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“The weird thing about growing up kidnapped,”Shane McCrae, the 47-year-old American poet, told me in his melodious, reedy voice one rainy afternoon in May, “is if it happens early enough, there’s a way in which you kind of don’t know.”
There was no reason for McCrae to have known. What unfolded in McCrae’s childhood — between a day in June 1979 when his white grandmother took him from his Black father and disappeared, and another day, 13 years later, when McCrae opened a phone book in Salem, Ore., found a name he hoped was his father’s and placed a call — is both an unambiguous story of abduction and a convoluted story of complicity. It loops through the American landscape, from Oregon to Texas to California to Oregon again, and, even now, wends through the vaster emotional country of a child and his parents. And because so much of what happened to McCrae happened in homes where he was beaten and lied to and threatened, where he was made to understand that Black people were inferior to whites, where he was taught to hail Hitler, where he was told that his dark skin meant he tanned easily but, no, not that he was Black, it’s a story that’s been hard for McCrae to piece together.
McCrae’s new book, the memoir “Pulling the Chariot of the Sun,” is his attempt to construct, at a remove of four decades, an understanding of what happened and what it has come to mean. The memoir takes the reader through McCrae’s childhood, from his earliest memories after being taken from his father to when, at 16, he found him again.
his story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Warning: This episode contains descriptions of rape, sexual abuse and death.
As an epidemic of fentanyl use continues in America, causing tens of thousands of deaths each year, lawmakers and law enforcement agencies are holding one group increasingly responsible: drug users themselves.
Eli Saslow, a writer for The Times, tells the story of a man whose friendship ended in tragedy and a set of laws that say he is the one to blame.
Guest: Eli Saslow, a writer at large for The New York Times.
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Warning: This episode contains descriptions of violence.
The relationship between two democratic allies fell to its lowest point in history this week, after Canada accused India of assassinating a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June.
Mujib Mashal, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief, explains this stunning accusation — and what India’s reaction to it tells us about the era of its leader, Narendra Modi.
Guest: Mujib Mashal, The New York Times’s bureau chief for South Asia.
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New research and polling show that more and more Americans now doubt a previously unquestioned fact of U.S. life — that going to college is worth it.
Paul Tough, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, explains why so many high-school students and their parents are souring on higher education and what it will mean for the country’s future.
Guest: Paul Tough, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine who has written several books on inequality in education.
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As Ukraine’s counteroffensive grinds on, it’s increasingly turning to a secret drone program that is hitting targets deep inside Russian territory. At least three different Ukrainian-made drones have been used in attacks inside Russia, including on Moscow, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Christiaan Triebert, a journalist on The Times’s Visual Investigations team, explains the origins of that program. We also speak to Serhiy Prytula, a former Ukrainian television host who is now a key force behind it.
Guest: Christiaan Triebert, a journalist on The New York Times’s Visual Investigations team.
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Drugs like Ozempic are revolutionizing the treatment of obesity. The medications, originally used to treat diabetes, keep gaining attention as celebrities and other influencers describe taking them to lose weight quickly.
Dani Blum, a reporter for The Times, tells the story behind the drugs and describes some of the ramifications of using them.
Guest: Dani Blum, a reporter for Well at The New York Times.
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Twenty years ago, a glamorous platinum-blond widow arrived at the Paris law office of Claude Dumont Beghi in tears. Someone was trying to take her horses — her “babies” — away, and she needed a lawyer to stop them.
She explained that her late husband had been a breeder of champion thoroughbreds. The couple was a familiar sight at the racetracks in Chantilly and Paris: Daniel Wildenstein, gray-suited with a cane in the stands, and Sylvia Roth Wildenstein, a former model with a cigarette dangling from her lips. They first met in 1964, while she was walking couture shows in Paris and he was languishing in a marriage of convenience to a woman from another wealthy Jewish family of art collectors. Daniel, 16 years Sylvia’s senior, already had two grown sons when they met, and he didn’t want more children. So over the next 40 years they spent together, Sylvia cared for the horses as if they were the children she never had. When Daniel died of cancer in 2001, he left her a small stable.
Then, one morning about a year later, Sylvia’s phone rang. It was her horse trainer calling to say that he had spotted something odd in the local racing paper, Paris Turf: The results of Sylvia’s stable were no longer listed under her name. The French journalist Magali Serre’s 2013 book “Les Wildenstein” recounts the scene in great detail: Sylvia ran to fetch her copy and flipped to the page. Sure enough, the stable of “Madame Wildenstein” had been replaced by “Dayton Limited,” an Irish company owned by her stepsons.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has ordered an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, putting into motion the third formal attempt by Congress to remove a president in the past four years.
Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The Times, explains the unique realities behind this one.
Guest: Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The New York Times.
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In a rare move, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, traveled outside his country this week to meet with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Julian Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times, explains what Russia wants from North Korea and how far Mr. Putin might go to get it.
Guest: Julian E. Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times.
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On Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. government recommended that almost every American begin taking a new annual vaccine for Covid, a milestone in the nation’s three-year battle against the virus.
Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter for The New York Times, explains why the era of booster shots is now over and how to navigate this latest uptick in infections.
Guest: Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter for The New York Times.
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Later this week, as many as 150,000 U.S. autoworkers may walk out in a historic strike against the three Detroit automakers, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. The United Auto Workers union and the Big Three are still far apart in talks, and have only two days left to negotiate a new labor contract before the deadline.
Neal Boudette, who covers the auto industry for The New York Times, walks us through a tangled, decades-long dynamic and explains why a walkout looks increasingly likely.
Guest: Neal E. Boudette, an auto industry correspondent for The New York Times.
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For years, the government has been trying to rein in Big Tech, pursuing some of the largest and most powerful companies on the internet. This week, the government takes on Google in the first monopoly trial of the modern internet era.
David McCabe, who covers technology policy for The Times, discusses the case against the internet giant and what it might mean for the future if the it loses.
Guest: David McCabe, a technology policy correspondent for The New York Times.
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In early 2021, a Wikipedia editor peered into the future and saw what looked like a funnel cloud on the horizon: the rise of GPT-3, a precursor to the new chatbots from OpenAI. When this editor — a prolific Wikipedian who goes by the handle Barkeep49 on the site — gave the new technology a try, he could see that it was untrustworthy. The bot would readily mix fictional elements (a false name, a false academic citation) into otherwise factual and coherent answers. But he had no doubts about its potential. “I think A.I.’s day of writing a high-quality encyclopedia is coming sooner rather than later,” he wrote in “Death of Wikipedia,” an essay that he posted under his handle on Wikipedia itself. He speculated that a computerized model could, in time, displace his beloved website and its human editors, just as Wikipedia had supplanted the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which in 2012 announced it was discontinuing its print publication.
Recently, when I asked this editor if he still worried about his encyclopedia’s fate, he told me that the newer versions made him more convinced that ChatGPT was a threat. “It wouldn’t surprise me if things are fine for the next three years,” he said of Wikipedia, “and then, all of a sudden, in Year 4 or 5, things drop off a cliff.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This episode contains descriptions of severe injuries.
Last week, a devastating fire swept through a derelict building in Johannesburg that housed desperate families who had no place else to go. The authorities had been repeatedly warned that it was a potential firetrap. Nothing was done, and at least 76 people died.
Lynsey Chutel, who covers southern Africa for The Times, explains how Johannesburg, once a symbol of the hope of post-apartheid South Africa, became an emblem of just how bad the country’s breakdown has become.
Guest: Lynsey Chutel, a southern Africa correspondent for The New York Times.
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For decades, drugmakers have argued that patents are critical to bringing new drugs to the market. But in 2004, when a promising H.I.V. treatment emerged, Gilead Sciences decided to slow-walk its release to maximize profit on the company’s existing patents.
Rebecca Robbins, who covers the pharmaceutical industry for The Times, discusses one man’s case and how patents can create perverse incentives to delay new and better drugs.
Guest: Rebecca Robbins, a business reporter covering the pharmaceutical industry for The New York Times.
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In New York, the arrival of more than 100,000 migrants seeking asylum over the past year has become a crisis for the city’s shelter system, schools and budget.
As another critical election season begins to take shape, Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York State politics for The Times, explains why the situation has also become a political crisis for the state’s Democratic leaders.
Guest: Nicholas Fandos, a reporter covering New York State politics for The New York Times Metro desk.
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A Times investigation found that U.S. passenger planes come dangerously close to crashing into each other far more frequently than the public knows.
Sydney Ember, an economics reporter for The Times, explains why an aviation system known for its safety is producing such a steady stream of close calls.
Guest: Sydney Ember, an economics correspondent for The New York Times.
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A Times investigation revealed that in much of the United States, communities and farms are pumping out groundwater at alarming rates. Aquifers are shrinking nationwide, threatening supplies of drinking water and the country’s status as a food superpower.
Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation for The Times, went to Arizona, the state at the forefront of the crisis, and looked at one especially controversial idea to address it: desalination.
Guest: Christopher Flavelle covers climate adaptation for The New York Times.
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A year ago, Congress overhauled the way drugs for older Americans get paid for, by giving Medicare the power to bargain with drug makers over prices in the biggest change to health care for more than a decade. This week, the Biden administration began its implementation.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers health policy for The Times, discusses the decades long battle for bargaining power and Rebecca Robbins, who covers the pharmaceutical industry for The Times, explains its potential to reshape the business of drugs in America.
Guest: Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a Washington correspondent covering health policy for The New York Times.
Rebecca Robbins, a business reporter for The New York Times covering the pharmaceutical industry.
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In the Republican presidential race, the battle for second place has been jolted by the sudden rise of a political newcomer whose popularity has already eclipsed that of far more seasoned candidates — Vivek Ramaswamy.
Jonathan Weisman, who is a political correspondent for The Times, explains the rising candidate’s back story, message and strategy.
Guest: Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
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Over the past decade, China has placed more and more restrictions on the lives of its citizens — tightening its hold over what people can do, read and say.
When Bei Zhenying’s husband was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for “smearing” the country’s political system, she was left to pick up the pieces of his life. She now believes that her husband was the writer behind one of the most mysterious blogs on the Chinese internet, which for 12 years had ridiculed the ruling Communist Party from within the country.
Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The Times, tells the story of the couple.
Guest: Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times.
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Last week, India landed its spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the moon, becoming the first country to land such a craft near the south pole, where scientists believe vital reserves of water could be found frozen. The landing also revealed just how much the international space race has changed.
Kenneth Chang, a science reporter for The Times, explains why a new set of players are dominating the space race and what is motivating their groundbreaking missions to the moon.
Guest: Kenneth Chang, a science reporter for The New York Times.
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The signs on the gateat the entrance to the path and along the edge of the reservoir were clear. “No swimming,” they warned, white letters on a red background.
On a chill mid-April day in northwest England, with low, gray clouds and rain in the forecast, the signs hardly seemed necessary. But then people began arriving, by the dozens and then the hundreds. Some walked only from nearby Hayfield, while others came by train or bus or foot from many hours away. In a long, trailing line, they tramped up the hill beside the dam and around the shore of the reservoir, slipping in mud and jumping over puddles.
Down on the shore, giggling and shrieking people picked their way across slippery rocks. Then, with a great deal of cheering and splashing, they took to the water en masse, fanning out in all directions. Some carried a large banner that read, “The Right to Swim.”
More rounds of cheers went up as new waves of swimmers splashed into the water. An older woman wearing a pink floral swimsuit paused on the shore to turn to the crowd still on land. “Don’t be beaten down!” she shouted, raising a fist above her flower-bedecked bathing cap. “Rebel!” Then she, too, flopped into the lake.
The group of rebellious swimmers were trespassing for a cause: the uncontested right to walk, camp, cycle, swim, canoe and perform any other form of nonmotorized exploration throughout the country, also known as the “right to roam.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The mysterious crash of a private jet outside Moscow is believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the Wagner militia who led an armed rebellion against Moscow in June.
Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The Times, explains what we’ve learned about the crash, and what a potential political assassination says about President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Last night, Republicans held their first debate of the 2024 presidential cycle without the party’s dominant candidate onstage: Donald J. Trump.
Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for The Times, walks us through the debate and discusses how it might influence the rest of the race.
Guest: Maggie Haberman, a senior political correspondent for The New York Times.
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After a closely watched vote, driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco. Are autonomous vehicles an interesting and safe transportation alternative? Or are they a nuisance and a traffic-blocking disaster waiting to happen?
Cade Metz, who covers technology for The Times, describes the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves.
Guest: Cade Metz, a technology correspondent for The New York Times.
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A marine heat wave is warming the waters off the coast of Florida, pushing temperature readings as high as 101 Fahrenheit and endangering a critical part of sea life: the coral reef.
Catrin Einhorn, who covers biodiversity, climate and the environment for The Times, discusses the urgent quest to save coral and what it might mean for the world if it disappears.
Guest: Catrin Einhorn, a biodiversity, climate and environment correspondent for The New York Times.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida began the race for the Republican nomination with high expectations and a clear argument: that he was a political fighter with a solid record of conservative achievements in his state. Now, he appears to be in a downward spiral.
Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for The Times, explains why the DeSantis campaign is stumbling so badly.
Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for The New York Times.
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Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic with untold millions of people dead, that question about the origin of Covid-19 remains widely disputed and fraught, with facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of thought holds that the virus, known to science as SARS-CoV-2, spread to humans from a nonhuman animal, probably in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, an emporium brimming with fish, meats and wildlife on sale as food in Wuhan, China.
Another school argues that the virus was laboratory-engineered as a bioweapon to infect humans and cause them harm, and was possibly devised in a “shadow project” sponsored by the People’s Liberation Army of China. A third school, more moderate than the second but also implicating laboratory work, suggests that the virus got into its first human victim by accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research complex on the eastern side of the city, maybe after undergoing well-meaning but reckless genetic manipulation that made it more dangerous to people.
If you feel confused by these possibilities, undecided, suspicious of overconfident assertions — or just tired of the whole subject of the pandemic and whatever little bug has caused it — be assured that you aren’t the only one.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Warning: This episode contains descriptions of death.
When fires swept West Maui, Hawaii, many residents fled for their lives — but soon discovered they had nowhere to go. Thousands of structures, mostly homes, have been reduced to rubble. Husks of incinerated cars line the historic Front Street in Lahaina, while search crews nearby make their way painstakingly from house to house, looking for human remains.
Ydriss Nouara, a resident of Lahaina, recounts his experience fleeing the inferno and Mike Baker, the Seattle bureau chief for The Times, explains how an extraordinary set of circumstances turned the city into a death trap.
Guest: Mike Baker, the Seattle bureau chief for The New York Times.
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A plea deal struck between the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden was supposed to bring his years of legal troubles to an end. Instead, that deal has unraveled and a special counsel has been named to take over the case.
Michael Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The Times, explains why that turn of events is increasingly pitting the interests of Hunter Biden against those of President Biden.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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In a region of Africa where authoritarianism has been rising, Niger seemed to be on a different path of democracy and partnership with the United States.
Declan Walsh, chief Africa correspondent for The Times, explains how a military coup has now put all of that in jeopardy and why Niger’s allies still think it’s possible to reverse that coup.
Guest: Declan Walsh, the chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times.
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On Monday, former President Donald J. Trump and 18 others were indicted by an Atlanta grand jury, with Mr. Trump and some of his former top aides accused of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Richard Fausset, who covers politics and culture in the American South for The Times, explains why, of all the charges piling up against Trump, this one may be the hardest to escape.
Guest: Richard Fausset, a New York Times correspondent based in Atlanta.
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Last week, wildfires broke out on the Hawaiian island of Maui that became the deadliest in the United States in over a century. The town of Lahaina, once the royal capital of the kingdom of Hawaii, was one of the places hit hardest — its historic center was decimated, including Waiola Church, the oldest on the island and a cherished meeting place.
Today, the minister of Waiola Church, Anela Rosa, explains what it means to lose Lahaina and what it will take to rebuild it.
Guest: Anela Rosa, minister of Waiola Church in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.
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Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security issued a document that, underneath its 139 pages of dense bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail, amounted to a declaration of economic war on China. The magnitude of the act was made all the more remarkable by the relative obscurity of its source.
In recent years, semiconductor chips have become central to the bureau’s work. Despite the immense intricacy of their design, semiconductors are, in a sense, quite simple: tiny pieces of silicon carved with arrays of circuits. The chips are the lifeblood of the modern economy and the brains of every electronic device and system, including iPhones, toasters, data centers and credit cards. A new car might have more than a thousand chips, each one managing a different facet of the vehicle’s operation. Semiconductors are also the driving force behind the innovations poised to revolutionize life over the next century, like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, was reportedly trained on 10,000 of the most advanced chips available.
Though delivered in the unassuming form of updated export rules, the Oct. 7 controls essentially seek to eradicate, root and branch, China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology. If the controls succeed, they could handicap China for a generation; if they fail, they may backfire spectacularly, hastening the very future the United States is trying desperately to avoid.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
A few days ago, when the U.S. team was eliminated from the FIFA Women’s World Cup, it marked the end of a history-making run.
Rory Smith, chief soccer correspondent for The Times, argues that it also marked the end of something even bigger: an entire era that redefined women’s sports.
Guest: Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent for The New York Times.
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This summer, unrelenting heat waves have taken a devastating toll in many parts of the world, putting this year on track to be the hottest ever recorded.
Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The Times, and Dana Smith, a reporter for the Well section, discuss what it means to live in this new normal, an era in which extreme heat threatens our way of life.
Guest: Coral Davenport, an energy and environmental policy correspondent for The New York Times.
Dana G. Smith, a reporter for the Well section of The New York Times.
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Satellites owned by Elon Musk’s Starlink orbit the earth and beam an internet connection to almost anywhere. In 2019, the company sent its first 60 or so satellites into orbit — today, it has some 4,500 circling the planet, with around 1.5 million customers across about 50 countries and territories.
Adam Satariano, a technology correspondent for The Times, details the company’s rise and power, and discusses the implications of one man’s controlling it all.
Guest: Adam Satariano, a technology correspondent for The New York Times.
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To win a conviction against former President Donald J. Trump for trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election, Jack Smith, the special counsel, is applying laws in ways that have never been used before.
Charlie Savage, a Washington correspondent for The Times, explains Mr. Smith’s approach and previews Mr. Trump’s likely response.
Guest: Charlie Savage, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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The latest economic figures are some of the best of President Biden’s tenure so far. It appears increasingly likely that the United States has managed to tame high inflation without causing a recession.
Jim Tankersley, who covers economic policy for The Times, discusses the encouraging outlook and speculates about why the positive data hasn’t translated into a bump in President Biden’s popularity.
Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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When Barb’s father all but left, her mother turned inward, sitting quietly in front of the television, always smoking, often with a cocktail. Something had overtaken her, though it wasn’t clear what.
Six years later, Barb was 20 and in college when someone else in the family needed help. Her sister Christy was the second-born, 24 years older than Barb and the star of the family in many ways. But where once Christy was capable and professionally ambitious and socially conscious, now, at 44, she was alone, her clothes unkempt and ripped, her hair unwashed, her marriage over.
Depression was the first suspected diagnosis, then schizophrenia, though neither seemed quite right. Christy wasn’t sad or delusional; she wasn’t even upset. It was more as if she were reverting to a childlike state, losing her knack for self-regulation. Her personality was diluting — on its way out, with seemingly nothing to replace it.
What was left of Christy was chaotic and unpredictable. She refused to bathe and stopped bothering to make meals. She crashed a neighbor’s party and made odd conversation with strangers. She clogged a toilet with tampons and flooded the house. She was gleefully impulsive, spending thousands of dollars a year on magazine subscriptions. That strange, reckless profligacy made Barb think of their mother, who in her final years sat at home, saying yes to every sales phone call. How heartbreaking but also interesting, Barb thought, that Christy shared the same peculiar tendencies — a family trait of sorts.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The wildfires sweeping Canada have become the largest in its modern history. Across the country, 30 million acres of forest have burned — three times as much land as in the worst American fire in the past 50 years.
The scale has forced an international response and a re-evaluation of how the world handles wildfires.
Firefighters on the front lines discuss the challenges they face, and David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for The Times, explores how climate change has shifted thinking about wildfires.
Guest: David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for The New York Times.
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With Donald Trump facing charges in three different criminal cases, the biggest questions in American politics are whether that creates an opening for his Republican rivals in the presidential race — and whether it disqualifies him in the eyes of general election voters.
A new set of Times polls has answers to those questions. It shows the president and the former president still tied among registered voters, each at 43 percent.
Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, talks us through the first Times/Siena polling of the 2024 election cycle.
Guest: Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times.
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On Tuesday afternoon, the special counsel Jack Smith filed criminal charges against former President Donald Trump over his wide-ranging attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The Times, talks us through the indictment and the evidence it lays out that Trump participated in an illegal conspiracy to remain in power.
Guest: Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The New York Times.
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How did the National Rifle Association, America’s most influential gun-rights group, amass its power?
A New York Times investigation has revealed the secret history of how a fusty club of sportsmen became a lobbying juggernaut that would compel elected officials’ allegiance, derail legislation behind the scenes, and redefine the legal landscape.
Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The Times, sets out the story of the N.R.A.’s transformation — and the unseen role that members of Congress played in designing the group’s strategies.
Guest: Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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Last year, Giorgia Meloni, an Italian far-right politician, became prime minister on an agenda that many feared would mark a radical turn for the country. Now, her visit to the White House last week has bolstered her credentials on the international stage.
Jason Horowitz, the Rome bureau chief for The New York Times, explains how she got here and the path she has carved out for Europe’s far-right parties.
Guest: Jason Horowitz, the Rome bureau chief for The New York Times.
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On the weekends, when Roy Gamboa was a little boy, his grandfather would wake him before dawn. He would pour some coffee into a bowl of rice, and that would be the boy’s breakfast. Roy knew better than to question anything; he sat quietly in his grandfather’s truck as they rumbled down the big hill from their village, Hågat, to Big Navy, as the U.S. Naval Base in Guam is known. They passed through the military gates, along a dirt road and onto the shore of a little cove, next to one of America’s deepest harbors, where skipjacks flipped out of the aquamarine water. The boy noodled with seashells as his grandfather cast. When his grandfather caught a fish, he would unhook it and throw it on the ground, and Roy would snatch it up and quickly stuff it, still wriggling, in the bag. If the fish weren’t biting at one spot, they packed up and moved to another. No one from the Navy ever stopped the old man and the young boy.
Some mornings, his grandfather would take Roy back across the dirt road into the jungle to pick papayas, lemons and coconuts. He would thrash a course into the thicket to collect firewood from the slender trees — tangen tangen in CHamoru, the language of the Indigenous inhabitants of Guam, which Roy’s grandmothers and grandfathers were. They would cut the logs into quarters to dry, and stack them higher than Roy could even reach. Other mornings, the man and the boy went to the same spot to cut the grass, all the way from the cove’s blue waters to the ruins of an old cemetery. “Why are we the only ones cutting the grass here?” Roy would ask.
“Boy, this was our land before the war,” his grandfather would reply, pointing to 40 acres running from the cemetery to the water to the jungle, over the road and back almost as far as their eyes could see. “We’re taking care of it because we hope, one day, in the future, our land will be returned to us.”
Since then, Guam has become a strategic node in America’s designs in the Pacific. It is commonly referred to as “the tip of the spear” — a place from which the United States can project military might across Asia, an essential conduit to the first island chain of Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan and then on to China. As geopolitical tensions rise, Guam’s importance to American military planners only increases, and so does the risk to those who live there. In every iteration of war games between the United States and China run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Beijing’s first strike on U.S. soil has been to bomb Guam.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Some of the worst symptoms of menopause — including hot flashes, sleeplessness and pain during sex — have an established treatment. Why aren’t more women offered it?
Susan Dominus, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, explains how menopause has been misunderstood both by doctors and society for years, and tells us what happened when her article about it went viral.
Guest: Susan Dominus is a writer for The New York Times Magazine.
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A major new study has revealed just how much elite colleges admissions in the U.S. systematically favor the rich and the superrich.
David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The Times and The Morning, walks through the data and explains why the study is fueling calls to abandon longstanding practices like legacy admissions.
Guest: David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The New York Times and The Morning.
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On Wednesday morning, Hunter Biden was scheduled to a guilty plea in a Delaware courtroom, marking the end of a yearslong federal investigation that many Republicans believed would put the president’s son in prison, and put an end to the Biden presidency.
Michael Schmidt, who covers national security and federal investigations for The New York Times, explains why none of that has happened.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times who covers national security and federal investigations.
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When Russia invaded Ukraine, it put the global food supply at risk — until the two countries struck an unusual deal to keep shipments flowing.
Last week, that deal fell apart.
Marc Santora, who has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict, explains what the collapse of the agreement means for the war and why its impact will be felt by tens of millions of people across the world.
Guest: Marc Santora, a Ukraine correspondent for The New York Times.
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For the past few months, a single senator — Tommy Tuberville — has blocked hundreds of promotions in the U.S. military.
Karoun Demirjian, a congressional correspondent for The Times, explains what’s behind the senator’s blockade, and why military leaders say it’s becoming a threat to national security.
Guest: Karoun Demirjian, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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On the morning of Feb. 7, 2017, two electricians were working on a warning siren near the spillway of Oroville Dam, 60 miles north of Sacramento, when they heard an explosion. As they watched, a giant plume of water rose over their heads, and chunks of concrete began flying down the hillside toward the Feather River. The dam’s spillway, a concrete channel capable of moving millions of gallons of water out of the reservoir in seconds, was disintegrating in front of them. If it had to be taken out of service, a serious rainstorm, like the one that had been falling on Northern California for days, could cause the dam — the tallest in the United States — to fail.
Kory Honea, the sheriff of Butte County, which includes the dam and the town it is named for, first heard that something was wrong from Dino Corbin, a local radio personality, who called him at his office: “Are you aware there’s a hole in the spillway?” Around the same time, one of the sheriff’s dispatchers received a confusing message from California’s Department of Water Resources, which owns the dam, saying it was conducting a “routine inspection” after reports of an incident.
At the dam, department officials closed the gates at the top of the spillway to prevent any more of its concrete slabs from being lost in what an independent forensic report prepared after the incident described as “a sudden, explosive failure.” The flow of water stopped. The rain, however, didn’t.
In the six years since the near-failure of the Oroville Dam, dam operators across the country have begun to reassess the structures under their control, looking for hidden weaknesses: the cracks in the spillway, the hillside that crumbles at the first sign of water. That work is necessary, but it may not be enough to prevent the next disaster. Bigger storms are on the way.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
“Barbie” is premiering this weekend and is trying to pull off a seemingly impossible task: taking a doll best known for reinforcing conventional stereotypes of women and rebranding it as a symbol of feminism, all without coming off as a shameless ad for the doll’s maker, Mattel. Willa Paskin, a journalist and host of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast, recounts her conversation with the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, about how she approached the challenge.
Guest: Willa Paskin, Slate’s television critic and the host of Slate’s Decoder Ring podcast.
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As a historic heat wave grips much of the world and the United States, no city has become more emblematic of the crisis than Phoenix, where temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees for the past three weeks.
Today, the city’s chief heat officer, David Hondula, discusses how the city is adjusting to the new reality of chronic extreme heat — and whether we are adapting to it fast enough.
Guest: David Hondula, the director of heat response and mitigation for the city of Phoenix.
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Last week, for the first time in U.S. history, federal regulators approved the sale of a birth control pill without a prescription.
Pam Belluck, a health and science correspondent for The Times, explains why, after decades of brutal battles over contraception, this decision played out so differently.
Guest: Pam Belluck, a health and science correspondent for The New York Times.
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To refine their popular technology, new artificial intelligence platforms like Chat-GPT are gobbling up the work of authors, poets, comedians and actors — without their consent.
Sheera Frenkel, a technology correspondent for The Times, explains why a rebellion is brewing.
Guest: Sheera Frenkel, a technology correspondent for The New York Times.
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When China suddenly dismantled its lockdowns and other Covid precautions last December, officials in Beijing and many investors expected the economy to spring back to life. It hasn’t worked out that way.
Daisuke Wakabayashi, an Asia business correspondent for The Times, explains why China’s economic rebound hit a wall, and what it says about the country’s next chapter.
Guest: Daisuke Wakabayashi, an Asia business correspondent for The New York Times.
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Some years ago, a psychiatrist named Wendy Dean read an article about a physician who died by suicide. Such deaths were distressingly common, she discovered. The suicide rate among doctors appeared to be even higher than the rate among active military members, a notion that startled Dean, who was then working as an administrator at a U.S. Army medical research center in Maryland. Dean started asking the physicians she knew how they felt about their jobs, and many of them confided that they were struggling. Some complained that they didn’t have enough time to talk to their patients because they were too busy filling out electronic medical records. Others bemoaned having to fight with insurers about whether a person with a serious illness would be preapproved for medication.
The doctors Dean surveyed were deeply committed to the medical profession. But many of them were frustrated and unhappy, she sensed, not because they were burned out from working too hard but because the health care system made it so difficult to care for their patients.
By the time the journalist Eyal Press met Dean, the distress among medical professionals had reached alarming levels. Professional organizations like National Nurses United, the largest group of registered nurses in the country, had begun referring to “moral injury” and “moral distress” in pamphlets and news releases. Mona Masood, a psychiatrist who established a support line for doctors shortly after the coronavirus pandemic began, recalls being struck by how clinicians reacted when she mentioned the term. “I remember all these physicians were like, Wow, that is what I was looking for,” she says. “This is it.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the second Black justice to sit on the court after Thurgood Marshall, has spent years opposing affirmative action. When the high court struck down the policy last month, Justice Thomas was one of the most influential figures behind the ruling.
Abbie VanSickle, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, explains the impact affirmative action has had on Justice Thomas’s life and how he helped to bring about its demise.
Guest: Abbie VanSickle, a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times.
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Two weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, declaring that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.
Today, three people whose lives were changed by affirmative action discuss the complicated feelings they have about the policy.
Guest: Sabrina Tavernise, a co-host of The Daily.
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Tens of millions of Americans changed jobs over the past two years, a rare moment of worker power as employees demanded higher pay, and as employers, short on staff, often gave it to them.
The tidal wave of quitting became known as the “great resignation.” Now, as the phenomenon seems to have fizzled out, the Times economic writer Ben Casselman discusses whether there have been any lasting benefits for American workers.
Guest: Ben Casselman, an economy correspondent for The New York Times.
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For months, President Biden has been wrestling with one of the most vexing questions in the war in Ukraine: whether to risk letting Ukrainian forces run out of the artillery rounds they desperately need to fight Russia, or agree to ship them cluster munitions — widely banned weapons known to cause grievous injury to civilians, especially children. On Friday, the Biden administration announced that it would send the weapons, which have been outlawed by many of Washington's closest allies.
David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, tells the story behind the president’s contentious decision.
Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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Last week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, released Threads, a social media platform to compete with Twitter. In just 16 hours, Threads was downloaded more than 30 million times.
Mike Isaac, who covers tech companies and Silicon Valley for The Times, explains how Twitter became so vulnerable and discusses the challenges Meta faces to create a less toxic alternative.
Guest: Mike Isaac, a technology correspondent for The New York Times.
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The wave of scandals that would engulf Spain began with a police raid on a wooded property outside Madrid. It was Nov. 3, 2017, and the target was José Manuel Villarejo Pérez, a former government spy. Villarejo’s name had been circulating in the Spanish press for years. He was rumored to have had powerful friends and to have kept dirt on them all. The impressive variety of allegations against him — forgery, bribery, extortion, influence peddling — had earned him the nickname “king of the sewers.”
For many decades, Villarejo’s face had been known to almost no one. He was, after all, a spy — and not just any spy, but one who had started his career in the secret police of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. In those years, he would dress in overalls from Telefónica, the national telephone company, as he conducted surveillance operations in the mountains, and on several occasions he even wore a priest’s collar in order to infiltrate the Basque separatist group ETA. More recently, Villarejo had taken to simply introducing himself as a lawyer who ran a private-investigation firm, offering those he met to dig up compromising material on their enemies. His formal connection to the government was increasingly ambiguous. Of all of the identities he assumed over the years, this was perhaps the most powerful one. It made him rich through the hefty fees he charged, and it opened a door into the worlds of business tycoons, government ministers, aristocrats, judges, newspaper editors and arms traffickers — all of whose trust he gained, all of whose private words he taped.
Villarejo was handcuffed and taken to Madrid. But as he sat in jail awaiting trial, the question left hanging over Spain was this: What happens to a country’s secrets when they have all been recorded by one man? And what happens when that man finds himself suddenly backed into a corner?
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Last week, the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s sweeping plan to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt.
Stacy Cowley, a finance reporter for The New York Times, explains what the decision means for borrowers now facing their first payments since a coronavirus pandemic-related pause and how an alternative plan could still ease their burden.
Guest: Stacy Cowley, a finance correspondent for The New York Times.
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Last month, a rebellion inside Russia left lingering questions about what really happened and about what the ramifications would be for President Vladimir V. Putin.
Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The Times, discusses what Mr. Putin has done since the mutiny and looks at how those actions might reveal how vulnerable the president is.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has become a sensation on YouTube for ostentatious and sometimes absurd acts of altruism.
Today, Max Read, a journalist and contributor to The Times, discusses what the rise of one of YouTube’s most popular star tells us about the platform and its users.
Max Read is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and writes about technology and internet culture in his newsletter “Read Max.”
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The patients in this story came to the Yale Fertility Center to pursue pregnancy. They began their I.V.F. cycles full of expectation and hope. Then a surgical procedure called egg retrieval caused them excruciating pain.
Some of the patients screamed out in the procedure room. Others called the clinic from home to report pain in the hours that followed. But most of the staff members who fielded the patients’ reports did not know the real reason for the pain — a nurse at the clinic was stealing fentanyl and replacing it with saline.
Today, we’re sharing the first episode of “The Retrievals,” a five-part narrative series from Serial Productions and The New York Times, reported by Susan Burton, a veteran staff member at “This American Life” and author of the memoir “Empty.”
The Supreme Court delivered another major decision this past week, ruling in favor of a web designer who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples.
Adam Liptak, a Times correspondent who covers the court, explains what the ruling might mean for all kinds of different groups of Americans.
Guest: Adam Liptak, who covers the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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HF0, or Hacker Fellowship Zero, is a start-up accelerator that provides 12-week residencies for batches of fellows from 10 different start-ups. Their experience, which culminates in a demonstration day, is supposed to be the most productive three months of the fellows’ lives. Dave Fontenot, one of HF0’s founders, was inspired by the two years he spent living in monasteries in his 20s: While monastery life was materially ascetic, he found that it was luxurious in the freedom it gave residents to focus on the things that really mattered. And this year at the Archbishop’s Mansion in San Francisco, the home of the fellows, almost everyone has been monastically focused on what has become the city’s newest religion: artificial intelligence.
The A.I. gospel had not yet spread in 2021, when Fontenot and his two co-founders, Emily Liu and Evan Stites-Clayton, started the accelerator. Even a year ago, when HF0 hosted a batch of fellows at a hotel in Miami, six out of the eight companies represented were cryptocurrency start-ups. But at the mansion in San Francisco, eight of the 10 companies in HF0’s first batch this year were working on A.I.-based apps.
That generative A.I. has largely supplanted crypto in the eyes of founders and venture capitalists alike is not exactly surprising. When OpenAI released ChatGPT late last year, it set off a new craze at a time when the collapsing crypto and tech markets had left many investors and would-be entrepreneurs adrift, unsure of where to put their capital and time. Suddenly users everywhere were realizing that A.I. could now respond to verbal queries with a startling degree of humanlike fluency. “Large language models have been around for a long time, but their uses were limited,” said Robert Nishihara, a co-founder of Anyscale, a start-up for machine-learning infrastructure. “But there’s a threshold where they become dramatically more useful, and I think now it’s crossed that.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent by striking down affirmative action and declaring that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful.
Adam Liptak, who covers the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times, explains the ruling, and what it means for American society.
Guest: Adam Liptak, who covers the court for The New York Times.
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In a San Francisco courtroom, federal regulators are fighting to block one of the biggest deals in the history of Silicon Valley.
David McCabe, who covers technology policy for The New York Times, talks about Lina Khan, the F.T.C. chair who is the architect of the lawsuit, and the growing campaign to finally rein in big tech.
Guest: David McCabe, a New York Times correspondent covering technology policy.
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Since its introduction less than a year ago, ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence platform that can write essays, solve math problems and write computer code, has sparked an anguished debate in the world of education. Is it a useful research tool or an irresistible license to cheat?
Stella Tan, a producer on The Daily, speaks to teachers and students as they finish their first semester with ChatGPT about how it is changing the classroom.
Guest: Stella Tan, an audio producer for The New York Times.
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Earlier this month, a group of hard-right Republicans hijacked the floor of the House of Representatives in protest against Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The mutiny, staged by nearly a dozen members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, raised questions about whether the speaker could continue to govern his slim and fractious majority.
Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The Times, explains how and why this small group of members made the chamber ungovernable.
Guest: Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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An armed rebellion in Russia over the weekend stunned the world and amounted to the single biggest challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule since he came to power 23 years ago.
Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, talks about the man who led the revolt, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, and about what might happen next.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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For months, much of the world has been watching and waiting as Ukraine prepares for a major counteroffensive in its war with Russia. That battle is now underway, and it’s not what was expected.
Andrew E. Kramer, the Kyiv bureau chief for The New York Times, reports from the front line.
Guest: Andrew E. Kramer, the Kyiv bureau chief for The New York Times.
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A few days ago, when passengers set off on a deep sea expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, they were aboard a vessel that many experts had already concluded was dangerously designed.
William Broad, a science correspondent for The Times, explains why he was worried from the start.
Guest: William J. Broad, a science correspondent for The New York Times.
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In the decades after World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, Germany deliberately underinvested in its military. But that’s about to change.
Katrin Bennhold, a correspondent in Europe and former Berlin bureau chief, explains why Germany is re-entering an era of militarization, and what that will mean for its national identity.
Guest: Katrin Bennhold, a Germany and Europe correspondent for The New York Times.
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Rapid inflation has been a problem in the United States for more than two years, but the tide appears to be turning. Annual inflation is now less than half of what it was last summer.
Jeanna Smialek, who covers the Federal Reserve and the U.S. economy for The Times, discusses whether the decline is a result of careful policymaking, or more of a lucky accident.
Guest: Jeanna Smialek, a Federal Reserve correspondent for The New York Times.
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Almost everyone who reads “American Born Chinese,” Gene Luen Yang’s groundbreaking graphic novel, is a little afraid of Chin-Kee.
The book is a classic of young-adult literature, threading together stories of Asian American boyhood with a revered Ming dynasty novel. Chin-Kee’s role in it is a small one, but he is the bomb at the book’s heart. He’s a kind of Urkel character, embarrassing comic relief that isn’t so funny for the people who have to live with him — a cruel marionette pieced together from ugly stereotypes. He makes the old schoolyard “me Chinese” rhymes and begins sentences with “Confucius say …” He sings “She Bangs,” in a library, in the style of the “American Idol” contestant William Hung. At one point, he eats a packed lunch with a cat peeking out of the container. A laugh track runs in a ribbon under each scene, a brutal little receipt: “HA HA HA HA HA.”
So when news arrived, in 2021, that “American Born Chinese” would be adapted as a live-action Disney+ streaming series, the first reaction from some readers was, more or less, “Oh, no.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This week, a historic case has landed in a Montana courtroom. A group of young environmentalists is suing the state, arguing that its embrace of fossil fuels is destroying pristine environments, upending cultural traditions and robbing young residents of a healthy future.
David Gelles, a climate correspondent for The Times, explains why the case could be a turning point, and what a win in Montana would mean for the future of the climate fight.
Guest: David Gelles, a climate correspondent for The New York Times.
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Last week, golf’s premier circuit, the PGA Tour, announced it was partnering with its rival circuit LIV Golf, an upstart league backed by Saudi Arabia, giving the country a powerful new seat at the table of international sports.
Alan Blinder, who covers golf for The New York Times, explains what was behind the deal and what it means for the business of sports.
Guest: Alan Blinder, a reporter who covers golf and health for The New York Times.
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Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami yesterday on 37 criminal counts covering seven different violations of federal law, including the handling of classified documents.
Three New York Times journalists covered the proceedings: Glenn Thrush was inside the courtroom, Luke Broadwater reported from outside the courthouse, and Maggie Haberman was at Mr. Trump’s home in Bedminster, N.J.
Guests:
Luke Broadwater, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
Glenn Thrush, who covers the Department of Justice for The New York Times.
Maggie Haberman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
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When the #MeToo movement gained momentum in exposing abuses at the highest levels of power, the restaurant industry was exposed as a chief offender. In 2020, the James Beard Awards, the food world’s main kingmaker, announced that there would be no winners in either 2020 or 2021 after allegations against several top chefs.
Brett Anderson, a contributing writer on The Times’s Food desk and a former member of the awards committee, discusses the attempts to hold the industry to account.
Guest: Brett Anderson, a food correspondent for The New York Times.
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Last week, Donald Trump was charged with federal violations relating to his handling of classified material after leaving office.
Ben Protess, who covers the government and law enforcement for The Times, discusses the indictment and walks us through the evidence.
Guest: Ben Protess, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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When the former secretary of state and C.I.A. director Mike Pompeo, a man who had dealt firsthand with autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, described Randi Weingarten as “the most dangerous person in the world” last November, it seemed as though he couldn’t possibly be serious.
Weingarten is 65 and just over five feet tall. She is Jewish and openly gay — she’s married to a rabbi — and lives in Upper Manhattan. She is the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, which is not even the country’s biggest union of public school educators. The A.F.T. did give in excess of $26 million to Democratic candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle, but the Carpenters and Joiners union gave more than twice as much.
The public education system may not be very popular right now, but both Democrats and Republicans tend to like their local schools and their children’s teachers. The unions that represent those teachers, however, are more polarizing. One reason for this is that they are actively involved in partisan politics and, more specifically, are closely aligned with the Democrats, a reality powerfully driven home during the pandemic. In some ways, Randi Weingarten and the A.F.T. — the union “boss” and “big labor” — are a logical, even inevitable target for the G.O.P.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The seven new criminal charges against Donald Trump relate to his handling of classified material upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.
Michael S. Schmidt, who covers national security and federal investigations for The Times, talks about what this will mean for Trump, and for President Biden, whose administration will now be prosecuting his biggest potential rival for the White House.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada has created a crisis in the American Northeast and beyond, with air pollution in New York reaching its worst level in modern history.
David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for The Times, explains why this happened, and why there is so little we can do to keep it from happening again.
Guest: David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist correspondent for The New York Times.
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Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination keep entering the field, despite the fact that Donald Trump polls consistently as the front-runner and Ron DeSantis has emerged as the clear No. 2. Why do so many lesser-tier Republicans think they have a real shot?
Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The Times, offers a guide to the new crop of candidates and discusses their rationale for running.
Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.
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A few weeks ago, footage showing asylum seekers, including young children, being rounded up, taken to sea and abandoned on a raft by the Greek Coast Guard was sent to The New York Times.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s bureau chief in Brussels, discusses how she proved the truth of the tip that a major European government was carrying out an illegal scheme risking the lives of civilians.
Guest: Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Brussels bureau chief for The New York Times.
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About 50 years ago, the educator Lucy Calkins pioneered a technique called balanced literacy, which de-emphasized the use of phonics to teach reading. It was widely adopted in the United States, including in New York, the country’s largest public school system.
But doubts about the approach persisted, and now it seems that using balanced literacy has given a generation of American students the wrong tools.
Dana Goldstein, who covers family policy and demographics for The Times, discusses the story of balanced literacy and how Professor Calkins is trying to fix the problems that the technique created.
Guest: Dana Goldstein, a national correspondent for The New York Times who writes about family policy and demographics.
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This episode contains descriptions of violence.
In the two years since the United States pulled out of Afghanistan, the Taliban has shut women and girls out of public life.
Christina Goldbaum, a correspondent in the Kabul bureau for The New York Times, traveled across Afghanistan to talk to women about how they’re managing the changes. What she found was not what she had expected.
Guest: Christina Goldbaum, a correspondent in the Times bureau in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This weekend, we’re bringing dispatches from Times critics and writers on great music, TV, movies, recipes and more. They’re all part of a new series called “NYT Shorts,” available only on NYT Audio, our new iOS audio app. It’s home to podcasts, narrated articles from our newsroom and other publishers, and exclusive new shows. Find out more at nytimes.com/audioapp.
On today’s episode:
In recent years, well-paid and college-educated Americans have shed major cities like New York, San Francisco and Washington for places like Philadelphia or Birmingham, Ala.
Emily Badger, who writes about cities and urban policy for The Upshot at The New York Times, explains what is driving the change, and what it means for the future of the American city.
Guest: Emily Badger, a cities and urban policy correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
With stunning speed, the status of trans youth has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party, from state legislatures to presidential campaigns.
Adam Nagourney, who covers West Coast cultural affairs for The New York Times, explains how that came to be, and why it’s proving such a potent issue.
Guest: Adam Nagourney, a West Coast cultural affairs correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Since 2016, the cardinal rule of Republican politics has been to defend Donald J. Trump and his allies at all costs, no matter the allegation. That appeared to change last week, when Texas lawmakers issued 20 articles of impeachment against their state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a powerful Trump supporter.
J. David Goodman, the Houston bureau chief for The New York Times, explains what the escalating conflict in Texas indicates about tensions within the party.
Guest: J. David Goodman, the Houston bureau chief for The New York Times.
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As the world begins to experiment with the power of artificial intelligence, a debate has begun about how to contain its risks. One of the sharpest and most urgent warnings has come from a man who helped invent the technology.
Cade Metz, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, speaks to Geoffrey Hinton, who many consider to be the godfather of A.I.
Guest: Cade Metz, a technology correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This weekend, we’re bringing dispatches from Times critics and writers on great music, TV, movies, recipes and more. They’re all part of a new series called “NYT Shorts,” available only on NYT Audio, our new iOS audio app. It’s home to podcasts, narrated articles from our newsroom and other publishers, and exclusive new shows. Find out more at nytimes.com/audioapp.
On today’s episode:
Top White House officials and Republican lawmakers are racing to reach an agreement as the date when the United States is projected to default on its debt approaches.
Jim Tankersley, who covers the White House for The New York Times, looks at the state of the negotiations and explains what it will take to win over enough votes in Congress to avoid an economic disaster.
Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Our new show brings you the biggest stories in about 10 minutes. It's the complement to The Daily you’ve been waiting for.
This episode includes:
We'll be sharing The Headlines every day this week, right here in your Daily feed. To get the full experience, download New York Times Audio, a new app that's home to all of our audio journalism, including exclusive new shows. Free for Times news subscribers. Download it at nytimes.com/audioapp.
A New York Times investigation has found that a group of Republican operatives used robocalls to raise $89 million on behalf of veterans, police officers and firefighters.
David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains how they actually spent the money and the legal loophole that allowed them to do that.
Guest: David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Our new show brings you the biggest stories in about 10 minutes. It's the complement to The Daily you’ve been waiting for.
This episode includes:
We'll be sharing The Headlines every day this week, right here in your Daily feed. To get the full experience, download New York Times Audio, a new app that's home to all of our audio journalism, including exclusive new shows. Free for Times news subscribers. Download it at nytimes.com/audioapp.
After almost a year of deadly battle, Russia has claimed victory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. But what happens now is uncertain.
Eric Schmitt, who covers national security for The New York Times, explains what this moment in the war means, and why the next few months could be critical for Ukraine.
Guest: Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Our new show brings you the biggest stories in about 10 minutes. It's the complement to The Daily you’ve been waiting for.
This episode includes:
We'll be sharing The Headlines every day this week, right here in your Daily feed. To get the full experience, download New York Times Audio, a new app that's home to all our audio journalism, including exclusive new shows. Free for Times news subscribers. Download it at nytimes.com/audioapp.
A few days ago, the Supreme Court tried to answer a question that has long bedeviled the world of art: When is borrowing from an earlier artist an act of inspiration, and when is it theft?
Adam Liptak, who covers the court for The Times, explains a case that could change how art is made.
Guest: Adam Liptak, who covers the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Our new show brings you the biggest stories in about 10 minutes. It's the complement to The Daily you’ve been waiting for.
This episode includes:
We'll be sharing The Headlines every day this week, right here in your Daily feed. To get the full experience, download New York Times Audio, a new app that's home to all our audio journalism, including exclusive new shows. Free for Times news subscribers. Download it at nytimes.com/audioapp.
Voters in the 2022 midterms seemed to send a clear message — a rejection of Trumpism and extremism. And yet it appears increasingly likely that he will win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
Astead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The Times and the host of the politics podcast The Run-Up, explains what has shifted in Republican politics so that Mr. Trump’s nomination could start to seem almost inevitable.
Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Our new show brings you the biggest stories in about 10 minutes. It's the complement to The Daily you’ve been waiting for.
This episode includes:
We'll be sharing The Headlines every day this week, right here in your Daily feed. To get the full experience, download New York Times Audio, a new app that's home to all our audio journalism, including exclusive new shows. Free for Times news subscribers. Download it at nytimes.com/audioapp.
This weekend, we’re bringing you something a little different: dispatches from Times critics and writers on great music, TV, movies, recipes and more. They’re all part of a new series called “NYT Shorts,” and they’re available only on NYT Audio, our new iOS audio app. It’s home to podcasts, narrated articles from our newsroom and other publishers, and exclusive new shows. Find out more at nytimes.com/audioapp.
On today’s episode:
The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful ever made, has revolutionized the way we see the universe. The name was chosen for James E. Webb, a NASA administrator during the 1960s. But when doubts about his background emerged, the telescope’s name turned into a fight over homophobia.
Michael Powell, a national reporter for The Times, tells the story of Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, an astrophysicist whose quest to end the controversy with indisputable facts only made it worse.
Guest: Michael Powell, a national reporter covering free speech and intellectual debate for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This episode contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault.
It’s been more than five years since the #MeToo movement, driven by reporting at publications like The New York Times, toppled powerful and abusive men. Behind that essential journalism were sources, many anonymous, who took enormous risks to expose harassment and sexual violence.
Today, Rachel Abrams, a producer and reporter at The Times, speaks to Ali Diercks, a lawyer who provided crucial information for a major #MeToo story. Ms. Diercks has waived her anonymity to discuss the costs of her coming forward and what she thinks about her decision years later.
Guest: Rachel Abrams, a senior producer and reporter for “The New York Times Presents” documentary series.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
For two decades, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has loomed large over Turkish politics. But skyrocketing inflation and a devastating earthquake have eroded his power and, in a presidential election over the weekend, he was forced into a runoff.
Ben Hubbard, The Times’s Istanbul bureau chief, discusses how Turkey’s troubles have made Mr. Erdogan politically vulnerable.
Guest: Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
For weeks, officials have feared that the end of Title 42 would create a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border that would strain and possibly cripple America’s immigration system.
Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, reports from the border about what actually happened when the pandemic-era policy expired.
Guest: Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
A little over a decade ago, a small Israeli company created what would become the world’s most powerful and notorious hacking tool.
Mark Mazzetti, who is a Washington investigative correspondent for The Times, explains the surprising story of the NSO Group and why, despite banning its technology, the United States kept trying to use it.
Guest: Mark Mazzetti, a Washington investigative correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
In the final days of Marleny Mesa’s pregnancy, she could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. She could barely breathe, for one thing. For another, her anxiety and physical discomfort were approaching what felt like an unbearable peak. A week or so later, she delivered a tiny, squirming boy with jet black hair and soft, curious eyes. She and her husband, Andrés Noscue, named him Eliad. Marleny thought he was perfect, but her mother, a retired midwife, insisted that the placenta contained a hint of trouble. It was far too big, she said, and Eliad was too small, probably because he did not have enough room in her womb to grow. His grandmother thought he might need an incubator. Marleny thought he was fine, but when the baby was a few days old, she and Andrés traveled from the Jerusalén-San Luis Alto Picudito Indigenous reservation in Putumayo, Colombia, to take him to Villagarzón for a checkup, just to be safe.
This proved harder than they expected. The baby could not be seen at the hospital there until he had a civil identification or registration number, which he could not get without a birth certificate, which the hospital could not provide because the baby was born at home. Go to the registrar’s office, the nurses told Marleny and Andrés. But the registrar’s office only sent Andrés back to the hospital, where a different nurse told them to try the notary’s office instead. By then it was almost noon. The only bus of the day would be heading back to San Luis soon; if Andrés and his family missed it, they would have to cough up more money for room and board in town than they normally spent in a week. So they went home.
The problem of inadequate registries is most pressing in the low-income nations of Africa and Southeast Asia. But it is not confined to those regions. In Colombia, birth and death registration is especially spotty in Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, where the national government tends to have little presence and registrars and notaries tend to apply the rules arbitrarily. A program known as Colombia Rural Vital was created to simplify and democratize this process.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
In a high-stakes showdown this week, President Biden and the leaders of congress met face to face in an effort to avoid the United States defaulting on its debt for the first time in history.
Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The Times, explains how close the country is to financial calamity, and the radical step Biden might take to avoid it.
Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Last year, Times reporting revealed the many lies that the freshman Republican congressman George Santos had told about his life and career. Now he is facing legal consequences.
Michael Gold, who covers politics in New York for The Times, explains the charges against Mr. Santos and what they mean for his role in Congress.
Guest: Michael Gold, a New York politics correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This episode contains detailed descriptions of sexual assault.
A jury in Manhattan has found former President Donald J. Trump legally liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Ben Weiser, who covers the Manhattan federal courts for The Times, tells the story of how a nearly 30-year-old case reached this moment.
Guest: Benjamin Weiser, a correspondent for The New York Times covering the Manhattan federal courts.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
For the past three years, the United States has relied on Title 42, a pandemic restriction that has allowed the swift expulsion of many migrants at the southern border. But by the end of the week, that rule will expire.
Miriam Jordan, who covers immigration for The Times, explains what that will mean on both sides of the border.
Guest: Miriam Jordan, a national correspondent covering immigration for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Debate about ethical standards for Supreme Court justices has intensified after a series of revelations about undisclosed gifts, luxury travel and property deals.
Adam Liptak, who covers the court for The Times, reviews the allegations of misconduct and the growing calls to do something about it.
Guest: Adam Liptak, a correspondent covering the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Lakishia Fell-Davis is aware that at this point, in 2023, most people are treating the coronavirus pandemic as a thing of the past. For her, though, Covid still poses a real threat: Fell-Davis has Type I diabetes, putting her at higher risk of hospitalization and long-term complications from illness. As such, her experience during the pandemic has shaped how she thinks about her daily life, especially at Ninety-Fifth Street Elementary School, where she has worked on and off for more than a decade as a substitute teacher and teaching assistant.
She felt much more comfortable when schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were online during the first year and a half of the pandemic and her kids, Makayla and Kevin, were attending virtually. Sure, they missed their friends, but they were shy and soft-spoken children who had never really strayed far from home. They didn’t seem to mind the arrangement. And back then, Fell-Davis’s mother, who was paralyzed on her left side after surviving stomach cancer and two strokes, could visit them with relative peace of mind despite her poor health.
Fell-Davis cried when she learned that in the fall of 2021, the school district would require students and teachers to return to in-person learning. Her home — a cozy two-bedroom apartment in a calm neighborhood — had become her haven, the place where she had more control over her family’s health than she had anywhere else.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This week, thousands of writers went on strike against Hollywood studios over what they say is an existential threat to their livelihoods.
John Koblin, a media reporter for The New York Times, explains how streaming turned the most prolific era in American entertainment into an industry-changing labor dispute.
Guest: John Koblin, a media reporter for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
In the face of an escalating opioid epidemic, the F.D.A. recently approved over-the-counter sales for Narcan — a lifesaving nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose.
Jan Hoffman, who covers health law for The Times, explains why the new availability of Narcan could change the trajectory of the epidemic.
Guest: Jan Hoffman, a health law correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
For the past few months, a single lawmaker has prevented Democrats from carrying out their agenda in Congress. For now, there is no simple solution in sight.
Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The Times, explains the issue surrounding Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Guest: Annie Karni, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
On Monday morning, the federal government took over a third failing bank — this time, First Republic.
Jeanna Smialek, an economy correspondent for The Times, discusses whether we are at the end of the banking crisis, or the start of a new phase of financial pain.
Guest: Jeanna Smialek, an economy correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Last week, Speaker Kevin McCarthy persuaded Republicans to narrowly pass a bill to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, setting up high-stakes negotiations with the Biden administration.
Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress for The New York Times, explains the risks this might pose to his job and the country’s economy.
Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
In January 2022, Randi Schofield was a 34-year-old single mother who, not long before, left her full-time job of eight years as a personal bailiff to a local judge. She pulled $30,000 from her retirement savings and was planning to give herself all of 2022 to expand the small catering business she had always dreamed about. This would be the year she bet on herself. Then, that month, she received the news that medics were pulling her father out of his car.
The collision splintered the bone in his left thigh down to his knee; three days later, a metal rod held the broken pieces together. Until his leg recovered from the surgery, he would not be able to walk without assistance. In hindsight, there were warning signs that her father’s health could upend Schofield’s life. But he was also youthful and spirited, and it was easy to believe that everything was fine, that he was fine and that if she were to take care of him some day, it would be occasional and in a distant future. She didn’t see this day coming the way it did, so abruptly and so soon.
Increasing numbers of adult children are taking care of their parents, often shouldering the burden with no pay and little outside help — making their meals, helping them shower, bandaging their wounds and holding them up before they can fall. The social-work scholar Dorothy A. Miller once described this as the “peculiar position” in the modern American nuclear family, between the care people give to their aging parents and to their children. Today’s “sandwich generation” is younger than the version Miller described four decades ago, but it faces the same “unique set of unshared stresses” that she warned of then: acute financial strain, a lack of reciprocated support and “fatigue from fulfilling the demands of too many roles.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This month, an anonymous producer jolted the music industry by using artificial intelligence to impersonate the singers Drake and the Weeknd, creating a fake track, “Heart on My Sleeve,” that quickly went viral.
Joe Coscarelli, a culture reporter for The Times, talks about how the song’s rise and fall could presage widespread changes in the way music is made.
Guest: Joe Coscarelli, a culture correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This month, India reached a notable milestone. The country’s population surpassed that of China, which had held the No. 1 position for at least three centuries.
Alex Travelli, who covers South Asia and business for The Times, examines whether India can use its immense size to become an economic superpower.
Guest: Alex Travelli, a South Asia business correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
President Biden has announced that he will seek another term in the Oval Office, despite the fact that he will be 81 on Election Day 2024.
Not everyone is overjoyed about that prospect — more than half of Democrats don’t want him to run again. Nonetheless, the party’s leaders are increasingly confident about his chances. Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, explains why.
Guest: Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Less than a week after Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle the Dominion lawsuit, the network has abruptly fired Tucker Carlson — an anchor at the center of the case.
Jeremy W. Peters, who covers media and politics for The Times, explains why the network decided to cut ties with one of its biggest stars.
Guest: Jeremy W. Peters, a media and politics correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Sudan was supposed to be moving away from military rule and toward democracy. But over the past week, the country has been thrown into violent chaos as two factions battle for control.
Declan Walsh, chief Africa correspondent for The Times, explains how an explosive rivalry between two generals turned into a catastrophic conflict.
Guest: Declan Walsh, the chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
One Sunday in February, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.
Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea would throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched. They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets or yowling like Braveheart. But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting with their total beings a deranged-seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging — a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand.
The Battle of the Oranges is an annual tradition in Ivrea and part of a larger celebration described by its organizers as “the most ancient historical Carnival in Italy.” Several people in Ivrea told the writer Jon Mooallem that as three pandemic years had passed in which no oranges were thrown, they grew concerned that something bad would happen in the community — that without this catharsis, a certain pent-up, sinister energy would explode. And on that day in February, three years of constrained energy was due to explode all at once.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Last week, a 21-year old airman from Massachusetts, Jack Teixeira, was arrested under the Espionage Act and charged with violating federal laws by sharing top secret military documents with an online gaming group.
Dave Philipps, a military correspondent for The Times, explains why so many low-level government workers have access to so much classified material.
Guest: Dave Philipps, a military correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
At the very last minute, both Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News decided to settle their closely watched defamation lawsuit, rather than make their cases at trial.
Jeremy W. Peters, who covers media and politics for The Times, was inside the courtroom as it happened.
Guest: Jeremy W. Peters, a media and politics correspondent for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
In overturning Roe v. Wade last year, the Supreme Court’s message was that it was done with the issue of abortion. Now, dueling rulings on abortion pills will send the issue back to the highest court in the country.
Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, explains the case that is forcing the court to weigh in on abortion all over again.
Guest: Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service unveiled an $80 billion plan to transform itself into a “digital first” tax collector focused on customer service and cracking down on wealthy tax evaders.
Today, on the day that taxes are due in the United States, Alan Rappeport, who covers economic policy for The Times, explains how the plan could result in the agency repeating a set of old mistakes.
Guest: Alan Rappeport, an economic policy correspondent for The New York Times.
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The posturing between the United States and China has been intensifying in recent weeks — China responded with condemnations and military drills after Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, met the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.
Today, Edward Wong, who covers foreign policy at The Times, explains why China is so fixated on Taiwan, and how the U.S. got in the middle of it.
Guest: Edward Wong, a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times.
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In March 2017, an engineer at G.E. Aviation in Cincinnati received a request on LinkedIn. The engineer, Hua, is in his 40s, tall and athletic, with a boyish face that makes him look a decade younger. He moved to the United States from China in 2003 for graduate studies in structural engineering.
The LinkedIn request came from Chen Feng, a school official at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in eastern China. Days later, Chen sent him an email inviting him to the university to give a research presentation. Hua arranged to arrive in May, so he could attend a nephew’s wedding and his college reunion at Harbin Institute of Technology. There was one problem, though: Hua knew that G.E. would deny permission to give the talk if he asked, which he was supposed to do. He went to Nanjing, and flew back to the United States after the presentation. He thought that would be the end of the matter.
Many scientists and engineers of Chinese origin in the United States are invited to China to give presentations about their fields. Hua couldn’t have known that his trip to Nanjing would prove to be the start of a series of events that would end up giving the U.S. government an unprecedented look inside China’s widespread and tireless campaign of economic espionage targeting the United States, culminating in the first-ever conviction of a Chinese intelligence official on American soil.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
“The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest running show in the history of Broadway, will close its doors on Sunday after more than three decades.
We went backstage during one of the final performances before the show’s famous chandelier crashes down one last time.
Guest: Michael Paulson, a theater correspondent for The New York Times.
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A week ago, the world discovered that dozens of classified documents from the American government had been leaked online, including highly sensitive information about Russia’s war in Ukraine and damaging revelations on American spying abroad.
David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent for The Times, explains the contents of the leak and what it might mean for the war.
Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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In the week since Donald Trump was arraigned on 34 felony charges, debate about the strength of the case against him has only intensified.
Charlie Savage, a Washington correspondent at The Times, has closely studied the case and explains which side he stands on.
Guest: Charlie Savage, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin made it a crime to oppose the war in public. Since then, it has waged a relentless campaign of repression, putting Russian citizens in jail for offenses as small as holding a poster or sharing a news article on social media.
Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent for The Times, tells the story of Olesya Krivtsova, a 19-year-old student who faces up to 10 years in prison after posting on social media, and explains why the Russian government is so determined to silence those like her.
Guest: Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering Russia and the war in Ukraine.
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Last week, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled House expelled two of its members — both young Black Democrats.
Emily Cochrane, a national correspondent for The New York Times, explains the story behind the extraordinary ousting and what it tells us about this moment in American politics.
Guest: Emily Cochrane, a national correspondent for The New York Times covering the American South.
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The Times reporter Astead W. Herndon and the team are back for a new season of “The Run-Up” and they’re looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, which in many ways has already begun.
In this first episode, Astead heads to California for the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting to explore the tangled lines and scrambled allegiances that animated the effort to unseat Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the R.N.C.
This episode contains descriptions of severe injuries.
Tough new border policies introduced by the Biden administration have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States. But the measures have also created a combustible bottleneck along the southern border. That situation exploded last week when a deadly fire broke out at a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
Simon Romero, a national correspondent for The Times, explains how the United States has leaned more heavily on Mexico to help handle its immigration dilemma, bringing cities like Juárez to a breaking point.
Guest: Simon Romero, a national correspondent for The New York Times covering the Southwest.
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Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Africa last week was designed to send a simple message to its governments and people — China is not your friend. The United States is.
Abdi Latif Dahir, The New York Times’s East Africa correspondent, explains what the United States has to lose if countries in Africa choose China.
Guest: Abdi Latif Dahir, the East Africa correspondent for The New York Times.
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The line for reporters seeking to be in the courtroom for Donald J. Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan started forming at 2 p.m. on Monday, more than a day before the former president was scheduled to face a judge in a case centered on hush-money payments.
One of those who got in was Jonah Bromwich, a criminal justice correspondent for The Times.
He tells us what it was like inside the courthouse as Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts.
Guest: Jonah E. Bromwich, a criminal justice correspondent for The New York Times.
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Wisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court today, and it is no exaggeration to say that the result could end up reshaping U.S. politics for years to come.
The Times political correspondent Reid J. Epstein explains why the race to replace a single judge has become the most important American election of 2023.
Guest: Reid J. Epstein, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
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After Donald J. Trump was indicted over his role in paying hush money to a porn star during the 2016 presidential campaign, he called the move an act of political persecution.
But his impending arrest could actually make Mr. Trump a stronger candidate for 2024, the Times correspondent Maggie Haberman explains.
Guest: Maggie Haberman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.
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Joe Faillace, 69, has been running the sandwich shop Old Station Subs alongside his wife, Debbie, for the last four decades. But as an epidemic of unsheltered homelessness began to overwhelm Phoenix, and many other major American downtowns, the Faillaces have been met with hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station. Many of them were suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, resulting in incidents such as pilfered goods and public masturbation.
On one February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the middle of the street, wrapped beneath a canvas advertising banner. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of the restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate a dozen feet from the restaurant’s outdoor tables.
“It’s the usual chaos and suffering,” Joe told Debbie over the phone. “But the restaurant’s still standing.”
As the number of people living on the streets in Phoenix more than tripled after 2016, the housing crisis landed on the doorsteps of small businesses. The businesses began hiring private security firms to guard their property and lawyers to file a lawsuit against the city for failing to manage “a great humanitarian crisis.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
A Manhattan grand jury has indicted Donald J. Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case against him has kicked off a historic moment in American politics.
The investigative reporter Ben Protess discusses the development — which will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark Mr. Trump as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges — and what happens next.
Guest: Ben Protess, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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Major League Baseball is putting in effect some of the biggest changes in the sport’s history in an effort to speed up the game and inject more activity.
As the 2023 season opens, Michael Schmidt, a Times reporter, explains the extraordinary plan to save baseball from the tyranny of the home run.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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For months in Israel, the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing a highly contentious plan to fundamentally change the country’s Supreme Court, setting off some of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history.
On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu announced that he would delay his government’s campaign. Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, explains the prime minister’s surprising concession.
Guest: Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.
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This episode contains descriptions of violence
In a patch of woods southwest of Atlanta, protesters have been clashing with the police over a huge police training facility that the city wants to build there. This month, that fight came to a head when hundreds of activists breached the site, burning police and construction vehicles.
Sean Keenan, an Atlanta-based reporter, explains how what opponents call “Cop City,” and the woods surrounding it, have become an unlikely battleground in the nation’s debate over policing.
Guest: Sean Keenan, a freelance reporter for The New York Times.
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A few days ago, Utah became the first state to pass a law prohibiting social media services from allowing users under 18 to have accounts without the explicit consent of a parent or guardian. The move, by Republican officials, is intended to address what they describe as a mental health crisis among American teenagers as well as to protect younger users from bullying and child sexual exploitation.The technology reporter Natasha Singer explains the measure, and why it could be a sign of where the country is headed.
Guest: Natasha Singer, who writes about technology, business and society for The New York Times.
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Like a lot of people who get into professional wrestling, Donovan Danhausen had a vision of a different version of himself. Ten years ago, at age 21, he was living in Detroit, working as a nursing assistant at a hospital, watching a lot of “Adult Swim” and accumulating a collection of horror- and comedy-themed tattoos.
At the suggestion of a friend, he took a 12-week training course at the House of Truth wrestling school in Center Line, Mich., and then entered the indie circuit as a hand: an unknown, unpaid wrestler who shows up at events and does what’s asked of him, typically setting up the ring or pretending to be a lawyer or another type of extra. When he ran out of momentum five years later, he developed the character of Danhausen. Originally supposed to be an evil demon, Danhausen found that the more elements of humor he incorporated into his performance, the more audiences responded.
“I was just a bearded guy with the tattoos, trying to be a tough guy, and I’m not a tough guy naturally,” he said. “But I can be weird and charismatic, goofy. That’s easy. That’s also a role that most people don’t want to fill.”
Over the next couple of years, the Danhausen gimmick became more funny than evil, eventually settling on the character he plays today — one that is bizarre even by the standards of 21st-century wrestling.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
A few days ago, the Biden administration released a report warning that a warming planet posed severe economic challenges for the United States, which would require the federal government to reassess its spending priorities and how it influenced behavior.
White House reporter Jim Tankersley explains why getting the government to encourage the right decisions will be so difficult.
Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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A.O. Scott started as a film critic at The New York Times in January of 2000. Next month he will move to the Book Review as a critic at large.
After 23 years as a film critic, Mr. Scott discusses why he is done with the movies, and what his decision reveals about the new realities of American cinema.
Guest: A.O. Scott, a longtime film critic for The New York Times.
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Barney Frank was one of the people most responsible for overhauling financial regulation after the 2008 economic crisis. After retiring from Congress, he supported a change to his own law that would benefit midsize banks, and joined the board of such a bank.
Last week, that bank failed. David Enrich called Mr. Frank and asked him to explain.
Guest: David Enrich, the business investigations editor at The New York Times.
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As Xi Jinping, China’s leader, meets with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow this week, Chinese officials have been presenting his trip as a mission of peace. But American and European officials are watching for something else altogether — whether Mr. Xi will add fuel to the full-scale war that Mr. Putin began more than a year ago.
Edward Wong explains what Mr. Xi is really up to, and why it’s making people wonder whether a new Cold War is underway.
Guest: Edward Wong, a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times.
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TikTok, the app known for short videos of lip syncing, dancing and bread baking, is one of the most popular platforms in the country, used by one out of every three Americans.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has threatened to ban it over concerns that it poses a threat to national security.
Guest: Sapna Maheshwari, a business reporter for The New York Times.
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As an American, Sam Anderson knows what it feels like to arrive at a theme park. “The totalizing consumerist embrace,” he writes. “The blunt-force, world-warping, escapist delight.” He has known theme parks with entrances like “international borders” and ticket prices like “mortgage payments.” Mr. Anderson has been to Disney World, which he describes as “an alternate reality that basically occupies its own tax zone.”
In November, when Ghibli Park finally opened, Mr. Anderson made sure to get himself there. The park is a tribute to the legendary Studio Ghibli, first started by the animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, out of desperation, when he and his co-founders, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, couldn’t find a studio willing to put out their work.
Miyazaki is detail-obsessed. He agonizes over his children’s cartoons as if he were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, insisting that, although few viewers will be conscious of all this work, every viewer will feel it. And we do. Those tiny touches, adding up across the length of a film, anchor his fantasies in the actual world.
And so, after many years, and much traveling — at long last — Mr. Anderson found himself stepping into the wonders of Ghibli Park. His first impression was not awe or majesty or surrender or consumerist bliss. It was confusion.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
In the past week, as spooked customers frantically withdrew $42 billion from Silicon Valley Bank, the U.S. government stepped in to craft a rescue operation for the failed lender.
But efforts to contain the crisis have met resistance, and the fallout of the collapse has already spread to other regional banks, whose stocks have plummeted.
Guest: Emily Flitter, a finance correspondent for The New York Times.
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This episode contains strong language
Millions of people have taken to the streets in France to protest a government effort to raise the retirement age to 64, from 62, bringing the country more in line with its European neighbors.
Today, as Parliament holds a key vote on the proposal, we look into why the issue has hit such a nerve in French society.
Guest: Roger Cohen, the Paris bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Three years after the start of Covid, the central mystery of the pandemic — how exactly it began — remains unsolved. But recently, the debate about the source of the coronavirus has re-emerged, this time in Congress.
The Energy Department has concluded, with “low confidence,” that an accidental laboratory leak in China was most likely the origin, but politics are making it harder to find definitive answers.
Guest: Benjamin Mueller, a health and science correspondent for The New York Times.
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With federal regulators planning to take over the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, a 40-year-old institution based in California, nearly $175 billion in customer deposits will be placed under the authorities’ control.
The lender’s demise is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and the largest since the financial crisis in 2008. The debacle raised concerns that other banks could face problems, too.
Guest: Emily Flitter, a finance correspondent for The New York Times.
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The principle behind E.S.G. is that investors should look beyond just whether a company can make a profit and take into account other factors, such as its environmental impact and action on social issues.
But critics of that investment strategy, mostly Republicans, say that Wall Street has taken a sharp left turn, attacking what they term “woke capitalism.”
Guest: David Gelles, a climate correspondent for The New York Times.
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After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany told Parliament that the attack was a Zeitenwende — a historic “turning point” for Europe and Germany. The risk of a large land war in Europe had previously been considered far-fetched, but recent years of Russian aggression have inspired fear in Germany and a 100-billion-euro fund to bolster its military.
In Germany, skepticism of the merits of military strength has enabled a long post-Cold War process of disarmament. As a result, it is a historic anomaly in the heart of Europe — an economic leviathan but a military minnow. Now German leaders are vowing to transform the country into a military power capable of taking responsibility for Europe’s security.
In Nienburg, a medieval town in Lower Saxony, civilians come to train for “homeland protection” units in the country’s reserves. The question is whether a hesitant German society can follow through on this paradigm shift.
“I would say, many of them lean in the direction of being pacifists,” said Anne Katrin Meister, who is training at the base in Nienburg. “But you can only be a pacifist if you have this safe, ideal world. And we don’t have such a world.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Almost immediately after taking power in December, Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition in Isreal proposed a highly contentious overhaul of the Supreme Court.
The court has long been seen as a crucial check and lone backstop on the government, and the plan has divided Israeli society, kindling fears of political violence and even civil war.
Guest: Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Slaughterhouses, construction sites, factories. A Times investigation has found that migrant children have been thrust into jobs in some of the most demanding workplaces in the United States.
How did this crisis in child labor develop? And now that it has been exposed, what is being done to tackle the problem?
Guest: Hannah Dreier, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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The sabotage in September of the Nord Stream pipelines carrying Russian gas to Europe has become one of the central mysteries of the war in Ukraine, prompting months of finger-pointing and guesswork.
Now, new intelligence reporting has provided the first significant known lead about who was responsible.
Guest: Julian E. Barnes, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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As the race to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate gets underway, one figure has emerged as a particularly powerful rival to Donald J. Trump.
That person, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has broken away from the pack by turning his state into a laboratory for a post-Trump version of conservatism.
Guest: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times.
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On Feb. 3, a nearly two-mile long freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, a town of about 4,700 people.
The railroad company and local officials decided to do a chemical burn to neutralize the cargo, but as a giant plume of black smoke settled over the town, residents’ anger about the handling of the accident has intensified.
Guest: Emily Cochrane, a national correspondent for The New York Times.
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Today, we’re taking some time out of our regularly scheduled programming to share the first episode of “The Coldest Case in Laramie.” In the new series from The Times and Serial, Kim Barker, a Times investigative reporter, digs into the 1985 murder of Shelli Wiley, a young woman who was a few years older than Kim when they both lived in Laramie, Wyoming.
The long-unsolved case took a turn in 2016 when the police arrested someone for Shelli’s murder: a former officer named Fred Lamb. The evidence against him seemed solid, but prosecutors, confusingly, dropped the case. They’ve never refiled.
How did a case that seemed this open-and-shut fall apart with such a whimper? To find answers, Kim heads back to Laramie and grapples with conflicting memories and dueling narratives.
In episode one, Kim starts to call up Shelli’s family members to try to piece together what happened. To listen to all eight parts, visit nytimes.com/laramie.
As Russian troops pushed into Ukraine, children who were fleeing newly occupied territories were swept up. Many became part of a Russian effort to portray itself as a charitable savior.
The children were placed in Russian families and paraded on television. The Times interviewed one child who was taken from Ukraine, a girl named Anya, who said she ached to return.
Guest: Emma Bubola, a reporter for The New York Times based in London.
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In August, President Biden announced a loan cancellation plan that would erase an astonishing $400 billion in student debt — one of the most ambitious and expensive executive actions ever.
Now, in a far-reaching case, the Supreme Court will decide whether the president is authorized to take such a big step.
Guest: Adam Liptak, a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times.
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In 2000, the F.D.A. approved the medication abortion drug mifepristone. Now a federal judge in Texas is set to rule on a case filed by anti-abortion groups urging the agency to revoke its approval of mifepristone and the other main drug used for medication abortion in the United States. Abortion via medication has become increasingly common and now accounts for more than half of the nation’s abortions.
Plus, the Biden administration has started talking publicly about its intelligence when it comes to China, breaking with a long tradition of keeping U.S. secrets close to the chest. The secretary of state, the director of the C.I.A. and even the president himself have made statements on TV expressing concern over China’s plans to help Russia in the war in Ukraine.
Guest: Pam Belluck, a health and science correspondent for The New York Times.
Julian E. Barnes, a national security correspondent for The Times.
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The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6 left more than 50,000 people dead. The sight of rescuers combing the rubble has prompted questions about why so many buildings seemed so inadequate to resist the shaking earth.
In Turkey, the government has turned the focus onto builders and property developers, accusing them of chasing profit over safety. But the reality is far more complicated.
Guest: Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.
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After the 2020 election, wild theories ran rampant on the right of an election stolen from Donald Trump through a coordinated conspiracy. The news channel Fox News became one of the loudest voices amplifying these false claims into millions of U.S. households.
Now, a defamation lawsuit by Dominion, a voting machine maker that was cast as a villain in these conspiracy theories, seeks to hold the media company responsible for the false claims made by its hosts and guests, presenting evidence that Fox knew what it was doing was wrong.
Guest: Jeremy W. Peters, a correspondent for The New York Times who covers the media and its intersection with politics, culture and law.
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In February, the first lawsuit against Tesla for a crash involving its driver-assistance system, Autopilot, will go to trial. The slew of trials set to follow will be a costly fight that the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, has vowed to take on in court. When Tesla released its Autopilot feature in October 2015, Musk touted the feature as “probably better” than a human driver. The reality, however, has proved different: On average, there is at least one Autopilot-related crash in the United States every day.
While several of these accidents will feature in the upcoming trials, another camp of Tesla users who have fallen victim to Autopilot crashes are unwilling to take a negative stance because of their love for the brand. Or because they believe that accidents are a necessary evil in the process of perfecting the Autopilot software.
Dave Key, whose 2015 Tesla Model S drifted out of its lane and slammed into the back of a parked police S.U.V., is of the latter camp.
“As a society,” Key argued, “we choose the path to save the most lives.”
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The war has already done untold damage. By some estimates, tens of thousands have died, and the country has sustained tens of billions of dollars’ worth of damage that has left cities flattened. But Ukraine has also largely stopped the offensives of its much larger and better-armed neighbor and has regained some captured land.
On the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, these Ukrainians reflect on how the past year of conflict has changed their lives.
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Since 1996, the modern internet has been defined by a sweeping law that prevents tech companies such as Facebook and Google from being held responsible for the content posted on their sites.
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could take that legal immunity away.
Guest: Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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In a major shift that would modify laws set half a decade ago, states and cities around the United States are moving to legalize psychedelics for use as a medical treatment.
The sudden change of heart has a lot to do with who is asking for the substances.
Guest: Andrew Jacobs, a health and science reporter for The New York Times.
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The great supply chain disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic scrambled the shipping system across the Pacific.
Although mostly over, the turmoil has led to alterations in the way the global economy functions. One such change can be seen in Mexico, where companies from China are increasingly setting up shop.
Guest: Peter S. Goodman, a global economics correspondent for The New York Times.
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Times tech columnist Kevin Roose stopped by The Daily twice this week to chronicle the debut of Bing’s new chatbot — and the creepy things that transpired. Today, we’re bringing you the latest episode of Kevin’s podcast, Hard Fork. Kevin, along with his co-host Casey Newton, expand the discussion about why Microsoft’s A.I. search tool appears more powerful — and more unsettling — than they initially believed. Plus: a conversation about Elon Musk’s quest to be the most popular user on Twitter, and why online ads have gotten so much worse (like, much worse).
Hard Fork is a podcast about the future of technology that’s already here. You can search for Hard Fork wherever you get your podcasts. Visit nytimes.com/hardfork for more.
Microsoft recently released a new version of its search engine Bing that is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
On Valentine’s Day, after a meal with his wife, Kevin Roose, a New York Times technology columnist, had a two-hour conversation with the chatbot.
The chatbot, which revealed that it identified as Sydney, told Kevin that it wanted to be human, that it loved him and that he should leave his wife.
“There is something going on here that I don’t think Microsoft intended to build into a search engine,” Kevin said on today’s episode. “Something is not right.”
Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”
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When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Syria and Turkey last week, it killed thousands and created a crisis within a crisis.
International aid began pouring into Turkey, but northwestern Syria, which was also hard-hit, received only a trickle. It was a bitter blow for Syrians, whose lives had already been uprooted by years of civil war, mass displacement and death.
Today, we hear from some Syrians and look at why it is so difficult for the world to help them.
Guest: Raja Abdulrahim, a correspondent in Jerusalem for The New York Times who traveled to northwestern Syria after the earthquake.
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Microsoft recently released a new version of Bing, its search engine that has long been kind of a punchline in the tech world.
The company billed this Bing — which is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT — as a reinvention of how billions of people search the internet.
How does that claim hold up?
Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”
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Last week, after the Air Force shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon, examination of its wreckage revealed that it could not only take images, but also scoop up radio and cellphone communications.
The balloon, the U.S. military said, was part of a bigger global program by China to collect information about military operations.
Since then the U.S. has shot down three other objects from the skies over North America — apparently without knowing much about them.
Guest: Julian E. Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times.
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Amid growing threats from rivals like China, the United States military is determined to invest in new forms of defense and abandon those that no longer meet its needs.
On that list: a combat ship rife with flaws. But getting rid of the ship has proved unexpectedly difficult.
Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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Menopausal hormone therapy was once the most commonly prescribed treatment in the United States. In the late 1990s, some 15 million women a year were receiving a prescription for it. But in 2002, a single study, its design imperfect, found links between hormone therapy and elevated health risks for women of all ages. Panic set in; in one year, the number of prescriptions plummeted.
Hormone therapy carries risks, to be sure, as do many medications that people take to relieve serious discomfort, but dozens of studies since 2002 have provided reassurance that for healthy women under 60 whose hot flashes are troubling them, the benefits of taking hormones outweigh the risks. The treatment’s reputation, however, has never fully recovered, and the consequences have been wide-reaching.
About 85 percent of women experience menopausal symptoms. Rebecca Thurston, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who studies menopause, believes that, in general, menopausal women have been underserved — an oversight that she considers one of the great blind spots of medicine.
“It suggests that we have a high cultural tolerance for women’s suffering,” Thurston said. “It’s not regarded as important.”
To hear more stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This weekend, one of the most watched sporting events of the year, the Super Bowl, will draw an estimated $16 billion in bets from Americans, more than double last year’s total.
The booming trade is a sign of how gambling has gone from illegal to legal very quickly in many states — and hints at the enormous risks posed by the change.
Guest: Kenneth P. Vogel, an investigative correspondent for The New York Times.
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For the past decade, San Francisco has worked hard to turn its downtown into a vibrant hub, providing a model that other cities in the United States looked to emulate.
In the wake of the pandemic, however, many buildings and offices in the center of the city have remained empty.
What went wrong?
Guest: Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter at The New York Times and author of “Golden Gates: The Housing Crisis and a Reckoning for the American Dream.”; and Emma Goldberg, a reporter covering the future of work for The Times.
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This episode contains descriptions of violence.
The death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, at the hands of officers in Memphis last month has intensified calls for fundamental reform in policing. Those calls were echoed yesterday by President Biden, who hosted Mr. Nichols’s parents at the State of the Union address.
Today, we hear about a Times investigation into the special team of officers, known as the Scorpion unit, that is accused of killing Mr. Nichols.
Guest: Mike Baker, the Seattle bureau chief and a national correspondent for The New York Times.
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On Monday, a giant 7.8-magnitude earthquake and an aftershock almost as big shook the earth in southern Turkey. The quakes sent ripples through neighboring countries, but the area along the Syrian-Turkish border was hit particularly hard.
Thousands of people have been killed, and dozens of cities have been gutted.
We hear from witnesses on the ground about what happened when the devastating tremors hit.
Guest: Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.
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On Wednesday, residents in Montana saw a mysterious object — a balloon — hovering and bobbing around in the skies. The enigma brought Americans out to squint at the heavens, caused a diplomatic visit to be canceled and opened a political debate.
How did a balloon end up kindling such tension between Washington and Beijing?
Guest: Edward Wong, a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times.
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Going out to dinner with Juan Tamariz in Madrid is a little like accompanying a cartoon character on a journey to the real world. As Shuja Haider, the author of today’s Sunday Read, walked with him on side streets off the city center’s main drag, the Calle Gran Vía, heads turned left and right.
Mr. Tamariz, 80, has been a professional magician for 52 years, and in that time, he has managed the singular feat of becoming both a household name in his home country and a living legend in magic everywhere. David Blaine has called him “the greatest and most influential card magician alive.” But in Spain, Mr. Tamariz is an icon, less like Mr. Blaine or David Copperfield and more like Kermit the Frog.
In the United States, the most visible performers of magic in the late 20th century were stage illusionists who worked with big boxes and flashing lights. But Mr. Tamariz appears on stage and screen armed with little more than his two hands. He introduced Spanish viewers to the style of magic called “close-up,” done with ordinary objects, in near-enough proximity for a conversation and incorporating the participation of spectators.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The Biden administration said this week that it would end the public health emergency for Covid, a sign that federal officials believe that the pandemic has moved into a new, less dire phase.
The move carries both symbolic weight and real-world consequences for millions of Americans.
Guest: Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter for The New York Times.
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For the past 50 years, the race to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee has been shaped by the where the contest begins: Iowa.
But that process could soon be overhauled. In a coming meeting of the Democratic National Committee, South Carolina — a state that is more representative of the party and, possibly, of the country — could take over the key role of going first.
Guest: Adam Nagourney, a West Coast cultural affairs correspondent for The New York Times.
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The typical sales price of an existing family home in the United States in December: 372,700. The number of layoffs in the tech sector since the beginning of the year: 76,000. The number by which consumer spending fell in December: 0.2 percent. The increase in the cost of the same kind of carton of eggs bought by an editor on “The Daily” a year apart: 251 percent.
What do these numbers tell us about the state of the country’s economy?
Guest: Ben Casselman, an economics and business reporter for The New York Times.
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In the United States, 40 million people in seven states depend on water provided by the Colorado River.
After 20 years of drought, the situation is dire and the river is at risk of becoming a “deadpool,” a condition in which there is not enough water to pass through the dams.
The states were supposed to come up with a deal to cut their usage by Tuesday. Now, the federal government may have to step in and make a difficult decision.
Guest: Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter for The New York Times.
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This episode contains descriptions of violence and strong language.
Tyre Nichols was a 29-year-old Black man who lived in Memphis. His mother described him as living a simple and pleasant life. He worked for FedEx, loved to skateboard, was an amateur photographer and had a 4-year-old son.
On the evening of Jan. 7, after a traffic stop, Mr. Nichols was violently beaten by the police, sustaining severe injuries. He died on Jan. 10.
For weeks, what exactly had happened was unclear. This weekend, videos of the encounter were released.
Guest: Rick Rojas, the Southern bureau chief for The New York Times.
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In the past half-century, 17 percent of the Amazon — an area larger than Texas — has been converted to croplands or cattle pasture. Less forest means less recycled rain, less vapor to cool the air, less of a canopy to shield against sunlight. Under drier, hotter conditions, even the lushest of Amazonian trees will shed leaves to save water, inhibiting photosynthesis — a feedback loop that is only exacerbated by global warming.
According to the Brazilian Earth system scientist Carlos Nobre, if deforestation reaches 20 to 25 percent of the original area, “flying rivers” — rain clouds that recycle the forest’s own moisture five or six times — will weaken enough that a rainforest simply will not be able to survive in most of the Amazon Basin. Instead it will collapse into scrubby savanna, possibly in a matter of decades.
Losing the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, would be catastrophic for the tens of thousands of species that make their home there. What scientists are most concerned about, though, is the potential for this regional, ecological tipping point to produce knock-on effects in the global climate.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This episode contains descriptions of violence and injury.
In September, protests began in Iran over the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the government. The demonstrations have since intensified, as has the government’s response, with thousands arrested and a terrifying campaign of public executions underway.
Today, Iranians who have taken part in the demonstrations tell us — in their own words — why they are willing to brave such severe punishments to help bring about change.
Guest: Cora Engelbrecht, an international reporter for The New York Times.
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Recent advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a bold approach to treating the millions of children in the United States who are affected by obesity. Counseling, drug treatment and even surgery should be considered, the group says.
The guidelines are a response to a deeper understanding of what obesity is — and what to do about it.
Guest: Gina Kolata, a medical reporter for The New York Times.
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Nonprofit hospitals — which make up around half of hospitals in the United States — were founded to help the poor.
But a Times investigation has revealed that many have deviated from those charitable roots, behaving like for-profit companies, sometimes to the detriment of the health of patients.
Guest: Jessica Silver-Greenberg, an investigative business reporter for The New York Times.
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Over the weekend, F.B.I. agents found classified documents at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., after conducting a 13-hour search.
The search — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — resulted in the latest in a series of discoveries that has already led to a special counsel investigation.
What miscalculations have Mr. Biden and his team make throughout this ordeal?
Guest: Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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In the past decade or more, votes over increasing the U.S. debt ceiling have increasingly been used as a political tool. That has led to intense showdowns in 2011, 2013 and, now, 2023.
This year, both sides of the argument are dug in and Republicans appear more willing to go over the cliff than in the past.
What does this year’s showdown look like and how, exactly, did the United States’ debt balloon to $31 trillion?
Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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In a room in a modest concrete building in a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception. Technically an “anechoic chamber,” the room is the quietest place on the planet — according to some.
What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible speculation. Public fascination with it exploded 10 years ago, with an article on The Daily Mail’s website. The article left readers to extrapolate their own conclusions about the room from the short, haunting observations of its proprietor, Steven J. Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories.
“You’ll hear your heart beating,” Orfield was quoted as saying. And, “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”
Much of the lore about the chamber’s propensity for mind-annihilation centers on the concept of blood sounds. Hearing the movement of blood through the body is supposedly something like an absolute taboo, akin to witnessing the fabrication of Chicken McNuggets — an ordeal after which placid existence is irreparably shattered.
Despite this, Caity Weaver, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, wanted to give the chamber a go.
To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
With mountains, intense mud, fast-running rivers and thick rainforest, the Darién Gap, a strip of terrain connecting South and Central America, is one of the most dangerous places on the planet.
Over the past few years, there has been an enormous increase in the number of migrants passing through the perilous zone in the hopes of getting to the United States.
Today, we hear the story of one family that’s risking everything to make it across.
Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United States and allies have held back from sending Kyiv their most potent arms.
Over the past few weeks, that has started to change.
Guest: Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.
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With little warning or regulation, companies are increasingly using facial recognition technology on their customers — as a security measure, they say.
But what happens when the systems are actually being used to punish the companies’ enemies?
Guest: Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter for The New York Times.
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For nearly three years, China had one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world, thanks to its strict yet effective “zero Covid” approach.
But last month, the government suddenly abandoned the policy. Since then, there have been millions of coronavirus cases across the country.
Guest: Alexandra Stevenson, the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times.
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In states where abortion is severely limited or illegal, clinicians face imminent prosecution if they continue to provide abortions. What is much less clear is what happens if providers in blue states offer telemedicine abortions to women in states where that’s against the law. These clinicians, too, could be arrested or sued or lose their medical licenses. To protect themselves, they may have to give up traveling to certain parts of the country — and it’s still no guarantee.
In the face of so much uncertainty and an invigorated anti-abortion movement, large organizations and most clinicians are loath to gamble.
But some providers think that the end of Roe v. Wade calls for doctors to take bold action.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The Justice Department is scrutinizing how both former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden came to have classified records after they left office.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel after the discovery of two batches of classified documents from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president.
How are the two cases similar, how are they different and what might that mean for both?
Guest: Glenn Thrush, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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For weeks, a string of major storms have hit California, causing extreme flooding. While it might seem as if rain should have a silver lining for a state stuck in a historic drought, the reality is far more complicated.
Today, how California’s water management in the past has made today’s flooding worse and why it represents a missed opportunity for the future of the state’s water crisis.
Guest: Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter for The New York Times.
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After Jair Bolsonaro lost October’s Brazilian presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, many believed that the threat of violence from the defeated leader’s supporters would recede. They were wrong.
Mr. Bolsonaro had spent years sewing doubt and undermining Brazil’s election system, and last week, thousands of rioters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices.
What happened — and how did Brazil get here?
Guest: Jack Nicas, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Air travel was a mess over the holidays — in the last 10 days of December, 30,000 flights were canceled.
While every airline was affected, one stood out: Southwest, which over the past few decades has transformed how Americans fly, melted down. In the last 10 days of the year, it canceled as many flights as it had done in the previous 10 months.
So what went wrong?
Guest: Niraj Chokshi, a business reporter for The New York Times.
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Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House turned into a rolling disaster last week, played out over five long days and 15 rounds of voting.
Today, the inside story of how it went so wrong — and what he was forced to give up in order to finally win.
Guest: Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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On Christmas Eve in 1971, Juliane Diller, then 17, and her mother boarded a flight in Lima, Peru. She was headed for Panguana, a biological research station in the belly of the Amazon, where for three years she had lived, on and off, with her mother, Maria, and her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, both zoologists.
About 25 minutes after takeoff, the plane flew into a thunderstorm, was struck by lightning and broke apart. Strapped to her seat, Juliane fell some 10,000 feet, nearly two miles. Her row of seats is thought to have landed in dense foliage, cushioning the impact. Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash.
LANSA Flight 508 was the deadliest lightning-strike disaster in aviation history.
In the 50 years since the crash, Juliane moved to Germany, earned a Ph.D. in biology, became an eminent zoologist, got married — and, after her father’s death, took over as director of Panguana and the primary organizer of expeditions to the refuge.
To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The current level of biodiversity loss is extraordinary in human history: The global rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.
At the end of 2022, countries around the world came together in Montreal for an agreement akin to the Paris climate accord to tackle the biodiversity crisis. Here’s more on the effort and how it seeks to confront the problem.
Guest: Catrin Einhorn, who reports on biodiversity and climate for The New York Times.
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George Santos, the Republican representative-elect from New York, ran for office and won his seat in part on an inspiring personal story.
But when Times reporters started looking into his background, they made some astonishing revelations: Almost all of Mr. Santos’s story was fake.
Guests: Michael Gold, a reporter covering New York for The New York Times. Grace Ashford, a reporter covering New York politics for The Times.
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This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence.
When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, many believed the country’s army would quickly crush the Ukrainian forces. Instead, Russian military failures have defined the war.
Today, we hear from Russian soldiers, and explore why a military superpower keeps making the same mistakes and why, despite it all, its soldiers keep going back to fight.
Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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This episode contains strong language.
Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four years. The transition is shaping up to be chaotic.
Today, the 118th Congress will gather for the first time in the Capitol, yet there is still a question mark over who is going to be the Republican speaker of the House.
Why is there still a fight over leadership?
Guest: Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.
Kirill, 24, worked at a nonprofit for homeless people in the Moscow region. He does not support the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin and is vehemently against the invasion of Ukraine.
After suffering setbacks in the war, Mr. Putin announced a military draft in September. Kirill was among those called up. In September, Sabrina Tavernise spoke to Kirill who was hiding to avoid being served his papers. Since then, Kirill decided to flee Russia to avoid the draft. Today, Sabrina Tavernise checks in with Kirill about what’s happened since he left his country.
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This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since.
In May, the United States was stunned by the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that previewed the end of Roe v. Wade. After, we spoke to people on both sides of the abortion issue. Today, we revisit conversations with two women, an anti-abortion activist and an abortion provider, and discuss how their lives have changed since the end of the constitutional right to abortion.
Guests:
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This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.
In July, NASA released new images captured from a point in space one million miles from Earth. Ancient galaxies carpeting the sky like jewels on black velvet. Fledgling stars shining out from deep within cumulus clouds of interstellar dust.
Today, we return to our episode about the moment when the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest space observatory ever built, sent its first images back to Earth — and explore what the telescope has discovered since then in its long journey across the universe.
Guest: Kenneth Chang, a science reporter for The New York Times.
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This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.
This year, we explored the story of Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, two Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City, who had embarked on an improbable attempt to create the company’s first union and succeeded.
Today, we return to their story and learn about the current state of their organizing effort.
Guest: Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter for The New York Times; and Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, warehouse workers who led the first successful unionization attempt at Amazon.
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This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.
This episode contains strong language.
This year, in response to Russia’s increasingly brutal campaign against Ukrainian towns and cities, millions of people — most of them women and children — fled Ukraine. It was the fastest displacement of people in Europe since World War II.
Today, we return to the beginning of the invasion and reporting from our host Sabrina Tavernise, who traveled alongside some of those fleeing the conflict.
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During his time as a restaurant critic for The Times, Pete Wells has become both feared and revered in the world of dining — crowning those at the top and dethroning those whose time has passed.
But when the pandemic arrived, handing out stars to fancy restaurants made no sense anymore. A fundamental change was needed.
Guest: Pete Wells, a restaurant critic for The New York Times.
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A few weeks ago, when President Pedro Castillo of Peru attempted an illegal power grab and ended up in jail, the response was unexpected: Thousands of protesters took to the streets to support him, and some died.
Why does such a divisive leader have such fierce backing? And what does the upheaval in Peru tell us about the way the political winds are blowing in South America?
Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times.
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This episode contains descriptions of violence.
At the end of every year, The New York Times Magazine devotes an issue to remembering those who have died in the past year.
This year’s focus is gun violence, which is now the leading cause of death for American children, and the short lives that ended far too soon because of it.
Today, we remember three of them: Lavonte’e Williams, Elijah Gomez and Shiway Barry.
On today’s episode: The voices of Cheese, Shiway Barry's best friend; Crystal Cathcart, Elijah Gomez’s aunt, and his mother, Jennifer Cathcart; and Lavonte’e Williams’s mother, Miracle Jones, and Michael Jones and Tanika Jones, his grandparents.
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Every step of the way, the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has been groundbreaking.
As it wraps up its work, the panel referred former President Donald J. Trump to the Justice Department and accused him of four crimes, including inciting insurrection. The referrals do not carry legal weight or compel any action by the Justice Department, but they were a major escalation.
Here’s what happened during the committee’s final public meeting.
Guest: Luke Broadwater, a Congressional reporter for The New York Times.
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For weeks, much of the globe has been riveted by the highs and lows of the World Cup in Qatar. On Sunday, the soccer tournament culminated in a win for Argentina and its star, Lionel Messi, against France.
Here’s how the thrill of the game eclipsed the tournament’s tainted beginnings, and what that might reveal about the future.
Guest: Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent for The New York Times.
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“On his first night at the Brooklyn homeless shelter, Tin Chin met his best friend.”
So begins an unforgettable story of deceit and friendship, and the loneliness of starting life anew in a foreign country.
The journalist Sam Dolnick traces how two men came to find themselves in the homeless shelter, and how their shared backgrounds meant they became fast friends. But the story, as all good stories often do, quickly takes an unexpected turn.
This story was written and narrated by Sam Dolnick. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This episode contains strong language.
In the past few weeks, a major breakthrough in the world of artificial intelligence — ChatGPT — has put extraordinary powers in the hands of anyone with access to the internet.
Released by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company, ChatGPT can write essays, come up with scripts for TV shows, answer math questions and even write code.
Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”
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This fall, as Russia’s losses mounted in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced a draft. Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of men fled the country, though many more stayed.
Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent for The Times, spoke to Russians at a draft office in Moscow to gauge how they felt about going to war and who they blame for the fighting.
Guest: Valerie Hopkins, an international correspondent covering the war in Ukraine for The New York Times.
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When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this year, it appeared to be an unvarnished victory for the anti-abortion movement.
But as the year draws to a close, the realities of a post-Roe America are turning out differently than anyone predicted.
Guest: Kate Zernike, a national correspondent for The New York Times.
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Three thousand security officers fanned out across Germany this past week, raiding 150 homes, arresting 25 people and putting more than 50 others under investigation for plotting to overthrow the national government in Berlin.
The target of the counterterrorism operation, one of the biggest that postwar Germany has seen, was a movement known as the Reichsbürger, or citizens of the Reich.
What does the Reichsbürger plot reveal about the depth of right-wing extremism in the country?
Guest: Katrin Bennhold, the Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Companies like Meta and Twitter have said that they will be cutting jobs. Google and Amazon have announced that they are putting a freeze on any new hiring.
Are tech layoffs a sign of things to come across other sectors? Is this the opening bell for the bad news on the economy that many have been bracing for?
Guest: Jeanna Smialek, a correspondent covering the Federal Reserve and economy for The New York Times.
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Shortly after the war in Ukraine began, terrified civilians from across the country made their way to their cities’ main train stations.
The stations became scenes of great panic, with people jostling to be admitted onto the crowded trains. Compartments were filled 10 times their intended capacity, and people were packed shoulder to shoulder, unable to sit down. Images from these moments captured the beginning of the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
In this extensively reported article, Sarah A. Topol explores the history and cultural significance of Ukraine’s railways, and their crucial importance within the war effort.
This story was written by Sarah A. Topol and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
On one level, the case brought before the Supreme Court is about gerrymandering. But on a broader level, it’s about a theory that would completely reorient the relationship between the federal and state governments and upset the ordinary checks and balances.
Guest: Adam Liptak, a correspondent covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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This episode contains descriptions of distressing scenes.
Haiti is unraveling. Gangs control much of the capital, thousands have been displaced and hundreds more are dead.
In recent weeks, the government has taken the extraordinary step of asking for an armed intervention from abroad.
What is it like on the ground, and what does the request mean for Haitians?
Guest: Natalie Kitroeff, the bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for The New York Times.
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This episode contains strong language.
In the contentious debate over who controls what happens in America’s schools, a new battleground has emerged: library books.
This is the story of what happened when parents in one town in New Jersey tried to remove a handful of books that they said were explicit and sexually inappropriate — and the battle that ensued.
Guest: Alexandra Alter, a reporter covering publishing and the literary world for The New York Times.
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Georgia voters are heading to the polls for the final battle of the 2022 midterms — the runoff election between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker.
Both parties have their own challenges: Republicans have a candidate quality issue in Mr. Walker, and Democrats are concerned about the turnout of their voter coalition. One side, though, already seems resigned to losing.
Guest: Maya King, a politics reporter covering the South for The New York Times.
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For months, the war in Ukraine was about territory as both sides fought to control areas in the country’s south and east.
In recent weeks, the war has taken a new turn.
Mounting attacks on civilian infrastructure have left people across Ukraine without power, heat and sometimes water as the snow begins to fall.
Guest: Marc Santora, the International News Editor for The New York Times.
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Jon Mooallem met with the director Noah Baumbach to discuss his latest film, an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel “White Noise.”
The pair explore the recent chain of personal and public events in Baumbach’s life, including the toll of the coronavirus pandemic and the death of his father, and how this “routine trauma” has affected his work, and why it prompted him to create a discombobulated, “elevated reality” for his film in the vein of David Lynch, the Coen brothers and Spike Lee.
This story was written and narrated by Jon Mooallem. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Last month at COP27, the U.N. climate change conference, a yearslong campaign ended in an agreement. The rich nations of the world — the ones primarily responsible for the emissions that have caused climate change — agreed to pay into a fund to help poorer nations that bear the brunt of its effects.
In the background, however, an even more meaningful plan was taking shape, led by the tiny island nation of Barbados.
Guest: David Gelles, a climate correspondent for The New York Times.
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In a landmark verdict, a jury convicted Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, of sedition for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The charge he faced, seditious conspiracy, is one that can be traced to the American Civil War.
How did federal prosecutors make their case, and what does the verdict tell us about just how organized the attack really was?
Guest: Alan Feuer, a reporter covering courts and criminal justice for The New York Times.
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Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict coronavirus restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. It was the most extensive series of protests since the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
This is what these demonstrations look and feel like, and what they mean for President Xi Jinping and his quest for “zero Covid.”
Guest: Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times.
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For the past few months, Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker, investigative reporters for The New York Times, have looked into a secretive, yearslong effort by an anti-abortion activist to influence the justices of the Supreme Court.
This is the story of the Rev. Rob Schenck, the man who led that effort.
Guest: Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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The World Cup, the biggest single sporting event on the planet, began earlier this month. By the time the tournament finishes, half the global population is expected to have watched.
The 2022 World Cup has also been the focus of over a decade of controversy because of its unlikely host: the tiny, energy-rich country of Qatar.
How did such a small nation come to host the tournament, and at what cost?
Guest: Tariq Panja, a sports business reporter for The New York Times.
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Being tasked with the turkey on Thanksgiving can be a high-pressure, high-stakes job. Two Times writers share what they’ve learned.
Kim Severson takes listeners on a journey through some of the turkey-cooking gimmicks that have been recommended to Americans over the decades, and J. Kenji López-Alt talks about his foolproof method for roasting a bird.
Guest: Kim Severson, a food correspondent for The New York Times; and J. Kenji López-Alt, a food columnist for The Times.
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This winter, three major respiratory viruses — respiratory syncytial virus or R.S.V., the flu and the coronavirus — are poised to collide in the United States in what some health officials are calling a “tripledemic.”
What does this collision have to do with our response to the coronavirus pandemic, and why are children so far the worst affected?
Guest: Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter for The New York Times.
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Donald J. Trump is running for president again. Donald J. Trump is back on Twitter again. And now a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate Donald J. Trump again.
In the saga of the Trump investigations, there seem to be recurring rhythms and patterns. Here’s what to know about the latest developments.
Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
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Across the world, developed nations have locked themselves into unsustainable, energy-intensive lifestyles. As environmental collapse threatens, the journalist Noah Gallagher Shannon explores the lessons in sustainability that can be learned from looking “at smaller, perhaps even less prosperous nations” such as Uruguay.
“The task of shrinking our societal footprint is the most urgent problem of our era — and perhaps the most intractable,” writes Shannon, who explains that the problem of reducing our footprints further “isn’t that we don’t have models of sustainable living; it’s that few exist without poverty.”
Tracing Uruguay’s sustainability, Shannon shows how a relatively small population size and concentration (about half of the country’s 3.5 million people live in Montevideo, the capital) had long provided the country with a collective sense of purpose. He also shows how in such a tight-knit country, the inequalities reach a rapid boil, quoting a slogan of a Marxist-Leninist group called the Tupamaros: “Everybody dances or nobody dances.”
Looking for answers to both a structural and existential problem, Shannon questions what it would take to achieve energy independence.
This story was written by Noah Gallagher Shannon and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The midterm elections have left both parties in a moment of reflection. For Republicans, it’s time to make a choice about Trumpism, but one that may no longer be theirs to make. For Democrats, it’s about how much of their future is inherently tied to the G.O.P.
Earlier this year, much of the crypto industry imploded, taking with it billions of dollars. From that crash, one company and its charismatic founder emerged as the industry’s savior.
Last week, that company collapsed.
Who is Sam Bankman-Fried, how did he become the face of crypto, and why did so many believe in him?
Guest: David Yaffe-Bellany, a reporter covering cryptocurrencies and fintech for The New York Times.
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This week, Israel swore in a new Parliament, paving the way back to power for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he is on trial for corruption. Now, the country is on the cusp of its most right-wing government in history.
Who and what forces are behind these events in Israeli politics?
Guest: Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Divided government appears poised to return to Washington. In the midterm elections, the Republicans seem likely to manage to eke out a majority in the House, but they will have a historically small margin of control.
The Republican majority will be very conservative, made up of longtime members — some of whom have drifted more to the right — and a small but influential group of hard-right Republicans who are quite allied with former President Donald J. Trump and helped lead the effort to try to overturn the 2020 election.
What can we expect from this new Republican-controlled House?
Guest: Julie Davis, congressional editor for The New York Times.
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Days after voters rejected his vision for the country in the midterms, former President Donald J. Trump is expected to announce a third run for president.
Despite the poor results for candidates he backed, why are Republican leaders powerless to stop him?
Guest: Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.
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On the first nationwide test of American students since the pandemic, scores plummeted to levels not seen in 20 years. The results show how challenging it was to keep students on track during the pandemic.
What do the scores tell us about remote learning, who lost the most ground academically, and what can schools do to help students recover?
Guest: Sarah Mervosh, a national reporter for The New York Times.
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Sandra Plantz, an administrator at Gallia County Local Schools for more than 20 years, oversees areas as diverse as Title I reading remediation and federal grants for all seven of the district’s schools. In recent years, though, she has leaned in hard on a role that is overlooked in many districts: homeless liaison.
Ms. Plantz’s district, in rural Ohio, serves an area that doesn’t offer much in the way of a safety net beyond the local churches. The county has no family homeless shelters, and those with no place to go sometimes end up sleeping in the parking lot of the Walmart or at the hospital emergency room.
Homeless students have the worst educational outcomes of any group, the lowest attendance, the lowest scores on standardized tests, the lowest graduation rates. They all face the same cruel paradox: Students who do not have a stable place to live are unable to attend school regularly, and failing to graduate from high school is the single greatest risk factor for future homelessness.
This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This week’s elections have been startlingly close. Control of both chambers of Congress remain up in the air.
Historically, the president’s party is blown away in midterms. And the Democrats were further hampered this time round by President Biden’s unpopularity.
Considering the headwinds, how did they do so well?
Guest: Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times.
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In the early hours of Wednesday, control of both the House and Senate remained uncertain.
Going into the midterms, some analysts expected a repudiation of the Democrats and a surge of Republican victories. But this “red wave” did not materialize.
Today, we try to make sense of the surprising results.
Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.
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Over the last decade, Wisconsin has become an extreme experiment in single-party rule. Republican officials have redrawn the state’s election districts and rewritten laws to ensure their domination of the state’s legislature.
In Tuesday’s elections, those officials are asking voters for the final lever of power: control over the entire system of voting.
Guest: Reid J. Epstein, a reporter covering elections and campaigns for The New York Times.
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For the Democrats to hold on to power in Washington, they have to do what President Biden did in Pennsylvania two years ago: Break the Republican Party’s grip on the white working-class vote, once the core of the Democratic base.
In tomorrow’s midterm election, no race better encapsulates that challenge than the Pennsylvania Senate candidacy of John Fetterman.
Is the plan working or is this crucial group of voters now a lost cause for the Democrats?
Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political reporter for The New York Times.
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The phenomenon of babies stolen from hospitals in Spain, once shrouded in secrecy, is now being spoken about.
The thefts happened during the end of the regime of Francisco Franco, the right-wing dictator who ruled the country until 1975, and even today the disappearances remain a subject of mystery and debate among scholars.
According to the birth mothers, nuns who worked in maternity wards took the infants shortly after they were delivered and told the women, who were often unwed or poor, that their children were stillborn. But the babies were not dead: They had been sold, discreetly, to well-off Catholic parents, many of whom could not have families of their own. Under piles of forged papers, the adoptive families buried the secret of the crime they committed. The children who were taken were known in Spain simply as the “stolen babies.” No one knows exactly how many were kidnapped, but estimates suggest tens of thousands.
Nicholas Casey relates Ana Belén Pintado’s discovery, after the deaths of her parents, that she was a “stolen baby,” and considers the web of culpability and the tricky question of blame, as Spain reckons with its past.
This story was written by Nicholas Casey and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grass-roots level. It wasn’t long ago that Democrats used to brag about the coalition they had built — full of young people, minority voters and college-educated women. Today, we talk to members of the Democratic base, many of whom no longer see a clear path forward for the party.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. You can search for “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts. Visit nytimes.com/therunup for more.
With an unpopular president and soaring inflation, Democrats knew they had an uphill battle in the midterms.
But the fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer the party a way of energizing voters and holding ground. And one place where that hope could live or die is Michigan.
Guest: Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.
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For decades, many universities have used race as a factor when deciding which students to admit. In the past, the Supreme Court has backed that practice, called affirmative action, in the interest of creating a diverse student body.
This week, however, the majority-conservative court is considering a case that may change affirmative action forever.
Guest: Adam Liptak, a correspondent covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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Early on Friday, an intruder broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy Pelosi and bludgeoned Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer.
The shocking attack underlined fears about the growing number of threats against members of Congress and the woeful lack of security around those lawmakers.
Guest: Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
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It was long awaited, and some doubted that it would ever come to pass, but last week, the tech billionaire Elon Musk officially took over Twitter.
The platform was once the place of underdogs, a public square that allowed users to challenge the moneyed and powerful. Is that about to change?
Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”
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Four years ago, Xi Jinping set himself up to become China’s leader indefinitely.
At last week’s Communist Party congress in Beijing, he stepped into that role, making a notable sweep of the country’s other top leaders and placing even greater focus on national security.
Guest: Chris Buckley, chief China correspondent for The New York Times.
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For Sam Anderson, a staff writer, traveling with animals can lead to enlightening experience. In this essay for The New York Times Magazine, Mr. Anderson explores what he has learned from a lifetime of voyaging with animals, and what it means to connect with another creature: bridging spiritual, physical and even temporal distances, and reaching into “something like evolutionary time.”
“An animal voyage,” Mr. Anderson writes, “is special because it requires us to make many journeys all at once.”
This story was written and narrated by Sam Anderson. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This moment in politics will be defined by shifts at the grass-roots level. Today, we talk to conservative voters about the forces animating the midterm elections for them — and what Washington can learn from the people.
What do you think of “The Run-Up” so far? Please take our listener survey at nytimes.com/therunupsurvey.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
Voters in Brazil on Sunday will choose between two larger-than-life, populist candidates in a presidential race that is widely seen as the nation’s — and Latin America’s — most important election in decades.
Who are the candidates, and why is the future of Brazilian democracy also on the ballot?
Guest: Jack Nicas, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.
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As Democratic Party leaders assessed their vulnerabilities in this year’s midterm elections, the one state they did not worry about was New York. That — it turns out — was a mistake.
Despite being a blue state through and through, and a place President Donald J. Trump lost by 23 points two years ago, the red tide of this moment is lapping at New York’s shores.
Why is New York up for grabs?
Guest: Nicholas Fandos, a Metro reporter for The New York Times.
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A few days ago, when the House committee investigating Jan. 6 issued a subpoena to former President Donald J. Trump, it raised a legal question: Can Congress compel a former president to testify?
The committee’s move, while dramatic, is not without precedent.
What do presidential subpoenas of the past teach us about the moment we’re in, and about what the former president might do next?
Guest: Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The New York Times.
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In the early days of its war on Ukraine, Russia cut off gas supplied to most of Europe, plunging the continent into the most severe energy crisis in decades.
Soaring prices have put some European leaders on the defensive over their support of Ukraine in the war as they navigate economic crises and bubbling unrest at home.
Guest: Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Brussels bureau chief for The New York Times.
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This episode contains strong language.
Hundreds of candidates on the ballot in November still deny that President Biden won in 2020 — a level of denialism that is fueling harassment and threats toward election workers.
Few have experienced those attacks as viscerally as election workers in Arizona. Today, we speak with the top election official in the state’s largest county.
Guest: Stephen Richer, the recorder of Maricopa County in Arizona.
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Yiyun Li has garnered legions of fans with her unsparing prose, writing extensively about her own struggles with depression and suicidality.
Her latest novel, “The Book of Goose,” is no different, sharing the same quality that has made Ms. Li something of a beacon to those suffering beneath unbearable emotional weight.
Alexandra Kleeman, also a novelist, meets Ms. Li to discover the secrets of her charm, her experience of growing up in China and her writing process.
This story was written by Alexandra Kleeman and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
How a 12-year project to lock in political power in Wisconsin could culminate in this year’s midterms – and provide a glimpse into where the rest of the country is headed.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain has resigned after only 44 days in office. Hers is the shortest premiership in the country’s history.
What led to her downfall, and why has Britain entered a period of such profound political dysfunction?
Guest: Mark Landler, the London bureau chief for The New York Times.
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After a summer of news that favored Democrats and with just two weeks until the midterms, a major new poll from The Times has found that swing voters are suddenly turning to the Republicans.
The Times’s Nate Cohn explains what is behind the trend and what it could mean for Election Day.
Guest: Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.
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This episode contains strong language.
A leaked audio recording of Latino lawmakers in Los Angeles making racist comments has created a political firestorm and brought demands for resignations.
But not only has the uproar forced the authorities to reckon with what officials say behind closed doors, it has also raised a sharp issue: Why is a city with so many Latino constituents represented by so few of them?
Guest: Shawn Hubler, a California correspondent for The New York Times.
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Since Hurricane Ian devastated southwestern Florida last month, residents have filed a record number of insurance claims for the damage caused by the storm.
Today, Chris Flavelle, a climate reporter for The Times, discusses whether the insurance companies can survive. And if they can’t, what will the effect be on Florida’s housing market, the cornerstone of its economy?
Guest: Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter for The New York Times.
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Herschel Walker, the former football star who is running for the Senate, is, according to the Times political reporter Maya King, a “demigod in Georgia sports and in Georgia culture.”
The midterm election in that state is crucial — it could determine whether Democrats keep control of the Senate. Mr. Walker’s candidacy, however, has been tainted by a slew of stories about his character, including claims that he paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend despite publicly opposing the procedure.
Guest: Maya King, a politics reporter covering the South for The New York Times.
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In July 2020, Stephanie Long, the school superintendent in Leland, Mich., wrote a heartfelt letter to her students and their families after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers. Haunted by the images she’d seen in the media, she wrote: “Why be in a position of leadership,” she asked herself, “and not lead?”
“All people of color,” Ms. Long typed, “need us to stand with them to clearly state that we condemn acts of systematic and systemic racism and intolerance.” She envisioned profound pedagogical changes in her school; she imagined creating illuminating discussions within classrooms and searching, transformative conversations in the community beyond. She hit send. A degree of support came in reply. A letter of praise signed by 200 Leland alumni was published in a peninsula newspaper.
But angry emails, phone calls and letters poured in from within the district and, because Long’s message made the local news and spread over the internet, from across the country. They labeled her “a disgrace,” “a Marxist,” “a traitor.”
Daniel Bergner, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, wrote about what happened when a superintendent in northern Michigan raised the issue of systemic racism.
This story was written by Daniel Bergner recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
When Georgia flipped blue in the 2020 election, it gave Democrats new hope for the future. Credit for that success goes to Stacey Abrams and the playbook she developed for the state. It cemented her role as a national celebrity, in politics and pop culture. But, unsurprisingly, that celebrity has also made her a target of Republicans, who say she’s a losing candidate. On today’s episode: the Stacey Abrams playbook, and why the Georgia governor’s race means more to Democrats than a single elected office.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
In 2019, Julia Longoria, then a Daily producer, traveled to Nashville to speak with Ella Maners and her mother, Katie Maners.
Ella, 8 going on 9, was terrified of tornadoes and getting sick. So she did something that was even scarier than her fears: confront them at Fear Facers camp.
We revisit her story and catch up with Ella, now 12 and in the fifth grade, who has since returned to the camp.
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This episode contains mention of suicide.
A year ago, Lynsea Garrison, a senior producer on The Daily, started telling the story of N, a teenager in Afghanistan.
N’s family tried to force her to marry a member of the Taliban, but she resisted. When she tried to escape to the U.S., however, her case was rejected, so she had to remain in Kabul, fearful and in hiding.
Here’s what happened next.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, and you live in the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. Additional resources in other countries can be found here.
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Just before the sun came up on Saturday on the Kerch Strait Bridge, a strategically and symbolically important link between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, a bomb detonated, creating a giant fireball.
But Ukrainian elation about the explosion quickly turned into concern about how Russia would respond. And in the days since, Moscow’s retaliation has been to pound Ukrainian cities with missiles in the most sweeping rocket assault since the start of the war.
Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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To tackle its critical shortage of affordable housing, California has taken aim at a central tenet of the American dream: the single-family home.
Telling the story of one such property, in San Diego, can teach us about the larger housing crisis and how we might solve it.
Guest: Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter at The New York Times and author of “Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America.”
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. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
The search for intelligence beyond Earth has long entranced humans. According to Jon Gertner, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, this search has been defined “by an assumption that extraterrestrials would have developed radio technologies akin to what humans have created.”
However, Mr. Gertner writes, “rather than looking for direct calls to Earth, telescopes now sweep the sky, searching billions of frequencies simultaneously, for electronic signals whose origins can’t be explained by celestial phenomena.”
What scientists are most excited about is the prospect of other planets’ civilizations being able to create the same “telltale chemical and electromagnetic signs,” or, as they are now called, “technosignatures.”
This story was written by Jon Gertner and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
How the Republican grass roots got years ahead of a changing country, and whether the Democrats can catch up.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
If President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia follows through on his threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, he is likely to turn to a specific type.
Tactical nuclear weapons have a fraction of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and of the super bombs and city busters that people worried about during the Cold War.
What exactly are these weapons, how did they develop and what would it mean if Mr. Putin resorted to them in the war in Ukraine?
Guest: William J. Broad, a science reporter and senior writer for The New York Times.
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In the struggle to control inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates five times already this year.
But those efforts can be blunted if companies keep raising prices regardless. And one industry has illustrated that difficulty particularly starkly: the car market.
Guest: Jeanna Smialek, a federal reserve and economy reporter for The New York Times.
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A few weeks into this year’s monsoon season in Pakistan, it became clear that the rains were unlike anything the country had experienced in a long time.
The resulting once-in-a-generation flood has marooned entire villages and killed 1,500 people, leaving a trail of destruction, starvation and disease.
Guest: Christina Goldbaum, an Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent for The New York Times.
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The last Supreme Court term was a blockbuster. The justices made a number of landmark rulings, including in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended 50 years of the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
The new term could be just as testing, with a series of deeply divisive cases on the docket.
Guest: Adam Liptak, a correspondent covering the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times.
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Latino voters have never seemed more electorally important than in the coming midterm elections: the first real referendum on the Biden era of government.
Latinos make up 20 percent of registered voters in two crucial Senate races — Arizona and Nevada — and as much or more in over a dozen competitive House races.
In the past 10 years, the conventional wisdom about Latino voters has been uprooted. We explore a poll, conducted by The Times, to better understand how they view the parties vying for their vote.
Guest: Jennifer Medina, a national politics reporter for The New York Times.
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In September 2021, a group of female minority students at Arizona State University confronted two white male students who were studying in the library’s multicultural center.
The women were upset with what they saw as blatant antagonism: One of the men sported a “Didn’t Vote for Biden” shirt, the other had a “Police Lives Matter” laptop sticker. The women felt they had chosen the multicultural center in order to rile them. A heated row between both parties erupted, a video of which quickly went viral, threatening to upend the lives of all involved.
For The New York Times, Sarah Viren, a journalist and essayist, explored the incident in the context of “the widening gyre of the culture wars.” The row at Arizona State was, she explained, “a symbolic fight,” one that raised questions of “wokeism” and “free speech,” the perils of viral videos, and the purpose of “safe spaces.”
“It was a brief drama that was also a metaphor,” Ms. Viren wrote. “But watching and rewatching that drama unfold from my computer, I kept asking myself: a metaphor for what?”
This story was written by Sarah Viren and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
Why we can’t understand this moment in politics without first understanding the transformation of American evangelicalism.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
As the sun came up over Florida yesterday, a fuller picture began to emerge of the destruction that Hurricane Ian had inflicted on the state and its residents.
The Category 4 storm washed away roads, bridges, cars, boats and homes. The damage is so extensive that, according to the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, it may take years to rebuild.
Guests: Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief for The New York Times; Richard Fausset, a Times correspondent based in Atlanta; Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, a national news reporter for The Times; and Hilary Swift, a photojournalist.
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Kirill, 24, works at a nonprofit for homeless people in the Moscow region. He does not support the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin and is vehemently against the invasion of Ukraine.
After suffering setbacks in the war, Mr. Putin announced a military draft a week ago. Kirill was among those called up. As he hides out to avoid being served his papers, Kirill spoke to Sabrina Tavernise about how his life has changed.
Guest: Kirill, a 24-year-old from Moscow who is attempting to avoid the draft and who asked that only his first name be used to avoid reprisals.
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Mahsa Amini, 22, traveled from her hometown in the province of Kurdistan to the Iranian capital, Tehran, this month. Emerging from the subway, she was arrested for failing to cover her hair modestly enough. Three days later, she was dead.
The anger over Ms. Amini’s death has prompted days of rage, exhilaration and street battles across Iran, with women stripping off their head scarves — and even burning them — in the most significant outpouring of dissent against the ruling system in more than a decade.
Guest: Farnaz Fassihi, a reporter for The New York Times.
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During the pandemic, an enormous amount of money — about $5 trillion in total — was spent to help support the newly unemployed and to prop up the U.S. economy while it was forced into suspension.
But the funds came with few strings and minimal oversight. The result: one of the largest frauds in American history, with billions of dollars stolen by thousands of people.
Guest: David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, focused on nonprofits.
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The high poverty rate among children was long seen as an enduring fact of American life. But a recent analysis has shown that the number of young people growing up poor has fallen dramatically in the past few decades.
The reasons for the improvement are complicated, but they have their roots in a network of programs and support shaped by years of political conflict and compromise.
Guest: Jason DeParle, a senior writer at The New York Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine.
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The concept of having a “body clock” is a familiar one, but less widespread is the awareness that our body contains several biological clocks. Understanding their whims and functions may help us optimize our lives and lead to better overall health, according to scientists.
Every physiological system is represented by a clock, from the liver to the lungs, and each one is synced “to the central clock in the brain like an orchestra section following its conductor,” writes Kim Tingley, a New York Times journalist who explored the effect this knowledge has on how conditions are treated, and spoke to scientists about how misalignment or deregulation of these clocks can have a profound effect on our health.
Exploring the components that dictate our lives, and how they work together like the “gears in a mechanical watch,” Ms. Tingley builds a case for the importance of paying attention to all our circadian rhythms — and not just when it comes to monitoring our sleep.
This story was written by Kim Tingley and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
In kicking off the midterms, Joe Biden talked about American democracy as a shared value, enshrined in the country’s founding — a value that both Democrats and Republicans should join together in defending. But there is another possible view of this moment. One that is shared by two very different groups: the voters who propelled Biden to the presidency … and the conservative activists who are rejecting democracy altogether.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. Leading up to the 2022 midterms, we’ll be sharing the latest episode here every Saturday. If you want to hear episodes when they first drop on Thursdays, follow “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
Evangelicals make up about a quarter of the population in the United States and are part of the nation’s largest religious group. But lately the movement is in crisis.
The biggest issue is church attendance. Many churches closed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and struggled to reopen while congregations thinned.
But a smaller audience isn’t the only problem: Pastors are quitting, or at least considering doing so.
Guest: Ruth Graham is a national correspondent covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times.
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In a speech on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin said that he would require hundreds of thousands more Russians to fight in Ukraine — and alarmed the West by once again raising the specter of nuclear force.
The mobilization signals that Mr. Putin is turning the war from one of aggression to one of defense, offering clues about what the next phase of the fighting will involve.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Last week, nearly 50 Venezuelan migrants showed up, without warning, on the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard.
Their arrival was the culmination of a monthslong strategy by two of the United States’ most conservative governors to lay the issue of undocumented immigration at Democrats’ doorstep.
How has this strategy played out and what has it meant for the migrants caught in the middle?
Guest: Miriam Jordan, a national correspondent covering immigration for The New York Times.
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Adnan Syed was accused of the 1999 killing of his classmate and ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, whose body was found buried in a car park in Baltimore.
He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but has proclaimed his innocence for the last 23 years.
Mr. Syed was the subject of the first season of the podcast “Serial,” which painstakingly examined his case and the evidence against him.
Yesterday, his conviction was overturned. On today’s episode, the “Serial” team looks at how this happened.
Guest: Sarah Koenig, the host and executive producer of the “Serial” podcast.
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The funeral of Queen Elizabeth today will be one of the most extraordinary public spectacles of the last several decades in Britain, accompanied by an outpouring of sadness, reverence and respect.
But the end of the queen’s 70-year reign has also prompted long-delayed conversations about the future of the Commonwealth and of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.
Guest: Mark Landler, the London bureau chief for The New York Times.
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“Nobody’s gonna know. They’re gonna know.”
If you’ve been on TikTok in the past year, you’re most likely familiar with these two sentences, first drolly uttered in a post by TikTok creator Chris Gleason in 2020. The post has become a hit and has been viewed more than 14 million times.
But the sound is more famous than the video.
When uploading a video to TikTok, the creator has the option to make that video’s audio a “sound” that other users can easily use in their own videos — lip-syncing to it, adding more noise on top of it or treating it like a soundtrack. Gleason’s sound has been used in at least 336,000 other videos, to humorous, dramatic and sometimes eerie effect.
The journalist Charlotte Shane delves into the world of repurposed sounds, exploring how TikTok and other apps have enabled, as she writes in her recent article for The Times, “cross-user riffing and engagement, like quote-tweeting for audio.” She also considers “what makes a sound compelling beyond musical qualities or linguistic meaning.”
While “brainfeel” may be an apt buzzword for the sensation audio memes elicit, Ms. Shane writes, it is more than a mere trend: We have entered the “era of the audio meme.”
This story was written by Charlotte Shane and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
It’s March 2013. The G.O.P., in tatters, issues a scathing report blaming its electoral failures on an out-of-touch leadership that ignores minorities at its own peril. Just three years later, Donald Trump proves his party dead wrong. Today, how certain assumptions took hold of both parties — and what they’re still getting wrong — heading into the midterm elections.
The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.
A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.
Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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With the midterm elections a few weeks away, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, forwarded a plan to save his party from the growing backlash over abortion.
But the proposal — a federal ban on almost all terminations after 15 weeks — has served mostly to expose the division among Republicans about the issue.
Guest: Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.
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When President Biden canceled college debt last month, he left untouched the problem that created that debt: the soaring price of college.
In the 1980s, the list price of undergraduate education at a private four-year institution could hit $20,000 a year. At some of these schools in the last couple of years, it has topped $80,000.
Why has a college education become increasingly costly, and why has that become such a difficult problem to solve?
Guest: Ron Lieber, a personal finance columnist for The New York Times and author of “The Price You Pay for College.”
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Over the weekend, Ukraine’s military stunned the world. After months of a kind of stalemate, its military took hundreds of miles of territory back from Russia — its biggest victory since the start of the war.
How did the war reach this critical point, and what does Ukraine’s success mean for the future?
Guest: Eric Schmitt, a correspondent covering national security for The New York Times.
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The U.S. Open crowned its winners this weekend. But for a lot of fans, this year’s competition was less about who won, and more about a player who wasn’t even involved in the final matches.
Serena Williams, who announced last month that she’d be retiring from tennis after this year’s tournament, has made an indelible impact on her sport and left a legacy away from the court that has very little precedent.
Guest: Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York Times and co-host of Times podcast “Still Processing.”
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The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank in California, has in recent years become increasingly influential in Republican circles. In 2016, its goal was to turn Donald J. Trump into a legitimate candidate — and then it did .
The journalist Elisabeth Zerofsky traces the origins of the divisive organization, explaining how it made the intellectual case for Trumpism but also how, with ties to Ron DeSantis and John Eastman, the think tank has become a home for “counterrevolutionary” politics that go far beyond the former president.
This story was written by Elisabeth Zerofsky and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday brought to an end a remarkable reign that spanned seven decades, 15 prime ministers and 14 American presidents.
During her time on the throne, which saw the crumbling of the British Empire and the buffeting of the royal family by scandals, Elizabeth’s courtly and reserved manner helped to shore up the monarchy and provided an unwavering constant for her country, the Commonwealth and the wider world.
Guest: Alan Cowell, a contributor to The New York Times and a former Times foreign correspondent.
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As California watches the impact of rising temperatures devastate its environment with brutal heat waves and raging fires, the state is taking increasingly far-reaching steps to combat climate change.
One of those measures — banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 — could prove a turning point for the transition to electric vehicles.
Guest: Neal E. Boudette, an automotive correspondent for The New York Times.
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A counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces to try to drive Russian troops out of southern Ukraine has placed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, directly in the path of the fighting.
As the world scrambles to prevent a catastrophe, the plant’s workers find themselves in a dangerously precarious position.
Guest: Marc Santora, an international news editor for The New York Times, currently based in Kyiv.
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In November, Americans will head to the polls for the first nationwide election since the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. But what happens this fall won’t just be about who wins and who loses. On the first episode of "The Run-Up,” host Astead Herndon lays out the stakes of the midterm elections and explores the big questions the podcast is looking to answer.
“The Run-Up” is a new politics podcast from The New York Times. You can follow it wherever you get your podcasts, including on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and Amazon Music.
Today marks the unofficial start of the campaign for the midterm elections. This year’s midterms will be the first major referendum on the Biden era of government — and a test of how much voters want to reinstall the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
On today’s episode, Astead W. Herndon, a political reporter and the host of our new podcast, “The Run-Up,” offers a guide to the campaign. He’ll explore the forces at play in this election and how we arrived at such a fraught moment in American politics.
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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
An influx of Fentanyl, a highly lethal synthetic narcotic, has aggravated the opioid crisis in the United States and prompted communities to scramble for ways to lower the skyrocketing rates of overdose deaths.
In Vancouver, a Canadian city that has been at the forefront of innovative approaches to drug use, a novel and surprising tactic is being tried: It’s called “safer supply.”
Guest: Stephanie Nolen, a global health reporter for The New York Times.
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Few leaders have had as profound an effect on their time as Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who died this week at 91.
It was not Mr. Gorbachev’s intention to liquidate the Soviet empire when he came to power in 1985. But after little more than six tumultuous years, he had lifted the Iron Curtain and presided over the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ending the Cold War.
Guest: Serge Schmemann, a member of The New York Times’s editorial board.
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This episode contains detailed descriptions of a mass shooting that some listeners may find disturbing.
A trial is underway in Parkland, Fla., to determine the fate of the gunman who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
The trial is expected to last for months, forcing people in Parkland to relive the pain of a day they have spent years trying to put behind them.
We look back at conversations with some of the survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times.
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This episode contains discussions about suicide, self-harm and mental health issues.
In decades past, the public health risks teenagers in the United States faced were different. They were externalized risks that were happening in the physical world.
Now, a new set of risks has emerged.
In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. And suicide rates, which had been stable from 2000 to 2007 among this group, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018.
We explore why this mental health crisis has become so widespread, and why many people have been unprepared to handle it.
Guest: Matt Richtel, a correspondent based in San Francisco for The New York Times.
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Since he left office, former President Donald J. Trump has been facing several investigations.
They include the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol and the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his club and Florida residence, as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material.
Of all the government investigations, the one that is receiving the least attention — a case being made by a local prosecutor in Georgia — may end up being the most consequential.
Guest: Richard Fausset, a correspondent based in Atlanta for The New York Times.
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Going to college can be a shock to most: Leaving the comfort of friends and family for a leap into the unknown, a fresh start. But what is the university experience like as a refugee?
The journalist Maddy Crowell met some of the 148 Afghan women who have been enrolled in U.S. colleges to complete their degrees, and relates how they have adapted to American and collegiate life a year on from the fall of Kabul.
It has, she finds, been far from easy. Ms. Crowell wrote that one student said “she spent her days pinballing among exhaustion, despair and a sort of cautious optimism.”
This story was written by Maddy Crowell and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
President Biden’s announcement this week that he would cancel chunks of student loan debt stands to have a major impact for many of the 45 million Americans who owe $1.6 trillion for having gone to college.
Who will benefit from the plan, what will the cost be to the taxpayer and the economy, and, ultimately, could the White House have done more?
Guest: Stacy Cowley, a finance reporter for The New York Times.
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Daria Dugina and her father, Aleksandr Dugin, have been major figures in the Russian propaganda landscape, advocating Russian imperialism and supporting the invasion of Ukraine.
But a few days ago, Ms. Dugina was killed in a car bomb after leaving a nationalist festival, fueling speculation about who carried out the attack and whether Moscow’s reaction could affect the war in Ukraine.
Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.
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Across industries and income brackets, a growing number of American workers are discovering that their productivity is being electronically monitored by their bosses.
This technology is giving employers a means to gauge what their employees are doing and it’s already impacting how much and when people get paid.
Times investigative reporters have discovered that this tracking software is more common than one might think.
Guest: Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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Even as the anti-abortion movement celebrates victories at the Supreme Court and in many states across the country, there is debate about where to go next.
A hard-edge faction is pursuing “abortion abolition,” a move to criminalize abortion from conception, targeting not only the providers but also the women who have the procedure.
Guest: Elizabeth Dias, a correspondent covering faith and politics for The New York Times.
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. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
For more than 500 days, coal miners in rural Alabama have been on strike. Around 900 workers walked off the job in April 2021, and they haven’t been back since.
As the strike drags on, the miners are discovering that neither political party is willing to fight for them.
For Braxton Wright, 39, a second-generation coal miner and, until recently, a Republican, the experience has altered his view of American politics.
Guest: Michael Corkery, a business reporter for The New York Times.
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. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
In the past decade, planting trees has come to represent many things: a virtuous act, a practical solution and a symbol of hope in the face of climate change. But can planting a trillion trees really save the world?
Visiting the Eden Reforestation Projects in Goiás, Brazil, and interviewing numerous international scientists and activists, the journalist Zach St. George offers a vivid insight into the root of the tree-planting movement — from the Green Belt Movement of the 1970s to the Trillion Tree Campaign of the 2010s — and considers the concept’s environmental potential, as well as the movement’s shortcomings.
This story was written by Zach St. George and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
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