Ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife plead not guilty in New York, after a U.S. military operation brought them out of Venezuela and into a federal courtroom. Lawmakers are divided after a classified congressional briefing on Venezuela, with Republicans insisting the president acted within the law and Democrats asking what comes next. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scales back routine childhood vaccine recommendations at President Trump’s direction, some pediatricians warn it could leave more kids vulnerable.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Kelsey Snell, Gigi Douban, Jane Greenhalgh, Mohamad ElBardicy, and HJ Mai.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Stacy Abbott. And our technical director is Neisha Heinis.
Our Supervising Senior Producer is Vince Pearson.
(0:00) Introduction (1:57) Maduro Pleads Not Guilty (05:32) Congress on Venezuela (09:18) Vaccine Schedule Overhaul
Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky.
Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols.
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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a New York courtroom Monday, marking his first appearance since U.S. forces seized him and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas late Friday night. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he is issuing a letter of censure to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly for participating in a video urging U.S. soldiers to uphold the Constitution. And in other Washington news, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Monday he will not run for a third term. In California, record-setting rain continues, though sunny skies are expected by the weekend. In business, California is weighing a one-time 5% tax on billionaires and their trusts, and Tesla has been overtaken as the world’s top electric vehicle seller by China’s BYD. Read more at LATimes.com.
In 2016 psychologist Paul Bloom wrote a book titled Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (a naming decision he still wrestles with). In the book, as in his career and in this Social Science Bites podcast, Bloom deconstructs what is popularly meant by empathy. "Everybody seems to have their own notion," he tells interviewer David Edmonds, "and that's totally fine, but we end up talking past each other unless we're clear about it." And so he outlines several widely used definitions -- think compassion, for example -- before offering several more scholarly ways of viewing empathy, such as "cognitive empathy" and "emotional empathy."
A key to understanding his work is that Bloom is not actually against empathy, at least not in general, even though he tells Edmonds, "I think empathy is -- in some way -- a great cause for our worst behavior." But the use of what he terms "emotional empathy" concerns him because, as he explains, it's not evenly distributed or applied, and thus allows harm to occur under the guise of benevolence. "Empathy is sort of vulnerable to all the biases you would think about. This includes the traditional in-group, out-group biases -- race, nationality, religion. It includes attractiveness -- it's easier to feel empathic for somebody who's cute versus someone who's ugly."
Bloom and Edmonds also discuss how empathy leaches into the realm of artificial intelligence, where what might be judged empathetic responses from AIs can devolve into a humanity-extracting feedback loop.
Artificial intelligence isn't just chatbots. The technology is being integrated all across our economy and our lives. And that convergence of AI and robotics, biology and more is likely to be the most important tech trend in 2026, according to Futurist and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, Amy Webb.
The world of professional sports is a multi-billion dollar industry -- and even the most ardent fans may not know what actually happens away from the bright lights and cheering crowds. Join Ben and special guest, journalist Tim Livingston, the creator of Whistleblower, as they dive into the strange, twisting tale of one of the NBA's biggest conspiracies -- a gambling scandal that rocked the industry and, disturbingly, may have reprecussions that continue throughout the sport in the modern day.
On Monday, President Trump picked Vice President Delcy Rodríguez of Venezuela, now the interim leader, to continue to preside over the country instead of María Corina Machado, the opposition leader.
Anatoly Kurmanaev, who reports on Venezuela, explains why Mr. Trump chose a Maduro loyalist to run the country. And Venezuelan citizens reflect on the realities of a post-Maduro era.
Guest: Anatoly Kurmanaev, a reporter for The New York Times who covers Venezuela.
Nicolas Maduro and his wife face charges in American court. Financial markets react to President Trump’s designs on Venezuela’s oil supply. And Minnesota Governor Tim Walz drops his re-election bid amid accusations of fraud in his state’s daycare programs.
