We'll update you on the situation in the Middle East exactly one month after Hamas' brutal attack on Israel.
Also, we're talking about another high-stakes gun rights case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
And it's Election Day! We'll tell you about a few of the statewide races voters will be deciding today.
Plus, a company that was once the most valuable startup is now filing for bankruptcy, there's a new version of ChatGPT, and Taylor Swift turned her past into a more profitable future.
It’s Election Day, with big implications for abortion, democracy, and much more in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. It's also one year out from the 2024 presidential election, and a new set of battleground polls in the New York Times shows Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden just about everywhere. Meanwhile, Trump takes the stand in his civil fraud case while his advisors draw up plans to use the military against protesters if he wins the election. Then, Barack Obama sits down with Jon, Tommy, Dan and Alyssa Mastromonaco for an expansive conversation on democracy, violence in the middle east, and his memories of winning the presidency fifteen years ago.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
Hugo Contreras, the protagonist of Raul Palma's new novel, is a babaláwo; he can cleanse evil spirits. Except he doesn't really believe in the whole thing. So when he's able to strike up a deal with a debt collector – get rid of the ghosts in his house in exchange for a clean slate – he assumes he can mostly fake it. In today's episode, Palma joins NPR's Scott Simon to discuss A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, and how the concept of debt – not just financial, but personal, too – stirs up a lot of trauma for Hugo.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
Beneath starched Shakespearean togas and the pungent fug of gladiator sweat there are real Romans waiting to be discovered. To know what it was to be Roman you need to gather the scattered clues until they form a living, breathing human, witness to the highs and horrors of Europe’s greatest empire.
Mary Beard, Britain’s best-selling historian of the ancient world, rebuilds the lives of six citizens of the Roman Empire, from a slave to an emperor. Her investigations reveal the stressful reality of Roman childhood, the rights of women and rules of migration, but it’s the thoughts and feelings of individual Romans she’s really interested in.
In the bloody chaos of civil war, a young bride witnesses the savage murder of her parents, fights for her inheritance and funds her husband’s flight from the brutal gangsters carving up the empire. On Hadrian’s Wall a Hertfordshire slave girl marries a Syrian trader. Is it a cross-cultural love story or a brutal tale of trafficking and sexual abuse?
An eleven year old boy steps on stage to perform his poetry to a baying crowd of 7000 and the Emperor himself. The political and financial future of his entire family will be decided in the next few stanzas.
Across six episodes Mary Beard travels the Empire and gathers first-hand testimony and expert comment, creating an extraordinarily vivid sense of Being Roman.
In the first episode we meet Marcus Aurelius, the very model of the ideal Roman Emperor. Strong and masculine, but a deep thinker with wise words for every occasion. Richard Harris played him in the film Gladiator as a great leader of men, determined that loyal Russell Crowe inherit the Empire rather than his treacherous son, Joaquin Phoenix.
As Mary discovers, Marcus proves much more complicated- and interesting- than his image in popular culture. Letters to his beloved tutor reveal a naïve, sweet and dangerously flirtatious nature, while his record of campaigning and persecution under his rule shows an Emperor as comfortable with brutal violence as stoic philosophy.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Expert Contributors: Amy Richlin, UCLA and Elizabeth Fentress
Cast: Marcus played by Josh Bryant-Jones and Fronto played by Tyler Cameron
Amanda Holmes reads Pablo Neruda’s “I Explain a Few Things,” translated from the Spanish by Galway Kinnell. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
Chief Foreign Policy correspondent Derek Davison returns to the show for updates on Palestine, including discussion of recent videos of Palestinian arms and tactics, the Biden administration’s response to the war, the potential for further regional conflict, and where the new American focus on Israel leaves Ukraine.
Find Derek’s podcast American Prestige at:
Americanprestigepod.com
And find Derek’s newsletter Foreign Exchanges at:
Foreignexchanges.new
fx.substack.com
Former President Trump on the stand. Israel's military march splits Gaza into two. Abortion access on the ballot. CBS News Correspondent Jennifer Keiper with tonight's World News Roundup.
Soyeon Lee fled North Korea, was caught, was jailed, was beaten, then fled again. We will talk to her, and the documentarian Madeleine Gavin, about the new film Beyond Utopia, which includes surreptitiously recorded video of dangerous escape attempts. Plus, Joe Biden trails Trump everywhere that counts. Is the "people will figure out Trump is worse" strategy the best strategy? And protesters attack a seventeenth-century oil painting, because they hate paintings. No, wait, it's that they hate oil. Both are equally sensible.
Recent polls have some Democrats reverting to bed-wetting, Christie calls out the deplorables, and Scalise is an election-denying weasel. Plus, Biden and Gaza, and the left's support for Hamas. Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday.
Dan Senor joins us to talk about his new book, The Genius of Israel, co-written with Saul Singer, and why its portrait of the war-torn country—finished long before the war—offers an explanation for the country's extraordinarily cohesive response to the October 7 attack and shows Israel its own way forward to victory. Give a listen.
