Plus: Andreessen Horowitz raises over $15 billion across several funds. And LG Electronics expects to post a quarterly operating loss for the first time since 2016. Julie Chang hosts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

my private podcast channel
Plus: Andreessen Horowitz raises over $15 billion across several funds. And LG Electronics expects to post a quarterly operating loss for the first time since 2016. Julie Chang hosts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Crowdscience listener Ryosuke grew up in Japan, and spent his childhood summers catching cicadas in the park. For people in Japan, the sound of their chirping signals the first true summer day. But until they emerge, these enigmatic insects live underground - often for many years. Ryosuke wants to know how they know the time is right, and CrowdScience is on the case.
Presenter Anand Jagatia pieces together the story of the species, and meets the small but dedicated group of academics worldwide who’ve been able to study them.
In a field near Girona, Spain, he meets a scientist who’s spent the last twenty years counting them. How will a temperature probe help us work out when they might emerge, and what are they doing underground for so many years anyway?
In nearby Barcelona, another scientist cuts open the stem of a tomato plant and Anand watches as the sap flows out. Could this be a clue to how cicadas sense what’s going on above ground?
And he meets a cicada breeder in the US who has discovered a link between the life cycle of cicadas and the fruiting of a peach tree. Armed with that knowledge, can you really make time move faster for tree and insect alike?
Presenter: Anand Jagatia
Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo:Cicada on Hosta Leaf - stock photo Credit: KenWiedemann via Getty Images)
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. This week, we do our 2026 predictions in an abbreviated holiday-time episode. Here's what we cover: 1) Claude Code's ability to run autonomously and complete tasks 2) Claude's ability to use tools 3) Is this a big deal? 4) Can Claude Code style tools be used for more knowledge work? 5) Gmail adds AI 6) Another explanation for Meta's Manus purchase 7) OpenAI gets into healthcare (officially) 8) Future of the doctor-patient interaction 9) Are rigged prediction markets a good thing? 10) Do we still want to do busywork in the age of AI?
---
Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.
Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack + Discord? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Anti-impact environmentalists want you dead; they will settle, in the short term, for you to feel guilty for existing, producing and consuming, and willing to comply with any degree of central planning and freedom curtailment to “save the planet” from you.
Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/environmentalism-anti-humanism
By Dorothea Lasky
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025: a slow-burn success story that gathered momentum over the summer and fall and finally topped the New York Times hardcover best-seller list in December. For Evans, who had written and failed to sell seven previous novels, the book’s popularity has felt magical, as she explains to host Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.
“I went on a kind of a brief book tour in the fall, meeting hundreds of people,” Evans says, “and … different bookstores were starting to say, this is becoming a thing, we can’t keep it in the store. We keep running out of stock. And then they were going back, reprint after reprint. So then I started to think, oh, it’s getting bigger. But I think, I just didn’t have a context. I still don’t understand publishing. So I thought every step of the way was the mountaintop. I keep getting a new mountaintop.”
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.
Anti-government unrest has continued to spread across Iran, despite an internet blackout and a defiant address by the Supreme Leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed the protesters as "a bunch of vandals" and said the authorities would not back down. Demonstrations began nearly two weeks ago because of anger at rising living costs. Also: Russia uses a powerful hypersonic missile against the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, in another wave of air attacks. Switzerland observes a national day of mourning for the victims of the New Year's eve fire. And why the giant pandas in a Japanese zoo will soon be replaced by people in panda suits.
The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk
Plus: Meta unveils sweeping new agreements to purchase nuclear power. And the European Union backs a trade deal with four South American countries. Alex Ossola hosts.
Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.
An artificial-intelligence tool assisted in the making of this episode by creating summaries that were based on Wall Street Journal reporting and reviewed and adapted by an editor.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices