Meg Medina’s new young adult novel begins with a fall: Graciela, a 13-year-old-girl, is blown off a cliff and sucked into the bottom of the sea. A century later, she awakens and her afterlife begins. Most of the characters in Graciela in the Abyss are ghosts and spirits, but Medina says the story is really about life. In today’s episode, she joins NPR’s Scott Simon for a conversation that touches on the author’s “graveyard” of ideas, death as a constant, and her role as the 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
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Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss his vision for a multi-criterial economy and how it would alter the type of technology our society creates. It’s a plan to center human experience through democratic discourse while driving true social and technological innovation.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.
Also mentioned in this episode:
The twoparts of Aaron’s essay on a Multi-Criterial Economy were published in the New Left Review.
We’ll never leave your messages unread. On today’s show, we open the inbox to hear from Indicator listeners about why seasoned software developers might have more AI-proof jobs, and an idea for how to improve accreditation for crime labs.
Got a question, comment on a recent show or idea for an episode? Send us a message at indicator@npr.org.
How a Supreme Court decision from the shadow docket opens the door to racial profiling, creates a nightmare for millions of Latino Americans, and drains dwindling legitimacy from the court itself.
Guest: Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate, and the co-host of Amicus.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
Shoeless children running around the land that would become Rollingwood and West Lake Hills. Bar fights ending in axe-chopped limbs. Illegal moonshine operations in caves.
It’s the stuff of legend. But are the legends true?
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In this two-part episode of Leaders of Code, Peter O’Connor, Director of Platform Engineering, welcomes Ryan J. Salva, Senior Director of Product at Google, Developer Experiences, for a deep dive into the future of software development. They explore how AI-assisted tools are reshaping the developer experience, going far beyond just writing code. From breaking down deployment bottlenecks to streamlining operations and transforming how teams collaborate, this conversation unpacks where developer tooling is headed and how AI is changing the game at every stage of the software lifecycle.
The discussion also:
Addresses how AI is transforming team structures, enabling engineering teams to operate effectively with just a few people, reducing collaboration overhead and accelerating decision-making.
Highlights the future of platform engineering and DevOps, where AI will assist with standardization and dynamically create and manage deployment pipelines in real time.
Dana El Kurd talks about the recent declarations by France, the UK, Canada, and others to recognize Palestine as a state. She discusses what this means, how these declarations are not tied to Palestinians exercising sovereignty, and what Palestinians actually want.
Jack Butcher, Artist and Founder of Visualize Value, shares how he turned a decade-long career in corporate design into one of the internet’s most recognizable creative brands. He explains how simplifying ideas into bold, viral visuals led to a new kind of artistic practice—one rooted in transparency, leverage, and working in public. Jack dives into how crypto unlocks new layers of creative ownership and why the most valuable assets today are driven by community.
Midnight is a privacy-enhancing blockchain introducing vital, programmable privacy and selective disclosure capabilities. It means dApps can allow users to control what information is revealed without putting sensitive data on-chain, allowing you to break free from the limitation of choosing between utility or privacy. We deserve more when it comes to privacy. Experience the next generation of blockchain that is private and inclusive by design. Break free with Midnight, visit midnight.network/break-free.
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"Gen C" features host Sam Ewen. Executive produced by Uyen Truong.
Charlie Kirk, an American conservative activist and a close ally of Donald Trump, died shortly after being shot during an event at a university in Utah.