January 2025 – Page 75

January 15, 2025

Short Wave - Some Dinos Had Feathers. Did They Fly?

When you picture a dinosaur, what does it look like? For Jingmai O'Connor, paleobiologist and associate curator of reptiles at the Field Museum of Chicago, the dinosaurs she studies look a lot more like birds.

"If you looked at an artist's reconstruction of something like Velociraptor or Microraptor ... you would see that it pretty much looks the same as a bird," Jingmai says. "In terms of the plumage, the soft tissues covering the body, it would have looked very, very birdlike."

In this episode, Short Wave delves into the dinosaur-avian connection. Which dinosaurs had feathers? Were they using them to fly? And once and for all – what are those ancient dinosaurs' relationship to birds today?

Have other dinosaur questions you want us to unravel? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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January 15, 2025

Planet Money - The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

(Note: This episode originally ran in 2018.)

Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of them alike?

In the 1940s, if you were flying from New York City to London or Paris you would find yourself making a pit stop for fuel on the western coast of Ireland. The Shannon airport at the time wasn't much to look at, but the passengers arriving there were movie stars and celebrities, basically the super rich. And the people of Shannon realized pretty quickly that they needed to upgrade the local amenities for their wealthy clientele. They hired a man named Brendan O'Regan to make it happen. Being the quick-thinking entrepreneur that he was, O'Regan convinced the Irish government to create a tax loophole. And thus, duty free stores were born.

Today on the show, we follow the surprising origin of duty free, and try to answer the question: Are they really saving you any money?

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January 15, 2025

The Indicator from Planet Money - The race to produce lithium

Lithium is one of the hot commodities of the 21st century: needed for electric vehicles, semiconductors needed for AI, and grid-scale batteries. While the U.S. was once a pioneer in lithium production, it's fallen off — with others, including China, taking the reins. On our third and final episode of our grid battery series, we look at the race to produce the key ingredient in most of these batteries.

Related episodes:
How batteries are already changing the grid (Apple / Spotify)
How EV batteries tore apart Michigan (Update) (Apple / Spotify)
The surprising leader in EVs (Apple / Spotify)
How China became solar royalty (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

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January 15, 2025

NPR's Book of the Day - Kate Kennedy’s ‘Cello’ is part memoir, part musical detective story

A new book from writer, BBC broadcaster and cellist Kate Kennedy tackles the stories of four cellists connected by a mutual musical obsession. Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound focuses on musicians like Lise Cristiani, the first female professional cello soloist, and Pál Hermann, a Jewish-Hungarian cellist captured by the Gestapo during World War II. In today's episode, Kennedy speaks with NPR's Daniel Estrin – also a cellist – about these musicians' histories and her own complicated relationship with her instrument.

To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday

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January 15, 2025

Ologies with Alie Ward - Ethnocynology (HUMANS & DOGS THROUGH TIME) with David Ian Howe

Ancient dogs! Domestic wolves! Anthropology! Archaeology! It’s all Ethnocynology: when humans and dogs started living and working together. The wonderful and iconic David Ian Howe is an educator and professional archaeologist whose focus is canines and people. So let’s curl up and be cute – like dogs – as we listen about breed histories, what evidence we have for doggies being friends, how wolves tamed themselves, why our relationships with canines make us what we are, talking dogs, if it’s fair it ask your dog to love you back, corn paws, and why your dog is trying to make fetch happen.

Visit David’s website and his podcasts, The David Ian Howe Show & Ethnocynology with David Ian Howe

Follow David on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Patreon and Bluesky

A donation went to the Native American Humane Society

What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Does Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 Report Matter?

How did an investigation into an effort to violently overturn a US presidential election end up coming out as a whimper, well after it could have carried any weight or legal repercussions?

Guest: Jay Willis, editor-in-chief at Balls and Strikes.

Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.

Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.

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January 15, 2025

Engines of Our Ingenuity - The Engines of Our Ingenuity 2770: Building the Mustang

Episode: 2770 Developing the P-51 Mustang fighter. Today, our guest, NASA engineer Fitz Walker, remembers the P-51 Mustang.

January 15, 2025

Amarica's Constitution - Looking Forward, Looking Back

As Inauguration Day approaches, anxiety and uncertainty, even dread, mixes with the optimism of some in the American polity. Many express a mix of apathy, weariness, or hopelessness, with a sentiment akin to “wake me in four years.” What would they find when awakened? We begin to take a look ahead, in part by looking behind and evaluating how our own earlier prognostications have turned out. We start with abortion and the Dobbs case, as it loomed large in recent years and clearly continues to reverberate and feeds resentment on one side, activism on the other. What lies ahead for the law, the Court, and the people? CLE credit is available for lawyers and judges at podcast.njsba.com.

January 15, 2025

It Could Happen Here - From Anti-Satanic Crusaders to Congresswoman: Tracing an Anti-Trans Harassment Campaign

Mia talks with LA trans artist Precious Child about how she was the target of a series of anti-trans harassment campaigns against her art culminating in Congresswoman Nancy Mace censoring her work.

https://preciouschild.com

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January 15, 2025

Everything Everywhere Daily - Chasing the Impossible: The Enigma of Perpetual Motion (Encore)

Imagine a device that could supply an unlimited amount of energy. It would solve many of the world’s problems in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, such a device is impossible to build, but that hasn’t stopped people throughout history from trying.

In fact, to this very day, people still claim that they have created perpetual motion machines, and they keep getting proven wrong.

Learn more about perpetual motion machines, or the lack thereof, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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