K-pop fans in Taiwan have been turning to the God of love in the hope it will boost their luck in getting concert tickets. It got the Unexpected Elements team thinking, are some people just lucky?
First, we look at how music resonates in the brain and why listening to it live can feel more emotional. Also, can we measure how lucky we are? We look at a possible formula, and how you can increase your chances of striking on a lucky event.
We’re then joined by Professor of Marketing Marco Bertini, who explains the wild west of dynamic pricing and gives us some tips and tricks along the way. Plus we hear about Kenya’s ambitious plans to integrate traditional medicine into its health system.
And finally, why we dance when we pee and the Great British art of queuing. That’s all on this week’s Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Phillys Mwatee and Imaan Moin
Producers: Margaret Sessa-Hawkins, with Ella Hubber, Lucy Davies, Imy Harper and Tim Dodd
At the end of January, Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Epstein files: millions of pages of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records. Much was redacted and millions more pages have been withheld. There is a lot we want to know that remains unclear.
But what has come into clear view is the role Epstein played as a broker of information, connections, wealth and women and girls for a slice of the global elite. This was the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and it reveals much about the infrastructure of elite networks more generally.
Back in November, after the release of an earlier batch of Epstein files, Giridharadas wrote a great Times Opinion guest essay, taking a sociologist’s lens to the messages Epstein exchanged with his elite friends. So after the government released this latest, enormous tranche of materials, I wanted to talk to Giridharadas to help make sense of it. What do they reveal — about how Epstein operated in the world, the vulnerabilities he exploited and what that says about how power works in America today?
Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
The War on Illahee: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-Ups in the Pioneer Northwest(Yale UP, 2025) by Marc James Carpenter is a history book about history. More specifically, it's a book about how history gets subsumed in myth, and why the truth often matters less than the story that ends up being told. In the 1850s across the Pacific Northwest, settlers engaged in bloody wars with several Indgienous tribes to seize their homelands - Illahee - for incorporation into the United States. Yet, when those same settlers sat down to write about their experiences, the bloodshed, danger, and trauma was transmuted via memory and a multi-generational game of telephone into a triumphant story of peaceful pioneers fairly trading Native people for their land. The War on Illahee is thus not just a history of Native and settler warfare in what is today Oregon and Washingotn, but also an argument for the power of history, and the insidiousness of choosing to forget the past.
Thousands of students at Stanford are obsessing over Date Drop, a new platform that uses AI to match singles based on compatibility. WSJ’s Jasmine Li joins us to break it down. Plus, WSJ consumer goods reporter Aimee Look sits down with Belle Lin to talk about why tariffs are jumpstarting a boom in the American used electronics market. Isabelle Bousquette hosts.
Data centers are a hot issue - tech companies say they need them, but communities don’t want to be anywhere near them. Senator Van Hollen stops by the show to share his plan to address the rising costs of energy for consumers that data centers create, as well as his thoughts on ICE and the future of the Democratic Party.
Guest: Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.
The Super Bowl is over, but the NFL season is set to ramp up again in just a few months. Today’s episode features two nonfiction books that delve into the world of football. First, Chuck Klosterman’s Football is a critical reading of the sport. He spoke with NPR’s Juana Summers about why football became dominant in American culture and why he believes it’ll lose popularity over the next decades. Then, Danny Funt speaks with NPR’s A Martínez about his new book Everybody Loses, which charts the sports gambling boom and the NFL’s role in the popularization of prop bets.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
It’s time for … Indicators of the Week! Our weekly look at some of the most fascinating economic numbers from the news.
On today’s episode: Analyzing the new jobs numbers, how letting in more immigrants could reduce elder mortality, and betting on the return of … Jesus Christ.
