel resources from poor countries to rich ones.
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Circle and Kraken.
On today’s “Long Reads Sunday,” NLW reads Alex Gladstein’s Twitter version of his new essay "Structural Adjustment: How the IMF and World Bank Repress Poor Countries and Funnel Their Resources to Rich Ones."
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Nexo is a security-first platform where you can buy, exchange and borrow against your crypto. The company ensures the safety of your funds and keeps innovating with products like the Nexo Wallet - a non-custodial smart wallet that allows you to create your Web3 identity. Get early access at nexo.io/wallet.
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Circle, the sole issuer of the trusted and reliable stablecoin USDC, is our sponsor for today’s show. USDC is a fast, cost-effective solution for global payments at internet speeds. Learn how businesses are taking advantage of these opportunities at Circle’s USDC Hub for Businesses.
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Kraken, the secure, trusted digital asset exchange, is our sponsor for today's show. Kraken makes it easy to instantly buy 185+ cryptocurrencies with fast, flexible funding options. Your account is covered by regular Proof of Reserves audits, industry-leading security and award-winning Client Engagement, available 24/7. Sign up and trade today at kraken.com/breakdown.
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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsors today is "Back To The End" by Strength To Last. Image credit: sharply_done/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.
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Everything Everywhere Daily - The History of Credit Cards (Encore)
One of the most ubiquitous forms of payment today is credit cards. The odds are good that you have one, and most probably have one on your person right now.
But how did it come about that you could pay for something by just giving someone a piece of plastic and who exactly came up with this idea?
Learn more about credit cards, where they came from and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Subscribe to the podcast!
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Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen
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NBN Book of the Day - Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, “Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt” (Harvard UP, 2021)
It didn't always take thirty years to pay off the cost of a bachelor's degree.
In Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (Harvard UP, 2021), Elizabeth Tandy Shermer untangles the history that brought us here and discovers that the story of skyrocketing college debt is not merely one of good intentions gone wrong. In fact, the federal student loan program was never supposed to make college affordable.
The earliest federal proposals for college affordability sought to replace tuition with taxpayer funding of institutions. But Southern whites feared that lower costs would undermine segregation, Catholic colleges objected to state support of secular institutions, professors worried that federal dollars would come with regulations hindering academic freedom, and elite-university presidents recoiled at the idea of mass higher education. Cold War congressional fights eventually made access more important than affordability. Rather than freeing colleges from their dependence on tuition, the government created a loan instrument that made college accessible in the short term but even costlier in the long term by charging an interest penalty only to needy students. In the mid-1960s, as bankers wavered over the prospect of uncollected debt, Congress backstopped the loans, provoking runaway inflation in college tuition and resulting in immense lender profits.
Today 45 million Americans owe more than $1.5 trillion in college debt, with the burdens falling disproportionately on borrowers of color, particularly women. Reformers, meanwhile, have been frustrated by colleges and lenders too rich and powerful to contain. Indentured Students makes clear that these are not unforeseen consequences. The federal student loan system is working as designed.
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer has written about labor, politics, and education for the Washington Post, HuffPost, and Dissent. Author of Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics, she is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago.
Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly.
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