P.M. Edition for Aug. 29. This week, Microsoft became the latest company to crack down on political dissent among its employees. We hear from WSJ reporter Lindsay Ellis on why corporate leaders are adopting a new, harder-line playbook for dealing with political debate at work. Plus, the Trump administration said it’s using an untested strategy to rescind about $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional approval. Journal congressional reporter Siobhan Hughes discusses the backlash on the Hill and what’s at stake. And Kraft Heinz nears a breakup, a move that would undo an infamous 2015 merger. Alex Ossola hosts.
Emails between top Florida officials show that they expect the state’s newest immigration detention facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” to be emptied in the coming weeks. The White House is fighting a judge’s order to shut it down.
AI spending is approaching $1 trillion per year, but will there be a return from that spending. And the crew discusses the latest housing trends and how KPop Demon Hunters could change media. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Tim Beyers discuss:
- AI capex trends - Housing prices decline - KPop Demon Hunters and Netflix content - We play “Cut Down Day”
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What will remain of us hundreds of millions of years from now? And how can we be so certain that we are the first technologically advanced species on Earth?
These unsettling questions have been haunting listener Steve. If fossils can be lost to deep time through erosion and subduction into the Earth’s mantle, how would anyone — or anything — ever know that we had been here? And if an earlier species had built a civilization that rose and fell, would we even be able to find traces of it?
To investigate, CrowdScience presenter Caroline Steel speaks to the scientists trying to answer these questions, while producer Sam Baker goes fossil hunting on the Jurassic Coast in the UK.
Caroline speaks with astrophysicist Adam Frank at the University of Rochester in the US, who along with NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt developed the Silurian hypothesis – the idea that if an advanced species had existed deep in Earth’s past, they might have vanished without leaving a trace.
But palaeontologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Sarah Gabbott from the University of Leicester in the UK argue that humans are already leaving an indelible mark in the form the chemical and material fingerprints we’re pressing into Earth’s crust. They contend that the ‘technofossils’ we are producing will last a very long time indeed.
Along the way, Caroline and producer Sam discover just how rare fossils really are, how even the tiniest particles of pollution will give us away to far-future explorers, and why car parks might be our ultimate legacy. What they find is at once unsettling and oddly comforting: humanity could be fleeting, but our impact probably won’t be.
Could we really have missed evidence of an ancient civilization? And what strange clues will we leave behind for whoever, or whatever, comes next? We explore Earth’s geological memory to find out.
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Sam Baker
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: Old phone embedded in concrete layer with defocused landscape background Credit: Petra Richli Via Getty Images)
Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent with temperatures there increasing at twice the average global rate. That is melting Europe's glaciers, which may disappear by the end of the century, forever altering the continent's rivers with ripple effects on shipping. We go to the water’s source in the Swiss Alps to understand the changes taking place.
Trump is like a dysfunctional 8-year-old whose parents are always in the principal's office arguing that their son is a good boy. The media, CEOs, and Wall Street keep giving him a pass for his behavior while his supporters and apologists explain why he just had to set the school on fire. At the same time, he's empowering ideologues behind the scenes who are dismantling the government and executing their policy wet dreams. Plus, Joni Ernst's Senate tenure has been a sham, Vance tries Mickey Mouse Stalinism on for size, and what's going on with the bruising on Trump's right hand? The public has the right to know about the health of a president. Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.
Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes
We're joined by Michigan law professor Richard Primus to talk about his new book, "The Oldest Constitutional Question: Enumerated and Federal Power." Richard describes one of the the most widespread beliefs about constitutional law -- that the federal government is one of limited, enumerated powers -- and why he thinks it is actually wrong. Along the way, we discuss methods of constitutional interpretation, the relationship between the official story of the law and legal practice, and wrestle with the surprisingly hard question of how many congressional powers are listed in the Constitution.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, presumably as a precursor to a run for the presidency, has been getting attention for a very Trump-influenced style of, uh, fighting back against Donald Trump. Is this where American politics is headed? Does it have to be?
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
