New York City police used force overnight to zip-tie the hands of dozens of Columbia University student protesters and haul them away in buses, clearing the encampment two weeks after tents first popped up. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in Israel to pressing for more aid to Palestinians in Gaza — and a hostage deal. And Florida's six-week abortion ban takes effect today — with exceptions only in rare circumstances.
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Today's episode of Up First was edited by Kevin Drew, Vincent Ni, Acacia Squires, Lisa Thomson and Ben Adler. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Lilly Quiroz. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.
Here's a thought experiment: You want to spend a reasonably large sum of money providing assistance to a group of people with limited means. There's a lot of ways you might do that with a lot of strings and safeguards involved, but what about just giving them money -- "get cash directly into the hands of the poor in the cheapest, most efficient way possible." You and I might prefer that, since we, of course, are reputable people and good stewards and understand our own particular needs. But what about, well, others?
Economist Tavneet Suri has done more than just think about that; her fieldwork includes handing out money across villages in two rural areas in Kenya to see what happens. Her experiments include giving out a lump sum of cash and also spreading out that same amount over time. The results she details for host David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast are, to be frank, heartening, although the mechanisms of disbursement definitely affect the outcomes.
Despite the good news, the idea of a universal basic income is by no means a settled remedy for helping the poor. For one thing, Suri says, "it's super, super expensive. It’s really expensive. And so, the question is, “Is that expense worth it?” And to understand that I think we need a few more years of understanding the benefits, understanding what people do with the incomes, understanding whether this can really kickstart these households out of poverty."
And perhaps the biggest question is whether the results of fieldwork in Kenya is generalizable. "I would love to do a study that replicates this in the West," she says. "The one thing about the West that I think is worth saying that's different is you wouldn't add it on top of existing programs. The idea is you would substitute existing programs with this. And that to me is the question: if you substituted it, what would happen?"
Suri is the Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. She is an editor at the Review of Economics and Statistics; co-chair of the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, known as J-PAL, at MIT; co-chair of the Digital Identification and Finance Initiative at J-PAL Africa; a member of the executive committee at J-PAL; and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Today, we're breaking down the latest college campus protests, the frivolity of the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and reviewing what Americans find sexiest in men's style. Tune in!
No matter what you're doing right now – sitting, standing, walking – you're moving. First, because Earth is spinning around on its axis. This rotation is the reason we have days. Second, because Earth and other planets in our solar system are orbiting the sun. That's why we have years. Third, you're moving because the sun and the rest of our solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy at over 500,000 miles per hour. If all of that isn't nauseating enough, everything in the entire universe is expanding outward. All the time.
But in the 1970s, astrophysicists noticed something strange about our galactic neighborhood, or Local Group. The whole clump of neighboring galaxies was being pulled off course at over one million miles per hour, towards something we couldn't see — the "Great Attractor." This Great Attractor sits in the "Zone of Avoidance," an area of space that is blocked from view by the stars and gas of the Milky Way. Today on the show, host Regina G. Barber talks to astrophysicist Jorge Moreno about this mysterious phenomenon: What it might be and what will happen when we eventually reach it.
Curious about other cosmic mysteries? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
On this episode, we’ll hear a book panel discussion on Timur Kuran’s book, Freedoms Delayed: Political Legacies of Islamic Law in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2023). In his comments, Timur provides an overview of his book, highlighting the Middle East's struggle with repressiveness, the challenges of fostering a liberal civil society, and the historical role of Islamic legal institutions. The panel is moderated by Peter J. Boettke, and they are joined on the panel by:
Mark Koyama,* Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center, and co-author of How the World Became Rich (2022) and Persecution and Toleration (2019).
James Robinson, Professor of Political Science at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, The Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies, Institute Director at the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, and he has numerous books including The Narrow Corridor (2019) and Why Nations Fail (2013).
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Virtual Sentiments, our new podcast series from the Hayek Program is now streaming! Subscribe today and listen to season two, now releasing!
Sen. Roger Marshall was one of only 15 Republican senators who voted against sending an additional $60 billion to Ukraine for its war against Russia.
“One of my jobs is to prioritize where we're spending the money,” Marshall says. “And I'm telling you, until we secure the border, I don't think we should be spending any money outside of this country, let alone on what I'm describing as really Ukraine's … never-ending war.”
The Senate passed the foreign aid package, which totaled $95 billion and included aid for Israel and Taiwan, on April 23.
Marshall says that six times he “brought to the Senate floor stand-alone funding for Israel—the opportunity to fund just Israel, to take these issues one at a time. Six times the Democrats blocked that opportunity.”
“The Democrats used Israel as leverage to get their votes for Ukraine,” the Kansas senator said.
Marshall joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what America’s relationship with Ukraine should look like over the course of the next year. The senator also addresses the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests on America’s university campuses and what similarities can be drawn between these protests and the anti-war protests at colleges in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the modern age of warfare, what does it mean for Americans to enter the armed forces? Zachary and Emma speak with veteran and author Phil Klay about the disconnect many people who serve in our current wars feel when they return back home, as well as the lack of understanding that American civilians have toward the complexities of these conflicts. Yet the military remains a major factor in the government’s budget and in Americans' patriotic pride. This discussion leads to questions about the morals of modern warfare and the care the nation owes to the veterans who have provided their service and the allies who have assisted in our efforts.