In a Manhattan restaurant, the narrator of Audition meets a young man for lunch. Everyone has a different understanding of the pair's relationship, including the narrator herself. Katie Kitamura says she got the idea for the story after coming across a headline that said, "a stranger told me he was my son." That headline turned into the premise for her latest novel, which experiments with the idea of contradictions to destabilizing effect. In today's episode, Kitamura joins NPR's Ari Shapiro for a conversation about her decision to cut the book in half. They also discuss other media that's split into two parts – like the films Vertigo and Shoplifters – and Shapiro shares his interpretation of the novel.
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What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Will HHS Survive RFK Jr?
At his first press conference as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. gave a glimpse of what the department will look like under his leadership: a smaller overall budget, relitigating settled scientific questions.
Guest: Kiera Butler, senior editor and reporter at Mother Jones and author of Raise: What 4-H Teaches Seven Million Kids and How Its Lessons Could Change Food and Farming Forever.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther.
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This Machine Kills - 403. Perpetual Slop Machine
It’s slop world, baby! We get into how the internet has become choked by artificial intelligence systems focused on the endless production, circulation, and consumption of slop and shit. This is driven by the continual capture and recapture of deep fried forms of value, instead of actually producing anything new or useful. This leads to an internet that is hostile to human existence—where people are unwelcomed and unnecessary. We trace the degradation of the internet from information superhighway to hostile architecture to abandoned infrastructure.
••• Welcome to slop world: how the hostile internet is driving us crazy https://www.ft.com/content/5d06bbb4-0034-493b-8b0d-5c0ab74bedef
••• AI hype is drowning in slopaganda https://www.ft.com/content/24218775-57b1-4e9f-ba64-266a3239cf27
Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s new book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills
Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)
Chapo Trap House - 929 – Given feat. Alex Nichols (4/28/25)
Fighter jets are just falling off the back of our aircraft carriers now in yet another Keystone Kops-ass bungle in the Red Sea. Gerry Connolly announces he’ll step down from the oversight committee in another moment of glory for the funeral home waiting room of Democratic leadership. Will reads us a profile of a new up-and-coming conservative influencer so annoying it drives Felix to the brink of rage-quitting. Alex Nichols returns to the pod to discuss these stories and more on today’s program.
We are putting a limited number of overstock copies of ¡No Pasarán! Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War next Wednesday, April 30th at 8am Pacific Time at: https://chapotraphouse.store/
Engines of Our Ingenuity - The Engines of Our Ingenuity 2579: Music and Mathematics
Episode: 2579 Music and Mathematics. Today, UH Math Professor Krešo Josić talks about music and mathematics.
The Stack Overflow Podcast - “We’re not replacing you; we’re with you”: Where AI meets infrastructure
The Geminus platform is built to automatically integrate data, physics, and computation for autonomous control of complex systems. Explore the platform or get in touch.
Find Greg on LinkedIn.
Read Me a Poem - “Pin Pricks of Loneliness” by Etheridge Knight
Amanda Holmes reads Etheridge Knight’s “Pin Pricks of Loneliness.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
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It Could Happen Here - Cosmopolitanism feat. Andrew
Andrew is joined by James to discuss cosmopolitanism, the idea that all human beings are members of a single community.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
array(3) { [0]=> string(150) "https://www.omnycontent.com/d/programs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/78d30acb-8463-4c40-a5ae-ae2d0145c9ff/image.jpg?t=1749835422&size=Large" [1]=> string(10) "image/jpeg" [2]=> int(0) }Freakonomics Radio Archives - Freakonomics - “Musical Theater Is a Magic Trick”
A backstage conversation with Jeffrey Seller, producer of Rent, Avenue Q, and Hamilton. To get subscriber-only episodes, sign up for SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
The post “Musical Theater Is a Magic Trick” appeared first on Freakonomics.
array(3) { [0]=> string(0) "" [1]=> string(0) "" [2]=> int(0) }Global News Podcast - Power outage causes chaos in Spain and Portugal
A massive power cut hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, causing widespread disruption.