my private podcast channel
Part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on President Trump released overnight. Pete Hegseth confirmation hearings. Fears CA wildfires could spread. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hannes Lenke was born in East Germany. He started tinkering with computers at an early age, and became interested in making games at the age of 10. Once the browsers came out, he quickly dove into the world of web development. He also has a background in trading stocks, which he started when he was 14, along with software development consulting for enterprise. Outside of tech, he's married with 2 daughters. He lives in a small town close to Berlin, and enjoys running, rowing, and cooking out on his grill.
In 2010, Hannes founded a startup centered around testing. Post exit, he noticed that more and more businesses were using end to end testing... AND, the world was changing toward devops and observability. He decided that a new tool needed to be made along the lines of synthetic monitoring.
This is the creation story of Checkly.
Sponsors
Links
Though central banks have cut interest rates, uncertainty about the future has sent yields sky-high. Our correspondent explains why expectations diverge from the economic data, and the impact on borrowers. Donald Trump’s desire to control Greenland using economic or military force provoked outrage. But could America buy the country (9:01)? And why Singapore’s iconic hawker centres are under threat (17:41).
Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+
For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.
Alabama
National
In this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Hanson, author of “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation,” explores the systematic failures plaguing Los Angeles as it attempts to put out devastating wildfires. From diversity, equity, and inclusion dilemmas to regulatory failures, see how this extreme ideology impacts good governance.
“We have a $700,000-a-year utilities czar in Los Angeles, and she cannot explain why there was not enough water, at least in a convincing way—because she's never had to, because she was ideologically correct.”
“You have an assistant fire chief who said, ‘If women can't—if I can't carry out a man [from a burning building], then that's not on me. It's the man who shouldn't be there.’ It's like saying if a child fell down a well and I'm not physically strong enough to retrieve him and save him, that's his fault. He shouldn't have been in the well.”
“In the Los Angeles catastrophe, there are whole areas of imperial inquiry that are put off limits. You cannot talk about the homeless and whether there was a homeless person who was out in the hills, [and] to get warm, lighted a fire. It's a legitimate topic of inquiry. It's happened. You can't talk about.”
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Trump’s inauguration is right around the corner, and there is so much to cover about the new White House. In the coming weeks, we’ll have key figures in the Trump administration on Honestly to talk about what they are planning.
But, we all know that if Trump 2.0 is anything like Trump 1.0, there are going to be a lot of twists and turns here. And we want to analyze and break down each development that unfolds in Trump’s new administration.
Starting today and for the next few months, we’re going to bring you weekly episodes with two of my favorite guests: Batya Ungar-Sargon and Brianna Wu.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is a Free Press contributor and the opinion editor at Newsweek. Brianna Wu is a Democratic fundraiser and activist, and in her past life, a video game developer. If you’ve heard them together on Honestly before, you know that these two come from different sides of the political spectrum, but we really value hearing both of their perspectives, even—or especially—when they disagree. We think you will too.
Today, we’re going to cover the L.A. fires and their political implications, the civil war inside the MAGA movement between the nationalist populists and the free marketers over H-1B visas, and Mark Zuckerberg’s red pill moment and changes at Meta—and the pair give us their predictions for confirmation hearings beginning this week.
If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.
Go to groundnews.com/Honestly to get 50% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock worldwide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Forty years ago, Schengen - a wine-making village at the tripoint border of Luxembourg, France, and Germany - made European history when diplomats from these countries, Belgium, and the Netherlands struck a deal to scale back their mutual border checks.
"The event at Schengen went unnoticed by much of the European press," writes Isaac Stanley-Becker in Europe Without Borders: A History (Princeton University Press, 2025). Yet, as one of its signatories said much later, the Schengen agreement "changed everything" - accelerating the development of the European single market and currency area.
Today, however, Schengen is under threat as its now-29 members struggle to balance the free movement of people against the demands of cross-border policing, immigration control, and political consent. In September 2024, the German government - rattled by surging support for the nativist AFD in the run-up to a federal election - reinstated border controls with its four Schengen founders, prompting threats of retaliation. Could Schengen face, as Stanley-Becker warns, "death by a thousand cuts"?
Isaac Stanley-Becker is an investigative reporter at the Washington Post - part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024 for a series exploring the role of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in American life. A graduate of Yale, he went on to complete a PhD in History at Oxford in 2019. Europe Without Borders is his first book.
*The author's book recommendations were East West Street: On The Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016) and The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton, 2019).
Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes and podcasts on Substack at 242.news.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
Around a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks are headed to Capitol Hill this week to appear for their Senate confirmation hearings. The big one to watch today is the hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, military veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who’s facing allegations of excessive drinking, financial mismanagement, and sexual assault. Hegseth’s confirmation hearings could be a litmus test for some of Trump’s other problematic picks. Burgess Everett, Congressional bureau chief for Semafor, talks about what we can expect from the coming confirmation hearings.
And in headlines: House Speaker Mike Johnson said federal aid for wildfire recovery in Southern California could be tied to a debt limit increase, the Supreme Court ruled the city of Honolulu can move forward with a major lawsuit to hold oil companies accountable for climate change, and President Joe Biden said negotiators are “on the brink” of a ceasefire agreement to end the war between Israel and Hamas.
Show Notes: