A new Israeli military offensive in north Gaza has humanitarian organizations raising the alarm over the threat of starvation. Vice President Kamala Harris is on a push to shore up support among Black men. And a new feature on the real estate website Zillow will show potential property buyers climate risks on listings.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Hannah Bloch, Roberta Rampton, Janaya Williams, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Paige Waterhouse, Nia Dumas and Kaity Kline. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.
A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that Vice President Harris is proposing loans for Black entrepreneurs. In fact, the proposed loans would go to Black entrepreneurs and others.
Our correspondent sits down with Keir Starmer on the sidelines of a conference dedicated to drawing much-needed investment. We examine the prime minister’s pitch to investors. All the connections within the fruit fly’s brain have now been mapped out; we ask what that means for the human kind (11:44). And the chatbots that are surprisingly successful at dissuading conspiracy theorists (17:46).
Vishal Agarwal was born in India, and did his schooling in Darjeeling. He noted that this city exports some of the best tea in the world! Prior to his current venture, he was the chief marketing officer for Choxi. Outside of tech, he is an avid tennis lover and follows cricket and basketball closely. Though, he admits, now that he has a 2.5 year old child, his time is mostly dedicated to him.
In attempting to solve the problem of "splitting the check", Vishal discovered that restaurants had a real problem with having multiple tablets for the many order and delivery services - like GrubHub, DoorDash, etc. When he saw this problem proliferate, he validated that people were willing to pay for a solution.
It's Spooky Season! Just in time for your Halloween playlists Danny and Tyler are here to offer some delightfully spooky songs. This week we discuss... "Vampire Girl" by Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale "The Rubber Room" by Porter Wagoner and "Water Witch" by The Secret Sisters and Brandi Carlile
We'll be back next week with more spooky, creepy, and spine-chilling country songs!
A few weeks ago, we had Sarah Longwell and David French, two prominent conservatives, on Honestly to explain why they’re supporting Vice President Kamala Harris this presidential election.
There are a lot of people like them—conservatives who are so staunchly never Trump that they are supporting the Democratic candidate. What’s less common—or, at least, less talked about—are the Democrats who are voting for Donald Trump. Maybe there are fewer Democrats crossing the aisle to vote for Trump in 2024, but I’d guess that there are more who are just not willing to speak up because of the stigma.
Today, we are talking with three people, all of whom have spent their lives identifying as liberal or progressive and are voting for Trump this year—and are loud and proud about it.
Shaun Maguire is a partner at the VC fund Sequoia Capital and has previously started five companies himself. In 2016, he said he was terrified of Trump winning and actively supported Hillary Clinton. But this year, Shaun gave Trump $300,000, saying he believes that “the Biden administration has had some of the worst foreign policy in decades.”
Maud Maron is a lifelong progressive. She’s dedicated her career to those causes. She was a Planned Parenthood escort and worked for Kathleen Cleaver, the former Black Panther and professor, who called Maud her “excellent research assistant.” She worked for many years as a public defender at The Legal Aid Society until she was canceled by the organization for “wrong think.” Maud ran for NYC’s City Council in 2021 and then for Congress in 2022 as a moderate Democrat. She says she’s no longer a Democrat and will vote Republican for the first time in a presidential election because of, among other things, the Democratic Party’s fixation on race over merit.
Shabbos Kestenbaum is a recent graduate of Harvard, who’s currently suing his alma mater for its failure to combat antisemitism. He says he disagrees with former president Trump on most issues, but on the most important ones, he’s in lockstep with him. Shabbos supported Bernie Sanders and Jamaal Bowman in the past, but has moved right because he has seen firsthand how the excesses on the left have impacted college campuses—and particularly Jewish students—for the worst.
There are a lot of people who are deeply dissatisfied with the options in this year’s presidential race, and are planning to write in someone on that line of their ballot. Shaun, Maud, and Shabbos are not doing that. They’ve gone the full 180 and are supporting the candidate they once hated. Why?
On today’s episode, how these three former Democrats got so disaffected with their party, how they grapple with the antisemitism on the right, how they contend with Trump’s questionable character, how they square Trump and J.D. Vance’s comments on Ukraine with their hawkish foreign policy views, and much, much more.
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Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality--where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world--is terrible news for democracies and citizens.
In The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton UP, 2024), Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies--from social media to artificial intelligence--have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies. To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can--and must--resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world.
Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world--and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late.
We'll tell you about dueling events on the campaign trail this week, from the battleground state of Pennsylvania to the airwaves of Fox News.
And why FEMA workers had to pause some hurricane recovery efforts in North Carolina.
Plus, why ten million pounds of meat have been recalled, what to expect from a new NASA mission looking for signs of life near Jupiter, and which American zoo is about to accept two new giant pandas on their way now.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
Join us every Mon-Fri for more daily news roundups!
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Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are working hard to earn the support of a key voting bloc this election: union voters. While most major unions have kept up the tradition of backing Democrats by endorsing Harris, two of the country’s biggest unions — the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters — opted not to endorse either candidate, citing internal divisions among their ranks. April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, joins us to talk about why her union endorsed Harris, and what’s driving divisions within unions.
And in headlines: Georgia’s Republican secretary of state says local officials are prepared to fight election misinformation, A Nevada man says he’ll sue a California county sheriff who accused him of plotting to assassinate Trump, and NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s ocean moon.