I see London, I see France, I see Shohei Ohtani’s underpants. This week, the MLB kicked off Spring Training with brand new see-through uniforms — yes, you read that right.
But it’s not just MLB players’ clothing that’s seemingly crappier, the uniform change is another story in a long line of corporate decisions that have made the clothing we wear worse and worse with each passing year. Max and Erin get to the bottom of how fashion got so fast, telling the story of a little Spanish retailer named Zara that changed the way we shop and a big, bad bogeyman (hint: it’s private equity) that stepped in to accelerate the decline of clothing quality.
On the "CBS News Weekend Roundup", host Allison Keyes hears from CBS's Nancy Cordes about former president Trump's and President Biden's dueling visits to the border amid growing immigration concerns. We'll get the latest on that massive, deadly wildfire in Texas. In the "Kaleidoscope with Allison Keyes" segment, a discussion about a new study on how the abortion landscape in the nation has changed since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Classical Archaeologist and TV host Dr. Darius Arya is back for a smologized version of this classic episode to dish about priceless garbage piles, pottery graveyards, tomb discoveries, what's under European cities, ancient spa days, ingenious construction methods, and unlikely laundry techniques. Plus, what did ancient romans use before toilet paper - and perhaps more importantly, WHY??
It was a wild week at the High Court (another seven days crammed with a year’s worth of news). SCOTUS heard cases about bump stocks, and how Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would do as Facebook content moderators. The Supreme Court also finally found the time to put a thumb on the scale for serially indicted alleged insurrector-in-chief former President Donald J Trump. We’ll talk about all those things with Slate’s very own Mark Joseph Stern.
But what we’re really focused on this week is the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent decision finding that frozen embryos are children, and the unshakeable sense that the coverage of this so far has had a slightly myopic quality, as though this case is purely about IVF, and carving out IVF, when in fact the entire movement for fetal personhood sweeps in many more people and rights than just those seeking assisted reproductive technology. We’re joined by a preeminent expert on matters of law, medicine, reproductive health, and biotechnologies, Dr. Michele Goodwin. Dr. Goodwin is the author of Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood. She explains (again) why we should have seen this decision coming from miles (and centuries) away.
Want more Amicus? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock exclusive SCOTUS analysis and weekly extended episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.
Later, in the Slate Plus segment, Mark returns to discuss this week’s SCOTUS arguments and the big news that legislative turtle and legal hellscape architect Mitch McConnell will be stepping down from his role as leader of Republicans in the Senate later this year.
As running races get longer, the gap between male and female competitors seems to close. Tim Harford and Lucy Proctor investigate the claim that when the race is 195 miles long, women overtake men to become the fastest runners.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Lucy Proctor
Producers: Nathan Gower and Debbie Richford
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Sound Mix: Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
(Image:Male and female running together up a mountain trail. Credit: nattrass via Getty)
First we chat about the very dumb debacle with Google’s Gemini AI being “absurdly woke,” when in reality the story here is that they were extremely naive and lazy about how to solve the structural biases of white visual culture. Then we get deeper into Nvidia’s major stock rally after blowing away all expectations with their latest financial reportings – and what this means for the political economy of technology, both AI specifically and the sector broadly.
••• A Sign That Spells: DALL-E 2, Invisual Images and The Racial Politics of Feature Space https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.06323
••• The Deeper Problem With Google’s Racially Diverse Nazis https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/google-gemini-diverse-nazis/677575/
••• Now Google's 'absurdly woke' Gemini AI refuses to condemn pedophilia as wrong - after being blasted over 'diverse' but historically inaccurate images https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13122189/Googles-absurdly-woke-Gemini-AI-refuses-condemn-pedophilia.html
••• AI boom catapults Nvidia into tech’s big league https://www.ft.com/content/1f8b317d-fcce-4f5b-9e54-8315e102ec10
••• What Bubble? Nvidia Profits Are Rising Even More Than Its Stock https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-26/hedge-funds-unload-tech-stocks-after-going-all-in-before-nvidia
••• The AI craze has companies even 'more overvalued' than during the 1990s dot-com bubble, economist says https://qz.com/ai-stocks-nvidia-overvalued-dot-com-bubble-1851287271
••• Nvidia's $2 trillion market cap looks bubbly https://www.axios.com/2024/02/23/nvidia-valuation-chipmakers-trillion
Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills
Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.
You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today!
Texas wildfire becomes largest in state history, the Smoke House Creek Fire Wildfire may have destroyed as many as 500 structures in the Texas Panhandle. Biden says US military to airdrop food and supplies into Gaza.
It's Indicators of the Week, our weekly look under the hood of the global economy! Today on the show: Tyler Perry halts his film studio expansion plans because of AI, Wendy's communications about a new pricing board goes haywire and a key inflation measure falls.
Related episodes: Listener Questions: the 30-year fixed mortgage, upgrade auctions, PCE inflation (Apple / Spotify) AI creates, transforms and destroys... jobs (Apple / Spotify) The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines (Apple / Spotify) The Birth And Death Of The Price Tag
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
It is so expensive to have a kid in the United States. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries worldwide with no federal paid parental leave; it offers functionally no public childcare (and private childcare is wildly expensive); and women can expect their pay to take a hit after becoming a parent. (Incidentally, men's wages tend to rise after becoming fathers.)
But outside the U.S., many countries desperately want kids to be born inside their borders. One reason? Many countries are facing a looming problem in their population demographics: they have a ton of aging workers, fewer working-age people paying taxes, and not enough new babies being born to become future workers and taxpayers. And some countries are throwing money at the problem, offering parents generous benefits, even including straight-up cash for kids.
So if the U.S. makes it very hard to have kids, but other countries are willing to pay you for having them....maybe you can see the opportunity here. Very economic, and very pregnant, host Mary Childs did. Which is why she went benefits shopping around the world. Between Sweden, Singapore, South Korea, Estonia, and Canada, who will offer her the best deal for her pregnancy?
