Burying the dead in San Francisco has long been banned, but at the Presidio pet cemetery hundreds of dogs, cats, fish, iguanas, and turtles have been laid to rest. This week, Bay Curious Intern Ana De Almeida Amaral takes us to the Presidio to learn about the history of the pet cemetery and to ask "Can I bury my pet here?"
This story was reported by Ana De Almeida Amaral. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, and Ana De Almeida Amaral. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Holly Kernan, and the whole KQED family.
A constellation of islands, reefs and rock-piles has been the source of disputes for decades. As a new phase in the conflict begins, how to calm things down? In the first of a series of first-person dispatches, we speak to a student in Gaza (09:50). And after a conservation success story, Europe’s wolves are again villains in the popular imagination (18:19).
It would have been unthinkable for Brianna Wu to have appeared on Honestly a decade ago (if the show had existed back then). But Brianna isn’t most people. I actually can’t think of anyone else quite like her.
She’s a trans woman who advocates passionately for trans healthcare, but thinks many trans activists have alienated women and feminists. She’s a progressive who once called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “one of the best politicians in America,” but is today a staunch supporter of Israel. She was cyber-attacked by an alt-right mob during Gamergate, but now thinks the political left acts just like that mob.
Brianna says her politics haven’t actually changed. Instead, it’s the Democratic Party that has morphed. And she says they’ve become unelectable. But Brianna is not sitting idly by while it runs itself into the ground. She wants Democrats to get back to common sense, kitchen table issues, which is why she’s launched a political action committee and is fundraising big time in the 2024 election cycle.
At The Free Press we cover a lot of people whose politics have shifted over the past few years. But very few have experienced that evolution in public in the way that Brianna has. On today’s episode, Brianna tells us how Gamergate changed her life, the story of her political evolution, why she is a staunch supporter of Israel, and a critic of niche left causes, and what Democrats risk if they continue to alienate voters.
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On Wednesday, a WIRED exclusive revealed that one of J.D. Vance’s financial policy advisers has posted a lot on Reddit about illicit substances. Given Vance’s hard stance on drugs, WIRED’s Tim Marchman and Makena Kelly join Leah to discuss why it matters that a member of his staff seems to have been using them.
Leah Feiger is @LeahFeiger. Makena Kelly is @kellymakena. Tim Marchman is @timmarchman. Write to us at politicslab@WIRED.com. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.
Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are now underway to restrict what ideas can be promoted and discussed in university classrooms. Professors at public universities have long assumed that their freedom to teach is unassailable and that there were firm constitutional protections shielding them from political interventions. Those assumptions might always have been more hopeful than sound. A battle over the control of the university classroom is now brewing, and the courts will be called upon to establish clearer guidelines as to what – if any – limits legislatures might have in dictating what is taught in public universities.
In You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms(Polity Press, 2024), Keith Whittington argues that the First Amendment imposes meaningful limits on how government officials can restrict the ideas discussed on university campuses. In clear and accessible prose, he illuminates the legal status of academic freedom in the United States and shows how existing constitutional doctrine can be deployed to protect unbridled free inquiry.
We'll tell you how Harris and Trump are looking to capture the support of undecided voters, with less than 20 days to go until Election Day.
And what to know about a record settlement, likely ending a quarter-century of lawsuits against the most populous archdiocese in the U.S.
Also, what we know so far about the death of a former member of the group ‘One Direction.’
Plus, why three major tech companies are now investing in nuclear energy, which high-end fashion brand helped with NASA’s first redesigned spacesuit in four decades, and the first-ever Kindle with color is here.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
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