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Donald Trump and Chinese premier Xi decided to back off their big fight and make concessions to each other for a year rather than end up in a full-scale trade war. The question: Did this aggressive move by Trump serve any real purpose? Give a listen.
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Earlier this month, after Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement, the Israeli military said it would withdraw from parts of Gaza — allowing some Palestinians displaced to the south to try to return home to the north.
Rachelle Bonja, a producer of “The Daily,” recently spoke by phone with three Gazans who were making or contemplating the journey home. One of them, Saher Alghorra, is a photojournalist who often works with The Times; another is Nidal Kuhail, a former restaurant worker whom The Times has spoken to over the course of the war.
The third is Hussein Khaled Auda, a former bodybuilder who ran a small gym in Jabalia. Mr. Auda’s story is about his family. His four young children were killed in airstrikes during the war, and his wife was seriously injured. He has been traveling back home in large part to find and bury the remains of two of his children, who had been in the rubble of his house after one of the airstrikes. We interviewed his wife, Rawa, and other relatives, and reviewed death certificates and video footage to help understand what happened to his family.
In our reporting, The Times also learned that a cousin of Mr. Auda’s was a senior leader of Hamas in Gaza who was killed during the war last year. The Times asked Mr. Auda if he himself had any ties to Hamas. He said he was not a member of Hamas and not political, and had dozens of cousins. He said he had seen the one affiliated with Hamas just a couple of times in his life.
Like other news organizations, The Times has not yet been able to send its own staff journalists into Gaza unescorted. This episode, like many other Times pieces for more than two years, seeks to help our audience understand the experiences of Gazans during a devastating war.
Guest:
Background reading:
Photo: Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
It’s no secret that young men are sort of unwell.
They are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to struggle with addiction, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. If that weren’t enough, record numbers of men are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues.
In response, a cottage industry has emerged—full of influencers and paid courses claiming to teach young men how to become “high value.”
But there seems to be a deeper intractable challenge: Young people lack meaning. Fifty-eight percent of young adults say they’ve experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month.
Shilo Brooks has a simple idea for all of it. He’s telling young men—and really, all young people—to read. Yes, read. The idea is simple: Reading great books can make stronger and better men.
He knows he’s facing an uphill battle: Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a fiction book, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap.
Shilo doesn’t have the stereotypical profile for a “lit boy,” as Gen Z might describe him. He’s from a small town in Texas and has a thick Southern drawl. When he was a baby, his stepfather stole his mother’s savings, leaving them with nothing. And he almost didn’t go to college because he couldn’t afford it.
But today, Shilo is president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College.
His prescription is simple. Shilo says: “Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.”
This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with The Free Press, called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that shaped their lives: Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse novels. Then there’s Coleman Hughes, Ryan Holiday, Rob Henderson, and so much more. Think of it like a boy’s book club that anyone can enjoy.
So, here’s what you’ll hear today: a conversation between Bari and Shilo about this project, and how it fulfills the desperate needs of a lost generation.
Subscribe to Old School with Shilo Brooks.
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
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Paris Marx celebrates the 300th episode of Tech Won’t Save Us by sharing his reasons to push for digital sovereignty and get off US tech. On top of explaining how that dependence gives the US governments and its tech companies power over us, Paris also provides tips of alternative services to consider migrating to.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.
Also mentioned in this episode:
Here is the Disconnect post offering a comprehensive list of options for getting off US tech.
Producer Kyla seconds the recommendation of the library as an alternative to streaming, audiobooks, big box bookstores, and for plenty of other benefits (including inviting us to be more active community members).
Trump’s sanctions against chief ICC prosecutor Karim Kahn has delayed proceedings, and resulted in Microsoft cancelling his email service.
Here’s more information about when JD Vance annoyed most of Europe by comparing their governments to authoritarian regimes.
Learn more about Alexandre de Moraes and his efforts to regulate US tech in Brazil.
Former Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre joins to promote her memoir Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House Outside the Party Lines—and faces pointed questions about contradictions between her praise for Biden, her criticism of Democrats, and her claim of newfound political independence. Asked what makes her truly "independent," she pivots to abstractions about democracy and compassion, refusing to name concrete policy differences or lessons from 2024. Plus: scarcity and abundance—how prosperity breeds complacency, and why measles could again become endemic in America while poorer nations still fight to get vaccines at all.
Produced by Corey Wara
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Hello,
Today we play a game called “I didn’t read that article” in which one of us has read an article and the other one hasn’t and we ask questions about it. Today’s topics are the NBA betting scandal which made front page news last week and a new feature in Harper’s about the “Gooniverse” of young, pornography addicted young men.
Enjoy!