Original Sin recounts a number of moments during which former President Joe Biden allegedly struggled to recognize the people around him, like close aide Mike Donilon or longtime donor George Clooney. The new book by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson argues that there were two versions of the former president, one "functioning" and one "non-functioning." Biden's inner circle, they say, worked to shield the "non-functioning" version from the American public – and even other White House officials. In today's episode, Tapper and Thompson talk with NPR's Scott Detrow about the book and the Biden team's decision to "cover-up" his alleged mental decline.
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We are back to answer your questions, listeners. Today on the show, we tackle three big questions: Are airport lounges worth it for credit card companies? How effective have carbon taxes been for Canada? Why is gasoline getting more expensive over the last few months as the price of crude oil has sunk?
If you want to submit your OWN question to be considered in a future episode, send us a message at indicator@npr.org.
In a return to a classic party policy goal, Republicans want to add “work requirements” to Medicaid to offset costs in Trump’s “one big beautiful bill.” Work requirements for health insurance have been tried before, on the state level, and the end result is a lot of people—including working people—losing their health insurance.
Guest: Leo Cuello, research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families and former Health Policy Director of the National Health Law Program.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther.
We planned this episode to cover the spate of stories revealing just how out of it and diminished Joe Biden was during his term, and new details about the political flunkies and media stooges who were complicit in covering it up. But yesterday Biden’s team announced an almost certainly life-ending cancer diagnosis. So we’re joined by David Roth to discuss how it’s finally well and truly Joever.
Find David’s work at Defector here: https://defector.com/author/david-roth
New merch for the summer up at https://chapotraphouse.store/
DBOS Transact is a lightweight, open-source library that makes durable execution simple so you no longer need to worry about manually coding retries and recovery procedures.
Donald Trump said his phone call with Vladimir Putin went “very well” and claimed that ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would begin “immediately”.
Amanda Holmes reads Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.” 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.
US President Donald Trump says Russia and Ukraine will "immediately" start negotiating towards a ceasefire, after a phone call with Vladimir Putin. Also: videos show capuchin monkeys kidnapping babies of another species.