There’s a phrase that’s common among those in the theater industry: You can’t make a living, but you can make a killing.
Jill Furman is a theatrical producer and winner of multiple Tony awards. She’s part of the team that brought breakout successes “Hamilton” and “In The Heights” to Broadway. Mary Long caught up with Jill for a conversation about:
- Pitching investors to back shows even when 80% of projects don’t recoup their initial investment.
- Working on original projects versus those based on existing stories.
- The formula for commercially successful musicals.
News Items: Demographics of Misinformation, The Toll of Fake Research, Dangerous Street Drugs, Nearby Habitable Zone Exoplanet, Reverse Engineering Alien Technology<"br>Who's That Noisy; Science Quiz; Your Questions and E-mails: Starlink Reentries; Science or Fiction
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeals to Europe for support as President Trump changes U.S. foreign policy. A tumultuous week at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. More details about the Jan. 29 aerial crash near Washington, D.C.
How a plea to fly a dog to the US ended in marriage. Adri Pendleton and Niklas Stöterau fell in love after he came to the rescue. Also: a son who's saved his dad's life, twice; and helping the homeless through tennis.
Matt Luongo from Thesis helps us “wrap” our heads around what it means to take your bitcoin cross-chain. What are the trust assumptions? What are the differences between different wrapped Bitcoin products? Is there any “funny business” going on?
Notes:
• New users are coming to ETFs
• Microstrategy vs cross-chain Bitcoin
• TVL mirroring
• BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin vs other wrapped Bitcoin
Check out our Bitcoin scaling conference! Visit opnext.dev to learn more.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:03 What is Wrapped Bitcoin
05:12 Bitcoin Layers and Bridging
10:30 Trust Assumptions in Wrapped Bitcoin
14:14 Proof of Reserves vs. Solvency
19:02 The Scale of Wrapped Bitcoin
25:12 Soft Forks and Bitcoin’s Future
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👋Bitcoin Season 2 is produced Blockspace Media, Bitcoin’s first B2B publication in Bitcoin. Follow us on Twitter and check out our newsletter for the best information in Bitcoin mining, Ordinals and tech!
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What is the purpose of schools? Most people would say to teach children to meet their potential and to prepare them for the world. But in her new book “Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism,” Chicago author and sociologist Eve Ewing presents readers with an exhaustively researched history of how U.S. schools have been a place where separation and inequality have been enshrined by design. Reset checks in with Ewing to explore the role of schools in America and a better way forward.
For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.
Europe’s largest and deadliest war since 1945 needs to come to an end, argues Victor Davis Hanson in this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”
As rumors of peace talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine spread, Hanson talks shop about the likely outcomes and why President Donald Trump is the only one who can end Europe’s bloodiest war since World War II:
“What did Donald Trump do when he came in? He started giving offensive weapons to Ukraine. He killed 300 to 400 of the Wagner Group in Syria. Nobody had ever done that in the Cold War, killed that many Russians. He got out of an asymmetrical missile deal. He sanctioned the oligarchs at a higher level. He started flooding the world with cheap oil that could bankrupt Russia. He was the best friend that Ukraine ever had.”
Many people assume that the first introduction of Christianity to the Chinese was part of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. In fact, Syriac-speaking Christians brought the gospel along the Silk Road into China in the seventh century. Glen L. Thompson introduces readers to the fascinating history of this early Eastern church, referred to as Jingjiao, or the “Luminous Teaching.”
Thompson presents the history of the Persian church’s mission to China with rigor and clarity. While Christianity remained a minority and “foreign” religion in the Middle Kingdom, it nonetheless attracted adherents among indigenous Chinese and received imperial approval during the Tang Dynasty. Though it was later suppressed alongside Buddhism, it resurfaced in China and Mongolia in the twelfth century. Thompson also discusses how the modern unearthing of Chinese Christian texts has stirred controversy over the meaning of Jingjiao to recent missionary efforts in China.
In an accessible style, Thompson guides readers through primary sources as well as up-to-date scholarship. As the most recent and balanced survey on the topic available in English, Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China(Eerdmans, 2024) will be an indispensable resource for students of global Christianity and missiology.
Glen L. Thompson is professor emeritus of New Testament and historical theology at Asia Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong. He has retired to Milwaukee, where he researches, works with students, and expands his Fourth-Century Christianity website.
New Books in Syriac Studies is presented by Kristian Heal.
What's the latest in love? For Valentine’s Day weekend, we’re talking about dating app trends, the impact of AI, the role of politics, and more on dating and relationships, both online and in real life.
Celebrity dating coach Damona Hoffman joins us to share data and advice.
Join us again for our 10-minute daily news roundups every Mon-Fri!
