Just one week after President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman set out to execute one of the most audacious plans of the US Civil War.
His plan involved violating several central tenants of warfare which had been established for thousands of years, yet in the process, he helped bring the war to a swift conclusion.
In hindsight, many people consider what he did to have been a war crime.
Learn more about Sherman’s March to the Sea and how it affected the outcome of the US Civil War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
How long are people really waiting when they call 999 for an ambulance? Tim Harford and the team examine in detail the sheer scale of delays in responding to emergency calls. We also ask why the NHS is facing a crisis when it?s got more funding and more staff than before the pandemic, with the help of Ben Zaranko from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Plus we fact check a claim from one of Britain?s leading teaching unions about pay. And are there more pubs in Ireland or Irish pubs in the rest of the world?
Presenter: Tim Harford
Series producer: Jon Bithrey
Reporters: Josephine Casserly, Nathan Gower, Paul Connolly
Sonic Landscape: James Beard
Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross
Editor: Richard Vadon
Lights! Cameras! Arachnids! And lizards and bees and beetles. Macro photography is like magic: curved glass gives an entirely new take on the world, from dust on a cricket’s brow to a curious mantid stare to the elegant symmetry of spider whiskers. Joseph Saunders is an Oklahoma-based wildlife photographer whose larger-than-life photos of bugs and reptiles will make you realize just how little we appreciate the creatures on our window sills and skittering up our porches. We talk shop about cameras, bug hunts, lenses, patience, Moth Week, BlackAFinSTEM, and also getting into nature with different mobility concerns. Alie is a shameless, rabid fan of Joseph and asked Patrons to help concoct an -ology to describe the art + science of his macro photography. Aperiology now exists to describe the tiny aperture used to keep these creatures in focus, and the huge world it opens up to us.
We have been ruled long enough. It is time to govern ourselves. If we are to get past the Constitution and all systems based on constitutions, we need to move past the nation state as the means by which we are governed from above.
Written by 55 of the richest white men of early America, and signed by only 39 of them, the constitution is the sacred text of American nationalism. Popular perceptions of it are mired in idolatry, myth, and misinformation - many Americans have opinions on the constitution but have no idea what’s in it.
The misplaced faith of social movements in the constitution as a framework for achieving justice actually obstructs social change - incessant lengthy election cycles, staggered terms, and legislative sessions have kept social movements trapped in a redundant loop. This stymies progress on issues like labor rights, public health, and climate change, projecting the American people and the rest of the world towards destruction.
Robert Ovetz’s reading of the constitution shows that the system isn’t broken. Far from it. It works as it was designed.
From the introduction:
‘The Framers genius was in designing a virtually unchangeable system that provides the people with a semblance of participation and allows a few to select some representatives while the rest of us relinquish the power to self-govern. How and why they did that, why it still functions in that same way, and why we need to move past it is the focus of this book.’
Professor Ovetz is a senior lecturer in political science and public administration at San Jose State University and a lecturer in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His first book, When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1924, was published in 2018 by Brill/Haymarket Books. His second book was an edited volume in 2020 entitled, Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives also published by Pluto Press.
Sydney Business School at Shanghai University - can be reached at keith.krueger1@uts.edu.au or keithNBn@gmail.com
When soccer journalist Grant Wahl died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm during the World Cup, his wife Dr. Céline Gounder was bombarded by messages from online trolls saying that she killed her husband with the COVID vaccine. She decided to fight those trolls. Andy speaks with Céline about the five most common moves in the vaccine disinformation playbook, how artificial intelligence could make things worse, and the emotional toll of protecting her husband’s legacy.
Keep up with Andy on Post and Twitter and Post @ASlavitt.
Find vaccines, masks, testing, treatments, and other resources in your community: https://www.covid.gov/
Order Andy’s book, “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response”: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the U.S. is on track to hit its debt ceiling by Thursday. The federal government has never defaulted on its debt, but House Republicans say they won’t lift the ceiling without spending cuts or other concessions.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reinstated coveted committee assignments to far-right members of his party – including Reps Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. Both lawmakers were booted off their respective panels in the last Congress over controversial posts they made on social media.
And in headlines: a jury was seated in a case brought by Tesla shareholders against Elon Musk, China’s population dropped for the first time in decades, and climate activist Greta Thunberg was briefly detained during a protest in Germany.
Show Notes:
Mother Jones: Sinema and Manchin High-Five Over Refusing to Reform the Filibuster In a Room Full of the Richest People on Earth – https://tinyurl.com/2xunjbjh
Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffee
The Food and Drug Administration has permanently changed its restrictions on abortion drugs. Following an official rule change in early January, women no longer need to see a doctor in person to be prescribed chemical abortion pills. The move, according to OB-GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop, is opening women up to the “Wild West” of abortion.
“With all the removal of the restrictions by the FDA, it is the Wild West,” Skop, a senior fellow and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, says. “We know there have already been documented cases of women much further along than 10 weeks who've been provided abortion pills by the boyfriend or the father of the baby who did not want her to be pregnant.”
Abortion pills are only authorized to be used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, but Skop says there “have been cases of 31-, 33-week infants being delivered because [the abortion pills will in] many cases not kill the baby, but it'll induce labor because of the misoprostol.”
Skop joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why the FDA has approved the mail-order abortions for women and is now allowing pharmacies to fill prescriptions for abortion pills.
