Introducing the newest thing in higher (and we really mean higher — like look UP) education: The Flying Pig Academy. A dream of The Village Square (with support from Florida Humanities) for many years, it’s finally aloft. The division in American society is big and seems impossible at times to address.
The first, second and third rule? Like buying a house: location, location, location OR local local local.
This is easier to fix than you thought.
The Village Square is a proud member of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
Funding for this podcast was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
A look at the roots of the difficult relationship between President Trump and President Zelenskyy. DOGE says its saved taxpayers billions of dollars. How do these claims stack up against the evidence? And Hamas returns the bodies of four Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack.
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Dana Farrington, Padmananda Rama, Didi Schanche, Reena Advani and Janaya Williams. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Our Executive Producer is Kelley Dickens.
Jason Schappert grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His Mom and Dad were always working together, and never had jobs. Jason's first job was working for his parents pest control company, where he crafted his understanding of what success looked like. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids, and is very into all of their sports. Fun fact, his kids enjoy doing their homeschooling in the office with their Dad, listening to calls and asking big questions - so business is actually what they do for fun.
For 16 years, Jason grew and ran a business in aviation. After a successful exit, he and his wife Magda were considering what to do next. She quickly remembered all of the things Jason did behind the scenes to setup their personal finances for success, in the midst of a chaotic startup life.
In which we celebrate the post-Valentine's season by looking back at the sleazy 1970s when adult films briefly became mainstream chic, and Ken avoids a Y2K for his marriage. Certificate #25369.
Whether it's on the apps or in real life it can be hard to meet romantic partners. We explore what it's like to be dating right now in the Bay Area. This episode is brought to you by the team over on KQED's The Bay podcast.
This story was reported by Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz and Christopher Beale, with support this week from Brian Douglas. The Bay episode was produced by Jessica Kariisa and Dana Cronin. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan and the whole KQED family.
Victor Davis Hanson discusses the misleading information about the first 30 days of the Trump administration’s actions, comparing it to FDR’s first hundred days. On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Hanson describes the current period as a “Trump restoration” rather than a revolution, emphasizing it as a counterrevolution against the changes brought by the Obama administration.
“ We don't really appreciate what we've been through with eight years of the Obama revolution and the four-year, more radical third term of Obama using or employing the wax effigy of Joe Biden. A revolution that we've experienced was a cultural, economic, political, social revolution. It was very similar to the French Revolution under the Robespierre brothers. You should remember what they tried to do. They changed the days of the week. They renamed things. They tore down statues. They went after the churches. Does this sound familiar? …
“ So this was a revolutionary movement. Movies were different. Sports were different. Take a knee. And Donald Trump came in and it was not sufficient to say we’re going to stop the madness of $37 billion. … It’s a return to normalcy. It’s a return to common sense. It only looks revolutionary to revolutionaries. But to the rest of the people, it is a counterrevolution to restore normalcy and bring the country from the far-left fringes back home again.”
I’m sure you remember the images of Kfir and Ariel Bibas.
They were just nine months and four years old when they were kidnapped by Hamas along with their mother, Shiri, on October 7, 2023. It was impossible to look at the image of her shielding them, her eyes full of terror, the children clinging to her, and not think of the Holocaust.
For more than 500 days, people around the world prayed for the safe return of these babies. Our hopes were raised on February 1, when the fourth member of the family—Yarden Bibas—was liberated after 484 days in Hamas captivity.
But as this episode goes live, Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri Bibas won’t be returning home alive. Hamas instead will hand over their remains.
How can Israel live alongside an enemy that kidnaps and murders babies? And what does it mean for us to live in a world, where people in the West tore down posters of the Bibas children.
My friend, Commentary magazine senior editor Seth Mandel, explains why in The Free Press:
“In a better world, the faces of the Bibas children would be everywhere at all times. In the world in which we live, by contrast, posters with those faces get torn down from bulletin boards. . . . The crimes against the Bibas family are indeed the symbol of the anti-civilizational menace that is Hamas—but also of the cowardice of the political and cultural leaders of the enlightened West. . . . It is impossible for the rest of us to pretend that we didn’t see a chunk of society, whether in person or online, rush to cross that line and cheer on the people who kidnapped two babies . . . .Kfir became a symbol because he is the answer to every relevant question about this conflict. His case is the war boiled down to its essence. Kfir is the dividing line. In a better world, there’d be no one standing on the wrong side of it.”
Before the devastating news of the Bibas children broke, Bari sat down with Matti Friedman, Free Press correspondent in Jerusalem. They happened to talk on the very day that Kfir and Ariel’s father, Yarden, was released after being kept in unimaginable conditions. Now Yarden confronts the nightmare that his entire family was murdered.
Bari and Matti talk about the toll of this war, why returning the hostages is so fundamentally important to the future of Israel, about the rise of anti-Jewish hate, and about how to be American, Jewish, and Zionist all at the same time, and how Jews are waking up to a new reality in 2025.
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 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.
In the early 20th century, David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and his wife Sydney Bowles had seven children, six girls and one boy.
The sisters all achieved notoriety for entirely different reasons.
They were, how can I say, different from each other. Very different. Several of them found themselves associated with some of the most important individuals of the mid-20th century.
Learn more about the Mitford Sisters and their very different lives on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Africa’s young are educated, ambitious side-hustlers. But they are hampered by their economies and dispirited by their politicians. How to harness their vast potential? America’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is, in a real-world accounting, not actually budging the budget much (8:25). And why Germans take more days off sick than other Europeans do (15:48).
