Russian drones and missiles hit nearly every district of Kyiv overnight. A record 539 drone and 11 missiles strikes were recorded by Ukrainian authorities. Meanwhile, Dutch and German intelligence agencies have warned that Russia's use of chemical weapons in Ukraine is intensifying in both frequency and strength.
Also on the programme: Donald Trump is due to sign the "Big Beautiful Bill." And music's "bad-boy" brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher are onstage together for the first time in sixteen years as Oasis play their first reunion show in Cardiff.
(Picture: A drone explodes in the skies above Kyiv. Credit: Reuters)
Unless you're a physicist, you've probably only encountered quantum mechanics on TV.
And even when it was explained, you might've still been a little confused.
The field of quantum mechanics was created a century ago. Today, scientists are using it to create methods of communication that can't be hacked, higher quality digital images, and to develop medications.
But many of us don't even understand what quantum mechanics is — or how it's deepening our understanding of the universe.
For today's installment of our series, "The Scientific Method," we answer your quantum-related questions.
Some conservatives think states should take over management of federal land. But often, states lack adequate resources, or use land for revenue rather than recreation or conservation. This Independence Day, we visit state trust land in Wyoming to learn more about state versus federal management issue. Plus: Homeownership is a tough bargain if you travel for work and data shows the manufacturing sector has contracted since Trump took office.
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Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.
Independence Day means different things to each of us. On this 249th birthday for America, we spend some time looking at different definitions of America by revisiting NPR's 2018 series: American Anthem — which had the simple goal of telling 50 stories about 50 songs that have become galvanizing forces in American culture.
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
If we think about the economic effects of President Donald Trumps big taxing and spending and domestic policy bill, we can roughly sum it up in one line. It goes something like this:
We will make many big tax cuts permanent and pay for those tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and a few other things and also...by borrowing money.
A lot of money.
Even more than we've already been borrowing over the past twenty years. (And that was already a lot, too!)
Today: simple arithmetic with profound ramifications. Tax cuts, spending cuts, and whether they balance out. (Spoiler: no.)
We look under the hood to see how all this is calculated. And we ask: how will a bigger deficit play out for all of us, in our normal, regular lives?
We've covered a bunch more having to do with the big taxing and spending bill and the federal debt recently on Planet Money and our short daily show The Indicator:
Support Planet Money, get bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening and now Summer School episodes one week early by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
Listener Dickson Mukisa from Uganda has been gazing up at the stars. But he’s not making wishes. He wants to know whether we can harness their energy, in the same way we do with our OWN star – the sun. After all, they may seem small and twinkly to us, but each one is a gigantic flaming ball of energy, with a power outputs averaging around 40 quadrillion kilowatt-hours per year – EACH! With somewhere between 100 and 400 BILLION stars in our own galaxy alone, that’s a lot of power! Can we get ‘solar power’ from stars that are such a long way away from earth? And what might we use it for?
Alex Lathbridge heads to the University College London Observatory, to peer through the eyepiece of an enormous telescope and see some stars for himself. Professor Steve Fossey explains just how much of the light energy of the stars reaches us on earth. In other words, how BRIGHT they are.
Once the starlight reaches earth of course, we have to capture it. Could traditional solar panels do the job? Alex meets Professor Henry Snaith from the University of Oxford, to find out about the future of photovoltaic technology, and why it could all be heading out to space.
Once in space, things start getting weird! What if we made an enormous fleet of solar panels, and put them all into orbit around a star, soaking up every last drop of that precious energy? That might sound like science fiction, but the idea has been around for decades. It’s called a Dyson Sphere, or Dyson Swarm. Swedish researcher at the Insitute for Future Studies, Anders Sandberg explains how we might be able to build one around a neighbouring star... in around 10,000 years or so.
But maybe it’s not all about light. Finally, Alex explores the mysterious, invisible energy of the ‘solar wind’, with Pekka Janhunen, Finnish physicist and inventor of the “E-Sail”, which might be able to harness the power of the stellar wind, too.
Presenter: Alex Lathbridge
Producer: Emily Knight
Series Producer: Ben Motley
(Image: Astronomer looking at the starry skies with a telescope. Credit: m-gucci via Getty Images)
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A year and two months after the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the 13 American colonies declared independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776.
Whether ridding the continent of British influence following the revolution, or coming to their aid during both World Wars, over 1 million soldiers have perished fighting to “protect the ideas of the American Revolution and the United States itself.”
“And on this July 4th, we need to give them a due. And remember what they did, who they were, and why they did it,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on this July 4 edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:”
👉He’s also the host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” available wherever you prefer to watch or listen. Links to the show and exclusive content are available on his website: https://victorhanson.com
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
