Dozens of air strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen were designed to show American resolve without themselves provoking a deeper conflict. We ask what happens next. Philanthropists are increasingly doing things differently: handing over the cash and getting out of the way (11:01). And cuteness has wriggled into every facet of culture—and along the way became a serious subject of study (18:47).
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The trade in opium formed a backdrop to Amitav Ghosh’s best-selling novels, The Ibis Trilogy. In his latest work of non-fiction, Smoke and Ashes, he investigates the impact of that trade on Britain, India and China, and follows the money that was made by some of America’s most powerful and well-respected families. He reveals how the poppy plant enabled the financial survival of Empire and proved catastrophic for Indian farmers and Chinese users.
In the 21st century Afghanistan became the biggest grower of poppies, producing more than 80% of the world's opium. The former soldier, Richard Brittan, set up the company Alcis, to provide an accurate picture of what’s going on on the ground in Afghanistan by using satellite imagery. As well as tracking the workings of the drugs trade, he explains the impact of the Taliban ban on poppy cultivation in 2023.
Professor Fiona Measham, Chair in Criminology at Liverpool University, explains that one of the effects of the disruption to the opium trade has been a large increase in the number of synthetic opiates – fentanyl and nitazenes – filling the vacuum. China has become the centre for the wider development of synthetic drugs that emulate plant-based street drugs, but are much stronger and potentially lethal. The charity The Loop, set up by Measham, is instrumental in checking drugs to better understand what is being sold on the streets.
Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Dr. Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing how an ancient editorial technique became a universally recognized component of narrative art and a means to register the sensation of time.
In The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2023) Dr. Dames begins with the textual compilations of the Roman world, where chapters evolved as a tool to organise information. He goes on to discuss the earliest divisional systems of the Gospels and the segmentation of mediaeval romances, describing how the chapter took on new purpose when applied to narrative texts and how narrative segmentation gave rise to a host of aesthetic techniques. Dr. Dames shares engaging and in-depth readings of influential figures, from Sterne, Goethe, Tolstoy, and Dickens to George Eliot, Machado de Assis, B. S. Johnson, Agnès Varda, Uwe Johnson, Jennifer Egan, and László Krasznahorkai. He illuminates the sometimes tacit, sometimes dramatic ways in which the chapter became a kind of reckoning with time and a quiet but persistent feature of modernity.
Ranging from ancient tablets and scrolls to contemporary fiction and film, The Chapter provides a compelling, elegantly written history of a familiar compositional mode that readers often take for granted and offers a new theory of how this versatile means of dividing narrative sculpts our experience of time.
T
his interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose
forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Located in the area between philosophy and mathematics is the realm of logic.
Logic permeates everything we do, from the work of Socrates to modern computer programming to the musings of Mister Spock.
However, there is more to logic than just making sense and avoiding fallacies. It can also be a highly formal system using symbols and variables to represent statements.
Learn more about formal logic, its ancient roots, and its modern applications on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
We'll tell you how the U.S. has started retaliating against militia groups in the Middle East.
And we'll lay out the details of a new bill that includes some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has considered in years.
Also, what's expected from a rare severe storm impacting millions of people across California?
Plus, we're talking about the booming business of beauty products for kids, alternative health strategies going mainstream, and several highlights from last night's Grammy Awards.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis admitted to having a personal relationship with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she hired to handle the election interference case against Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the federal case against Trump is being delayed. And the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on Thursday deciding whether he can be left off the ballot in Colorado for his role in the January 6th insurrection.
Police in the city of Dearborn, Michigan were on high alert this weekend after an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal called the city “America’s Jihad Capital.” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said on Saturday that he was ramping up police presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points. President Joe Biden even weighed in on Sunday in a post on X, writing, “Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong.”
And in headlines: Senators released the long-awaited $118 billion border deal and foreign aid package, President Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary over the weekend, and more than a hundred people have been killed by the wildfires raging in Chile’s Pacific Coast.
In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, releasing radioactive material into northern Ukraine and Belarus. It was the most serious nuclear accident in history. Over one hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area. But local gray wolves never left — and their population has grown over the years. It's seven times denser than populations in protected lands elsewhere in Belarus. This fact has led scientists to wonder whether the wolves are genetically either resistant or resilient to cancer — or if the wolves are simply thriving because humans aren't interfering with them.
This episode, researchers Shane Campbell-Staton and Cara Love talk through what might be causing this population boom. Plus, why researchers in the field of human cancer are eager to collaborate with them.
Want to hear about other ways humans are impacting the planet? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
What’s that model wearing? Uggs. The sheepskin boot brand’s sales have surged to an all-time high — Because nostalgia follows a 20-year life cycle.
It’s Facebook’s 20th birthday and Zuck’s baby just had its best week ever — Meta stock is up 5x in the last 14 months because of Meta’s metamorphosis: From people to profit.
And a new study just discovered the type of packaging that sells the best — Because it’s what’s on the “inside” that counts, but what’s on the “outside” that sells.
Donald Trump was, if nothing else, a boon for the news business. But this election cycle, even the “Trump bump” isn’t slowing the shrinking of the audience.
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