U.S. chipmakers’ stocks are hit especially hard by tariff threats. Plus: Venture Global stock drops after the gas exporter loses an arbitration case against BP. And Applied Digital posts strong quarterly results. Katherine Sullivan 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.
Atoms are the building blocks of our world. Many have been around since right after the Big Bang created the universe nearly 14 billion years ago. And if life on Earth is made of atoms that are from all the way back then... will those atoms keep existing forever? That’s what CrowdScience Listener Rob in Australia would like to know.
Caroline Steel investigates the immortality of atoms by travelling to CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory located along the border of France and Switzerland. There, theoretical physicist Matthew McCullough explains whether the smallest atoms can decay or survive the test of time.
Physicist Marco van Leeuwen from Nikhef, the National Particle Physics Laboratory in the Netherlands, gives Caroline a behind-the-scenes tour of the ALICE experiment and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. She learns how atoms are smashed at incredibly high speeds, and whether that might spell the end of an atom.
And all life on earth is made up of atoms, but how does a collection of tiny particles become a living being? Astrobiologist Betül Kaçar from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, breaks down how life works from an atomic point of view.
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Imaan Moin
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: Hands cupping a glowing atom in the studio - stock photo. Credit: Paper Boat Creative via Getty Images)
What can we learn about investing in 1999 or 2007 that can be applied today? While history doesn’t repeat, it often rhymes and we discuss what we wish we would have known 25 years ago and how we’re applying that today.
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Let's imagine the worst scenario for civilization: humans, for one reason or another, go extinct. What will rise from the ashes of the Anthropocene to take their place? In the second part of this two-part series, Ben, Matt and Dylan explore the possible candidates, from various high-order mammals and avians, to life beneath the seas, to plants, fungi, artificial intelligence and more. (We're extremely excited about this one, and can't wait to hear your picks for the next rulers of Earth.)
Italy’s Campi Flegrei volcano is depicted in Greek and Roman mythology as the entrance to the underworld. Its eruptions thousands of years ago blocked out the sun, turning summer into winter. And now the volcano is stirring in a way it hasn’t for centuries. We go to the volcano outside Naples to understand its new activity.
Plus: EU scrutinizes Google, YouTube, Apple and Snapchat over their children’s online-safety efforts. And the U.K. names Google as a company to keep an eye on under new competition law. Julie Chang hosts.
The Texas National Guard arrived in the Chicago area, then a judge granted a temporary restraining order on deploying the guard in Illinois. Meanwhile, ICE arrests and raids continued and the Chicago area began to feel the effects of the ongoing federal government shutdown.
Reset dives into those and other top local stories with Chicago Sun-Times reporter Mark Norkol, Fox 32 political correspondent Paris Schutz and Borderless Magazine editorial director Mauricio Peña.
For a full archive of In the Loop interviews, head over to wbez.org/intheloop.
The administration may be trying to lay the groundwork for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act by invading Chicago but the real human stories are breaking through: ordinary Chicagoans are outraged that good, decent immigrants are being snatched off the street and their families’ lives ruined. And while Kristi Noem keeps promoting the bad guys that are being rounded up, ICE is also treating American citizens abhorrently. Plus, from our live show in D.C., Rep. Sarah McBride talks with Sarah Longwell about the need for a big tent coalition without purity tests, and how the Dem demands for a renewal of the ACA subsidies is also a challenge to Trump’s authoritarian power grab.
Jacob Soboroff joins Tim Miller and Rep. Sarah McBride was live with Sarah Longwell.
The novelist Brandon Taylor has been a force to reckon with right from the start: His debut, “Real Life,” was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2020, and he quickly followed that up with two other books, the story collection “Filthy Animals” in 2021 and another novel, “The Late Americans,” in 2023, along with a steady stream of reviews, essays and literary hot takes he publishes on his popular Substack account, Sweater Weather.
Now Taylor returns with a new novel, “Minor Black Figures,” about a 31-year-old painter on the Upper East Side of Manhattan who falls unexpectedly in love with a former Catholic priest. On this week's episode, MJ Franklin speaks with Taylor about how he came to write “Minor Black Figures” and what drew him to the world of fine art as a setting.
As troops continue to roll in, unwelcome, to American cities, you can be forgiven for calling the national picture “pretty bleak.” But even now, the news will occasionally let you get off a chuckle or guffaw, even if it isn’t always from your better nature. It’s SchadenFriday; go ahead and indulge.
Guest: Alex Sammon, Slate feature writer.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
