Eliana Johnson joins the podcast today to talk about the unprecedented attack-dog performance on Tuesday in a Senate hearing by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who decided to treat her oversight committee as though they were enemies whom she had every right to attack in personal terms. Is this a new model going forward? And what's this with the idea that a Harvard professor shooting a gun near a synagogue was just hunting rats? Give a listen.
More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war. On Monday, Israeli and Hamas negotiators met in Egypt to discuss President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza.
What do we know about the U.S.-backed plan to end the war in Gaza? And what does this plan mean for Israelis and Palestinians two years into this conflict?
Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.
Just two months ago, the World Trade Organization predicted global trade would grow by nearly 2% next year. Now, it’s revised that forecast down to just 0.5% as the impact of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs sinks in. We'll hear what's been propping up trade so far and what's on the road ahead. Then, "Marketplace Tech" shares tips for spotting job scams. And later, we'll hear how other countries' "gold card" visa programs fared.
Plus: Advertising industry urges tech companies to adopt new standards for transparency in ad sales. And the European Union outlines plans to boost AI adoption. Zoe Kuhlkin hosts.
The price of gold has hit a record high of more than $4,000 an ounce as investors look for safe places to put their money over concerns about economic and political uncertainty around the world.
Also in the programme: Is time running out for France's President Emmanuel Macron? And we meet the woman trying to become the first person on record to walk the length of Saudi Arabia, from north to south.
(Photo: Gold bars at bullion house in Mumbai. Credit: Reuters/Arko Datta/File Photo)
In Patricia Lockwood’s latest novel, the protagonist is an author named Patricia. Will There Ever Be Another You documents a four-year period of disorientation, disassociation and confusion after Patricia becomes severely ill. The story is based on Lockwood’s own experience with brain fog and other symptoms after becoming sick with Covid-19 in March 2020. In today’s episode, the real-life author talks with NPR’s Ari Shapiro about embodying confusion as she wrote about it.
To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday
Riccardo Spagni (“Fluffypony”), former Monero lead maintainer, says that Bitcoin's filter debate mirrors the blocksize wars, why most nodes don't matter for consensus, and what real Bitcoin privacy looks like. Plus: he accidentally becoming a WorldCoin top influencer.
Riccardo Spagni (Fluffypony), former Monero lead maintainer, joins the Bitcoin filter debate and explains why it's following the same playbook as the blocksize wars. Riccardo explains his early studies on Sybil attacking Bitcoin nodes, why filtering is fundamentally broken censorship, the thankless job of being a protocol maintainer. We also discuss his WorldCoin criticism, AI agent commerce, and why stablecoins will likely dominate machine-to-machine payments.
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• Filtering OP_RETURN stops only 1 of 6 data methods
• Spagni maintained Monero 2014-2019 (5 years)
• Lightning privacy requires permanent open channels
• AI agents will likely use stablecoins, not Bitcoin
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:16 Who is Fluffypony?
06:45 Worldcoin influencer?
09:30 Filters (that don't filter anything)
12:53 Why don't "all nodes matter"?
18:35 Knots node count
23:16 OK, define censorship
31:24 Community criticism
38:26 The future of the "filter TM" debate
42:44 On-chain privacy
48:32 The state of Bitcoin privacy
53:23 OP_CTV
56:05 AI + Bitcoin
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👋Bitcoin Season 2 is produced Blockspace Media, Bitcoin’s first B2B publication in Bitcoin. Follow us on Twitter and check out our newsletter for the best information in Bitcoin mining, Ordinals and tech!
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Unveiling the launch of EVE Frontier on Layer-1 Blockchain Sui with CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson and Mysten Labs Co-Founder and CTO Sam Blackshear.
In an exclusive interview, CoinDesk's Sam Ewen sit downs with CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson and Mysten Labs Co-Founder and CTO Sam Blackshear unveil the launch of launch EVE Frontier on the Layer-1 blockchain, Sui. They dive into the core reason why CCP is building a successor to its legendary MMO to create a player-owned, "forever" universe. Plus, they explore how Sui’s architecture, originally designed for high-performance gaming, enables the real-time, massive space battles and player-moddable economy that EVE Frontier demands.
For more information, visit www.evefrontier.com.
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Bridge simplifies global money movement. As the leading stablecoin issuance and orchestration platform, Bridge abstracts away blockchain complexity so businesses can seamlessly move between fiat and stablecoins. From payroll providers and remittance companies to neobanks and treasury teams, Bridge powers payments, savings, and stablecoin issuance for thousands – like Shopify, Metamask, Remitly, and more.
When President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese goods earlier this year, China ceased crop purchases from U.S. farmers. That hurt American agriculture, so the government hopes to help those farmers out with aid using tariff revenue. Trump did this during his last trade war. Today, we'll outline how it all played out. Plus, the price of gold keeps climbing, and we check in with a tea shop owner about how tariffs are affecting business.
