Five journalists are among the 20 people killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, is detained by ICE again. And the family of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers speaks out after the government releases audio of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell.
Ever travel to Europe in the summer and suddenly feel very “ra ra ra” about America?
It’s not because of American culture, or food, or architecture. The thing people miss first and foremost is AC. Yes, air-conditioning.
It’s an American treasure and of course, fodder for many dad jokes.
But beyond the jokes, this invention has been politically and culturally transformational.
AC allowed factories to operate through the summer—creating more productivity, prosperity, wealth, and American dynamism.
It’s allowed Americans to live in the most uninviting places in the country—ever been to Arizona or Texas in the summer?
And this very flexibility to live in places like Phoenix and Austin has shifted migration, demographics, and even our political map.
So today we want to bring you podcasts from another show in The Free Press podcast network—Breaking History.
Eli Lake and his producer Poppy Damon speak with Salvatore Basile, the author of Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything, about how air-conditioning—once called “comfort cooling” and “refrigeration systems”—evolved from a bespoke invention to a household status symbol and a political force.
The episode is so interesting because it highlights inflection points that propelled this technology.
If you’re listening with your AC on high, you won’t want to miss it.
If you want to hear more from Eli Lake on Breaking History, follow here.
Header 6:The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
In 1968, the colony of Spanish Guinea was granted independence and became the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
In its first open election, which turned out to be its last, it elected as president Francisco Macías Nguema.
He very quickly turned out to be a dictator. However, he wasn’t just a dictator. He became one of the worst dictators of the 20th century.
Learn more about Francisco Macías Nguema, his reign of terror, and how he single-handedly wrecked Equatorial Guinea on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Car and phone theft were once the preserve of petty crooks in London. Now they underpin a vast and spreading international criminal network. Why you should consider consulting a new oracle for making big life decisions: an economist. And the cult of the private chef.
Elaine Weiss, acclaimed author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, follows that magisterial work with a work of equal scholarly significance and narrative excellence, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement (Simon and Schuster, 2025), "the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement." "In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights—and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists—many of them women—trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, “Mother of the Movement.”
Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. In addition to Spell Freedom, she is the author of Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of the Great War; and The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. Elaine lives with her husband in Baltimore, Maryland. Find out more at her website.
A lot has happened so far since President Donald Trump took office for a second term, but one thing is certain- he's indisputably unpopular. According to Gallup, Trump's six-month approval rating was around 37-percent, which is lower than that of any other president at that point in their presidency. That's, of course, with the exception of Trump in his first term. But polling can be confusing. Because while Trump's approval ratings have taken a dive, so has the Democratic Party's favorability. According to The Wall Street Journal, 63-percent of voters have a negative view of the Democratic Party. So where does that leave us? Can we trust the polls to tell us how Americans really feel? To find out more, we spoke with Crooked's resident polling expert, Dan Pfeiffer.
And in headlines: President Trump hosts South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a strike on a hospital in Gaza was a "tragic mishap", and Trump signs an executive order to crack down on anyone who burns or desecrates the American flag.
We’re talking about how President Trump opened a new fight for control over the Federal Reserve.
Also, why the President’s new order on flag burning has sparked rare criticism from his own party.
Plus: concerns from FEMA staffers, mail carriers suspending American packages, and—yes—it’s already that time of year: pumpkin spice season has arrived.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
Join us every Mon-Fri for more daily news roundups!
Businesses are scrambling for ways to minimize the impact of the Trump administration’s global tariff policy. Today on the show, we go over some of the tricks and legal loopholes that companies are employing to get around these sudden import taxes.