There are three types of economics-minded people in Donald Trump’s incoming administration. We ask whether they are likely to collaborate or to compete. Tourism clearly adds to emissions, but new numbers show just how fast that fraction is rising (9:58). And the next in our The World Ahead series reveals a familiar planetary phenomenon that will disappear in 2025 (17:07).
Happy New Year! This week, the Unexpected Elements team is reflecting on 2024 and looking forward to 2025 for renewed chances to spot the northern lights while they're at their peak visibility in this current solar cycle, and we recap on cellular regeneration advancements and regulations in embryonic stem cell models.
We chat to Professor Rene Oudmaijer from the Royal Observatory of Belgium who explains that stars also renew themselves... and this process is key to our lovely planet (and ourselves) existing!
We also learn all about the potential of bogs and wetlands in the fight against climate change from Professor Christian Dunn of Bangor University.
With another amazing year behind us, we reminisce about our favourite stories and listener correspondences in 2024.
And finally, we’re wowed by the regenerative ‘superpowers’ of the magnificent axolotl who has the cellular capabilities to re-grow limbs!
That, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenters: Marnie Chesterton and Caroline Steel
Producers: Harrison Lewis, Imaan Moin and William Hornbrook
Sound Engineer: Duncan Hannant
Today on Getting Hammered, we’re discussing the New Orleans attack, the Las Vegas attack, and the fallout from these events. We also have a correction about Jimmy Carter and a quick shoutout to Whitney Cummings. Don’t miss it!
Shakespeare Unlearned: Pedantry, Nonsense, and the Philology of Stupidity(Oxford UP, 2024) dances along the borderline of sense and nonsense in early modern texts, revealing overlooked opportunities for understanding and shared community in words and ideas that might in the past have been considered too silly to matter much for serious scholarship. Each chapter pursues a self-knowing, gently ironic study of the lexicon and scripting of words and acts related to what has been called 'stupidity' in work by Shakespeare and other authors. Each centers significant, often comic situations that emerge -- on stage, in print, and in the critical and editorial tradition pertaining to the period -- when rigorous scholars and teachers meet language, characters, or plotlines that exceed, and at times entirely undermine, the goals and premises of scholarly rigor. Each suggests that a framing of putative 'stupidity' pursued through lexicography, editorial glossing, literary criticism, and pedagogical practice can help us put Shakespeare and semantically obscure historical literature more generally to new communal ends. Words such as 'baffle' in Twelfth Night or 'twangling' and 'jingling' in The Tempest, and characters such as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Holofernes the pedant, might in the past have been considered unworthy of critical attention -- too light or obvious to matter much for our understanding of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Adam Zucker's meditation on the limits of learnedness and the opportunities presented by a philology of stupidity argues otherwise.
Adam Zucker is a faculty member in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches courses on Shakespeare and other 16th and 17th Century authors. In addition to Shakespeare Unlearned (Oxford University Press, 2024), he is the author of The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-editor of essay collections Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theater (Routledge, 2015); and Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Adam lives in Northampton, MA with his family, where he plays loud twangling instruments in the bands Outro, Bring It to Bear, The Young Old, and The Father Figures.
We'll bring you the latest details about two deadly attacks: a mass killing in New Orleans and an explosion in Las Vegas. Despite a lot of similarities, authorities don't believe they're connected.
Also, we're talking about high drama in South Korea as authorities try to arrest the president.
Plus, we'll cover another reversal for net neutrality, an update on the first congestion tolls in the United States, and how being boring has become cool.
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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Part of a Crusader castle collapsed. An 18th century minaret toppled. Church mosaics burned. Israeli airstrikes have damaged priceless antiquities across Lebanon & Syria during it's war with Hezbollah. With a ceasefire now in place, archaeologists are trying to assess damage to UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We visit some.
(encore) Snowflakes. These intricate, whimsical crystals are a staple of magical wintry scenes, but how big can they really get? Well, according to the Guinness World Record keepers, the "largest snowflake" ever recorded was a whopping 15 inches in diameter. It was spotted near Missoula, Montana in 1887. But Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at Caltech, has long been skeptical of that record. So he set out to find what makes a snowflake a snowflake and whether that 1887 record is scientifically possible. You can read more about what he discovered here.
Want to share the snowflakes you've spotted this winter? Email us a photo at shortwave@npr.org.
On this edition of Indicators of the Week, we discuss the economic legacy of former President, Jimmy Carter. Today on the show, we detail some of his top accomplishments from empowering the Federal Reserve's aggressive approach to inflation, deregulation of major industries and his push for cost saving energy measures that we still feel to this day.
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
