While humanity's local solar system appears huge from Earth, it's actually a pretty tiny piece of real estate in the grand scheme of things. And, in recent years, technological breakthroughs have allowed astronomers and physicists to learn more about the things traveling to us from outside our patch of space. In today's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive into the story of 3I/Atlas -- along with the experts who believe this thing may not be a natural accident, but manufactured, and perhaps purposely sent, directly to us.
P.M. Edition for Nov. 21. It’s mostly tech companies that have hit the milestone of a $1 trillion valuation. As WSJ Heard on the Street columnist David Wainer explains, Eli Lilly’s entrance into this elite club is for a completely different reason: weight-loss drugs. Plus, New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the U.S., but it’s planning to spend millions of dollars per year to be the first state to offer universal childcare. We hear from WSJ economics reporter Harriet Torry about how the plan will work, and what critics say. And now that the U.S. has presented its 28-point peace plan to Ukraine, President Trump says he expects an answer by Thanksgiving, leaving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with what he calls a very difficult choice. Alex Ossola hosts.
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.
The market has gotten volatile the last few weeks and some sectors are dropping, like Bitcoin. How are we handling the drop and where are opportunities emerging? Plus, we discuss what CEOs belong in the Hall of Fame.
Travis Hoium, Dan Caplinger, and Jon Quast discuss:
- Why the market is down
- Bitcoin’s drop
- Where we see bargains
- CEO Hall of Fame
Companies discussed: Bitcoin (BTC), Alphabet (GOOG), NVIDIA (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), Five Below (FIVE), Mercado Libre (MELI), Meta (META), Chipotle (CMG), Starbucks (SBUX).
Host: Travis Hoium
Guests: Dan Caplinger, Jon Quast
Engineer: Dan Boyd
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Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Sam Altman's admission that Google surpassed OpenAI in some areas 2) OpenAI getting thrown off the mark 3) What happens if Ai models commoditize? 4) Google surpasses Microsoft in market cap 5) Inside Google's rapid-fire comeback 6) Why Google's search business remains strong 8) Google's Gemini 3 marketing strategy 9) NVIDIA's earnings don't save the market 10) Oracle's rough few months 11) Jeff Bezos is a startup co-CEO again 12) Grok glazes Elon 13) AI music is... good? 14) May I meet you??
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Kentucky Fried Chicken was once one of the biggest fast-food chain in America. Now, it’s battling declining U.S. sales as rivals attract customers with chicken sandwiches and tenders over KFC’s classic bucket of bone-in chicken. WSJ’s Heather Haddon reports on how the iconic chain is trying to turn things around. Ryan Knutson hosts.
Literature isn’t a horse race. Taste is subjective, and artistic value can’t be measured in terms of “winners" and “losers.”
That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try.
The book world’s awards season officially kicked off on Oct. 9, when the Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai won the 2025 Nobel Prize, and continued this month when the Booker Prize in England went to the novel “Flesh,” by the British writer David Szalay (also of Hungarian descent, as it happens). Then this week, five National Book Award winners were crowned in various categories at a ceremony in New York.
On this episode of the podcast, the host MJ Franklin talks with his fellow Book Review editors Emily Eakin, Joumana Khatib and Dave Kim about the finalists, the winners and what this year’s big book awards might tell us about the state of literature in 2025.
We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.
Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of frustration or tears of pain - humans are thought to be the only animals that cry tears of emotion. CrowdScience listener Lizzy wants to know: why do we cry for emotional reasons? What is its evolutionary benefit? And why do some people cry more than others?
It turns out that humans cry three types of tear: basal, reflex and emotional. The first kind keeps our eyes nice and lubricated and the second flushes out irritants such as fumes from the pesky onion, but the reasons for emotional tears are a bit harder to pin down.
Using a specially designed tear collection kit, presenter Caroline Steel collects all three kinds of tears. With them safely stashed in tiny vials, she heads to the Netherlands, to Maurice Mikkers’ Imaginarium of Tears. Looking at her crystallised tears under a microscope will hopefully unveil a mystery or two.
Marie Bannier-Hélaouët, who grew tear glands for her PhD, explains how the nervous system processes our emotions into tears. But why should we cry for both happiness and sadness, and for so many other emotions in between? Ad Vingerhoets, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Tilburg University, suggests we cry for helplessness - our bodies do not know how to process such intensity of feeling.
But do these tears bring relief? Lauren Bylsma, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, has been studying heart rates during crying episodes to find out. With her help, we also explore if women do in fact cry more than men, and why that might be.
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Eloise Stevens
Editor: Ben Motley
Photo: Fisheye woman having a cry - stock photo Credit: sdominick via Getty Images)
Unpacking the crypto market drawdown with Hyperion Decimus Co-Founder Chris Sullivan.
In today's Markets Outlook, Hyperion Decimus Co-Founder Chris Sullivan joins CoinDesk's Andy Baehr to discuss the current crypto market drawdown, explaining why this period of "seller exhaustion" is the best time to accumulate hard assets. Plus, they dive into how trend-following strategies and derivatives skew prove the asset class is maturing and setting the stage for a vicious V-shaped recovery.
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