Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks. “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.
SpaceX is capping off a busy 2024, with more than 100 rocket launches, including its vaunted Starship. NPR Science Correspondent Geoff Brumfiel attended the November launch of Starship alongside SpaceX founder Elon Musk and president-elect Donald Trump. He spoke with NPR's Short Wave about the environmental impact of these launches in south Texas — and what a second Trump administration could mean for the company.
Lexy Bloom first read Haruki Murakami in the '90s, when she picked up A Wild Sheep Chase. At that point, not much of the Japanese author's work had been published in English. But Bloom often read his stories in The New Yorker, trying to guess which of his three translators had worked on each one. Bloom, who is now a senior editor at Knopf, began to edit Murakami's English translations years later, starting with 1Q84. Now, Murakami has a new novel out, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, a revision of an earlier novella. In today's episode, Bloom joins NPR's Andrew Limbong for a discussion that touches on what it's like to collaborate with Murakami, feminist critiques of the author's female characters, and reading the author's work through a Western lens.
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Paris Marx is joined by Cam Wilson to discuss Australia’s plan to ban under-16s from social media, the interests driving it, and whether it’s the right approach to tackle the harms of those platforms.
Cam Wilson is associate editor at Crikey.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
During his first administration, Donald Trump tried naming Kash Patel as deputy director of the FBI, but members of the administration pushed back. Now with the second administration filled with loyalists, Trump has named Patel as his pick for FBI director. What does Trump see in this guy?
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.
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Is Biden on tilt? Nate and Maria analyze the Hunter Biden pardon and try to find the line between false equivalence and equivalence. Then, inspired by the president’s present, they offer some thoughts on game-theory optimal gift giving for the holiday season.
By the way, Nate and Maria will be hosting a poker meet up at the Bellagio next week! 12pm PST on 12/11 at the Bellagio poker room in Las Vegas. RSVP to attend
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Mia and Gare discuss why South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol's recent half-baked coup attempt failed in less than 4 hours and how South Koreans defeated it.
The search is on for a suspect who gunned down the CEO of United Health Care outside a New York City hotel. Supreme Court hears arguments on Tennessee's transgender health care ban. Defense Secretary designee Pete Hegseth continues making rounds on Capitol Hill as sources tell CBS News that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a potential Secretary of Defense pick as "very real." CBS News Correspondent Jennifer Keiper with tonight's World News Roundup.
