A.M. Edition for Aug 13. Their crypto-currency venture has generated more wealth since the election - some $4.5 billion - than any other part of the president’s business empire, as WSJ senior reporter Patricia Kowsmann explains. Plus, hundreds of National Guard troops begin patrolling Washington D.C. And WSJ reporter Vipal Monga explains how some Canadians are using alcohol as a new front in their country’s trade war with the U.S.
The White House tempers expectations of a breakthrough during the Trump-Putin summit. The Trump administration says unhoused people who refuse to leave "encampments" or accept mental health help could be fined or jailed. And U.S. core inflation remains high.
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Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Gigi Douban, Rafael Nam, Olivia Hampton and Adam Bearne. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Over the past few weeks, the most senior intelligence officials in the federal government have released a series of new documents which they claim shows that, starting in 2016, President Barack Obama and his deputies carried out a criminal conspiracy against President Trump.
Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains what’s behind the sudden re-emergence on the Trump-Russia saga, and what happens when heads of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Justice Department all turn their attention to the president’s domestic enemies.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, covering Washington.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Photo: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
National Guard troops arrive in Washington, D.C., but even Army officials aren’t clear what they’ll do there. Ahead of a landmark summit with Vladimir Putin, President Trump plans a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And health experts question the future of mRNA vaccines as the Trump Administration cuts federal research funding.
In December 2023, when South Africa accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice, I thought it was wrong to do so. Israel had been attacked. Its defense was legitimate. The blood was on Hamas’s hands.
But over the last year, I have watched a slew of organizations and scholars arrive at the view that whatever Israel’s war on Gaza began as, its mass assault on Palestinian civilians fits the definition of genocidal violence. This is a view now held by Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, among many others
One reason I have stayed away from the word genocide is that there is an imprecision at its heart. When people use the word genocide, I think they imagine something like the Holocaust: the attempted extermination of an entire people. But the legal definition of genocide encompasses much more than that.
So what is a genocide? And is this one?
Philippe Sands is a lawyer who’s worked on a number of genocide cases. He is the author of, among other books, “East West Street,” about how the idea of genocide was developed and written into international law. He is the best possible guide to the hardest possible topic.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick and Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Two of the most important concepts in the world of mathematics and nature are the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio.
These two concepts seem separate, but they are actually tightly intertwined.
While they have been known since the ancient world, they are still highly relevant today and can be found all over nature.
Best of all, despite being important mathematical concepts, they are also among the easiest to understand.
Learn more about the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio, what they are, and how they were discovered on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Philip Carr-Gomm joins Jana Byars to talk about A Brief History of Nakedness (Reaktion, 2010) on the occasion of its newest paperback edition. From the naked sages of India to modern-day witches and Christian nudists, from Lady Godiva to Lady Gaga, Carr-Comm writes a survey of the touching, sometimes tragic, and often bizarre story of our relationships with our naked bodies. As one common story goes, Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, had no idea that there was any shame in their lack of clothes; they were perfectly confident in their birthday suits among the animals of the Garden of Eden. All was well until that day when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and went scrambling for fig leaves to cover their bodies. Since then, lucrative businesses have arisen to provide many stylish ways to cover our nakedness, for the naked human body now evokes powerful and often contradictory ideas--it thrills and revolts us, signifies innocence and sexual experience, and often marks the difference between nature and society. In A Brief History of Nakedness psychologist Philip Carr-Gomm traces our inescapable preoccupation with nudity. Rather than studying the history of the nude in art or detailing how the naked body has been denigrated in the media, A Brief History of Nakedness reveals how religious teachers, politicians, protesters, and cultural icons have used nudity to enlighten or empower themselves as well as entertain us. Among his many examples, Carr-Gomm discusses how advertisers and the media employ images of bare skin--or even simply the word "naked"--to garner our attention, how mystics have used nudity to get closer to God, and how political protesters have discovered that baring all is one of the most effective ways to gain publicity for their cause. Carr-Gomm investigates how this use of something as natural as nakedness actually gets under our skin and evokes complicated and complex emotional responses.
