Played

  • “Sen. Chuck Schumer warns drug dealers are pushing rainbow fentanyl to children,” CBS News cries. “'It's very challenging': Inside the fentanyl fight at the border,” ABC News reports. “The hard-drug decriminalization disaster,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments.


    In recent years, we’ve been warned about the growing threat of hyperpotent street drugs, particularly opioids. Fentanyl is disguised as Halloween candy to appeal to children. US Border Patrol doesn’t have enough resources to keep up with drug screenings. Efforts to decriminalize drug use and possession are causing chaos and suffering on our streets.

    The dangers of drugs like fentanyl are, of course, very real, and concerns about them are certainly legitimate. But too often, media framings don’t reflect genuine concerns. Rather than offering urgent solutions to help those who are truly struggling-like reduced penalties, or stable housing and healthcare–media, alongside policymakers, consistently promote the same old carceral logic of the Nixon-era War on Drugs, turning a true public-health crisis into an opportunity to increase arrests and policing in general.

    On this episode, we look at the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It’s Different We Promise, and how, despite lofty liberal rhetoric about how the War on Drugs has been cruel and counterproductive, media and elected officials are doubling down on fear-mongering, stigmatization, and severe prison and punishment.

    Our guest is Emily Kaltenbach.

  • Paris Marx is joined by Eric Silver to discuss Spotify’s big plan to dominate podcasting, why it’s now pulling back from those efforts, and the difference between highly produced and more independent podcasts.

    Eric Silver is a podcast producer and head of development at Multitude.

    Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

    The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

    Also mentioned in this episode:

    Paris will be in Christchurch on February 4 (details here) and Wellington on February 8 (details here). He’s hoping to get an Auckland date organized and is open to going to Australia.Spotify pulled back on its podcasting ambitions last year, canceling big shows and laying off staff.After buying Gimlet and Parcast, it merged them into Spotify Originals last year.Ashley Carman posted a slide from a Spotify presentation presenting the RSS feed as “outdated tech” because it’s harder for them to harvest data from.Support the show
  • Paris Marx is joined by Emily Hund to discuss the creation of the influencer industry, how it’s been formalized by companies who profit from it, and what can be done to make it fairer for the people who work in it.

    Emily Hund is the author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. She’s also a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Follow Emily on Twitter at @emilyadh.

    Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

    The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

    Also mentioned in this episode:

    An excerpt of Emily’s book was published in Wired.After Elon Musk took over Twitter, a menswear account was suddenly in everyone’s feeds.Instagram is offering a paid subscription service that includes customer service.Countries have begun regulating the influencer industry. For example, Norway requires retouched photos to be labeled, while France has an even stricter law that regulates the types of products that can be promoted along with other requirements.

    Support the show

  • Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the past year in AI hype, how AI companies have shaped regulation, and tech’s relationship to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

    Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute.

    Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

    The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

    Also mentioned in this episode:

    Paris is speaking in Montreal on January 20. Details here.Billy Perrigo reported on OpenAI lobbying to water down the EU’s AI Act.Nitasha Tiku wrote about the push to train students in a particular idea of AI.Politico has been doing a lot of reporting on the influences on AI policy in the US and UK.OpenAI made a submission in the UK to try to get permission to train on copyrighted material.Arab workers in the tech industry fear the consequences of speaking out for Palestinian rights.972 Magazine reported on Israel’s use of AI to increase its targets in Gaza.Jack Poulson chronicles the growing ties between military and tech.Timnit mentioned No Tech for Apartheid, Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory, and Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto.

    Support the show

  • The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists accused of murder, was one of the first "crimes of the century." But did they do it? To this day there is speculation that they did not. Learn all about this famous case in this classic episode.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • On this episode, we share two stories all about how hair can connect us. As a note, Imogen Wall’s story talks about someone experiencing the suicide of a loved one, if that subject is difficult for you, you might want to skip that story. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, you can call 988 in the US for free and confidential support.

    Host: Marc Sollinger

    Storytellers:

    Heather Rae looks to a wayward band of strangers to help get her keys out of the car that is locked and running.

    Imogen Wall finds connection and comfort in a hair salon.

    If you’d like to share your own story, or would just love to hear some incredible live storytelling, check out a Story Slam near you: https://themoth.org/events

    The Moth would like to thank its listeners and supporters. Stories like these are made possible by community giving. If you’re not already a member, please consider becoming one or making a one-time donation today at themoth.org/giveback

  • "Join Wall Street. Save the world," The Washington Post urged in 2013. "How to Know Your Donations Are Doing the Most Good," The New York Times proclaimed in 2015. "I give 10 percent of my income to charity. You should, too," Vox advised last November.

    Each of these headlines tops a piece that extols the virtues of Effective Altruism, a philanthropic philosophy, for lack of a better term, ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of the best ways to address large-scale, global ills like pandemics and factory farming, informed by “evidence and reason.” The school of thought, popularized by figures like the academic and author Peter Singer and disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been widely embraced – or at least uncritically boosted – in mainline media for years.

    Superficially, this makes sense. Effective Altruism seems unimpeachably virtuous: It’s great if people want to solve the world’s problems, and so much the better if they’ve done their research. But beneath this surface lies a deeply reactionary movement, predicated on an age-old desire to characterize the wealthy as the solution to, rather than the cause of, the very problems they purport to want to solve.

    On this episode, we parse the rise, motives, and influence of Effective Altruism. We look at how the doctrine gamifies wealth distribution, falsely portrays the rich as uniquely qualified to make decisions about public welfare, often provides cover for eugenics and racism, and masquerades as a groundbreaking ethos of data-driven compassion while it merely regurgitates a 100-year-old rich person ideology of supposedly benevolent control over the masses.

    Our guest is Dr. Linsey McGoey.

  • In this episode, you'll learn how to pronounce each letter of the French alphabet.

    Head over to https://mathildekien.com/podcast-episodes/2 for episode cheat sheet, transcript, and resources!

    🗝✨ FME Exercise Library: Unlock your free Exercise Library and get 100+ beginner-friendly exercises from the French Made Easy podcast lessons to help you practice and improve your French skills! Click here to access the FREE Library! 🔓

    ✨ Take your first step towards clear and effortless French pronunciation with my free French Sounds Cheat Sheet. Discover all French sounds, avoid common pronunciation mistakes—no more saying ‘cul cul’ (bum bum 🍑) when you really mean ‘coucou’ (hey 👋)—and express yourself more clearly. Download for free right here.

    🗺✨ Struggling with French Pronunciation? Get your 'Five-Step Roadmap to Effortless French Pronunciation' audio guide (and its accompanying transcript) – your key to clear, confident, and effortless speech. Perfect for beginners! Download Your Free Audio Guide Now 🧡

  • In this episode, you'll learn what the French Made Easy podcast is. 🎙✨Head over to https://mathildekien.com/podcast-episodes/1 for episode links and resources.

    🗝✨ FME Exercise Library: Unlock your free Exercise Library and get 100+ beginner-friendly exercises from the French Made Easy podcast lessons to help you practice and improve your French skills! Click here to access the FREE Library! 🔓

    📔✨ Are you a complete beginner in French? Get the '50 Essential French Words for Beginners' guide – your quick-start guide to building your French vocabulary. This guide features 50 key everyday words, from greetings to useful adjectives, plus audio guides and practical examples. Download it Now 💛

    🗺✨ Struggling with French Pronunciation? Get your 'Five-Step Roadmap to Effortless French Pronunciation' audio guide (and its accompanying transcript) – your key to clear, confident, and effortless speech. Perfect for beginners! Download Your Free Audio Guide Now 🧡

  • Welcome to the second episode of French Blabla podcast where we will cover tips to increase your fluency while boosting your way of learning. In today's episode, we will talk about the most difficult sound of the French language, that is to say our R sound. Feared by many of you, after this episode, you will know all there is to know about it and you will have the tools to face this sound! In this Episode Reasons you can't pronounce R in every word A step by step guide to pronounce the R sound How to create your personalized drills Share your story in comments below We've all been struggling with pronunciation and it can be so frustrating not to be able to sound the way we want. Try to do the exercises and tell me if it helped. Which position of the R is the most difficult to you? I would love to hear about it. Music by bensound.com

  • Welcome to the first episode of French Blabla podcast where we will cover tips to increase your fluency while boosting your way of learning. In today's episode, we will talk about a situation that every learner has faced at least once. It can be a real plague for some of us and prevent us from reaching our full potential. Today is the day you will discover how to overcome your fear of speaking. In this Episode Reasons we get blocked and paralyzed when speaking a foreign language Why the recurrent advice "go face your fear" doesn't work Why active listening will improve your communication 8 practical tips to definitely get rid of fear Share your story in comments below We've all felt this way at one point in our learning journey. What are the situations when you feel anxious and blocked? What do you do to overcome your fear? I would love to hear about it. Music by Bensound.com

  • Being on the internet just doesn’t feel as fun anymore. As more of our digital life is driven by algorithms, it’s become a lot easier to find movies or TV shows or music that fits our preferences pretty well. But it feels harder to find things that are strange and surprising — the kinds of culture that help you, as an individual, develop your own sense of taste.

    This can be a fuzzy thing to talk about. But Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a whole book on it, the forthcoming “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.” We talk about how today’s internet encourages everything to look more the same and is even dulling our ability to know what we like. And we discuss what we can do to strengthen our sense of personal taste in order to live a richer, more beautiful life.

    Mentioned:

    “Quartets: Two: II. Warmth” by Peter Gregson

    Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno

    Book Recommendations:

    “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki (essay)

    Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler

    The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

    Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

    You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

    This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

  • Filipe Figueiredo, Matias Pinto e Sylvia Colombo analisam a crise entre Venezuela e Guiana, por conta do referendo consultivo proposto pelo governo Nicolás Maduro, os preparativos para a posse presidencial de Javier Milei e outras notícias de nossa quebrada latino-americana.

    Também repercutimos a visita de líderes da União Europeia à China, além das últimas atualizações da invasão russa à Ucrânia.

    No mais, abordamos o fim da trégua entre Hamas e Israel, na nossa cronologia dos eventos em relação ao conflito na Faixa de Gaza!

  • Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT. A lot has happened since. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, recently dominated headlines again after the nonprofit board of directors fired C.E.O. Sam Altman, only for him to return several days later.

    But that drama isn’t actually the most important thing going on in the A.I. world, which hasn’t slowed down over the past year, even as people are still discovering ChatGPT for the first time and reckoning with all of its implications.

    Tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are hosts of the weekly podcast “Hard Fork.” Roose is my colleague at The Times, where he writes a tech column called “The Shift.” Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer, a newsletter about the intersection of technology and democracy. They’ve been closely tracking developments in the field since well before ChatGPT launched. I invited them on the show to catch up on the state of A.I.

    We discuss: who is — and isn’t — integrating ChatGPT into their daily lives, the ripe market for A.I. social companions, why so many companies are hesitant to dive in, progress in the field of A.I. “interpretability” research, and America’s “fecklessness” that cedes major A.I. benefits to the private sector, and much more.

    Recommendations:

    Electrifying America by David E. Nye

    Your Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill

    “Intro to Large Language Models” by Andrej Karpathy (video)

    Import AI by Jack Clark.

    AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor

    Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz

    Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

    You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

    This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

  • Filipe Figueiredo, Matias Pinto e Sylvia Colombo recebem o politólogo argentino Andrés Malamud, do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, para analisar os resultados do 2º Turno das eleições presidenciais na Argentina e os possíveis impactos na política externa do país.

    Também demos um giro pelo velho continente, mais precisamente nos Países Baixos, onde a extrema-direita também ganhou, mas neste caso ainda não levou.

    No mais, repercutimos o cessar-fogo entre Hamas e Israel e a liberação da primeira leva de cativos de ambos os lados!

  • Paris Marx is joined by Yangyang Cheng to discuss the growing divide between the United States and China, and how nationalistic narratives distract us from a better understanding of tech in both countries.

    Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist and research scholar at Yale Law School. She’s written for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, WIRED, and many others. You can follow Yangyang on Twitter at @yangyang_cheng.

    Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

    The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

    Also mentioned in this episode:

    Yangyang wrote about the myth of the TikTok spy and the US fixation on Chinese espionage for Wired.She mentioned the coming expiry of a science and technology agreement between the US and China. It’s been temporarily extended.Paris recently wrote about the benefits the US receives from the global footprint of its tech companies, and why that makes China look like a threat.

    Support the show

  • For most of us, seeing an advertisement pop up while we’re scrolling on Instagram or reading an article or watching a video is the most banal experience possible. But in the background of those experiences is a $500 billion marketplace where our attention is being bought, packaged and sold at split-second speeds virtually every minute of every day. Online advertising is the economic engine of the internet, and that engine is fueled by our attention.

    Tim Hwang is the former global public policy lead for A.I. and machine learning at Google and the author of the book “Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.” Hwang’s central argument is that everything about the internet — from the emphasis data collection to the use of the “like” button to the fact that services like Google Search and Facebook are free — flows from its core business model. But that business model is also in crisis. The internet is degrading the very resource — our collective attention — on which its financial survival depends. The resulting “subprime attention crisis” threatens upend the internet as we know it.

    So this conversation is about the economic logic that undergirds our entire experience of the internet, and how that logic is constantly warping, manipulating and shaping the most important resource we have — our attention. But it’s also about whether a very different kind of internet — build on a very different economic logic — is possible.

    Mentioned:

    “Does Quora Really Have All the Answers?” by Gary Rivlin

    Google report: “5 Factors of Viewability”

    “Almost Impossible”

    Book Recommendations:

    Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

    The Profiteers by Sally Denton

    Jim Ravel’s Theatrical Pickpocketing

    Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

    You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

    “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

  • About 50 years ago, beef cost more than $7 a pound in today’s dollars. Today, despite high inflation, beef is down to about $4.80 a pound, and chicken is just around $1.80 a pound. But those low prices hide the true costs of the meat we consume — costs that the meat and poultry industries have quietly offloaded onto not only the animals we consume but us humans, too.

    Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 14.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates as high as 28 percent. It uses half the earth’s habitable land. Factory farms pose huge threats as potential sources of antibiotic resistance and future pandemics. And the current meat production system loads farmers with often insurmountable levels of debt. Our meat may look cheap at the grocery store, but we are all picking up the tab in ways we’re often starkly unaware of.

    Leah Garcés is the chief executive and president of Mercy for Animals and the author of “Grilled: Turning Adversaries Into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.” Few animal rights activists have her breadth of experience: For years, she’s been steeped in the experiences of farmers who raise animals, communities that live alongside industrial animal operations and, of course, the farmed animals that live shorter and more miserable lives. So I invited her on the show for a conversation about what meat really costs and how that perspective could help us build a healthier relationship to the animals we eat and the world we inhabit.

    We discuss what it’s like to live next to a hog farm, factory farming’s role in growing antibiotic resistance, how the current system of contract farming saddles individual farmers with debt, the lengths the U.S. government — and taxpayers — goes to to subsidize industrial animal farming, the possibility that the next pandemic will emerge from a crowded factory farm, how high costs — like deforestation in the Amazon — are hidden from consumers at the grocery store, the challenge of helping children make sense of routinized cruelty, whether regenerative agriculture can help undo the damage done by industrial animal farming, the historic animal welfare case currently in front of the Supreme Court and more.

    Mentioned:

    Mercy for Animals

    “Sen. Cory Booker has a plan to stop taxpayer bailouts of Big Meat” by Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella

    Book Recommendations:

    Wastelands by Corban Addison

    Meatonomics by David Robinson Simon

    Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison

    Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)

    You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

    “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero, and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Leah Douglas and Evi Steyer.

  • “Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — things like abundant clean energy or liberation from employment — while ignoring many of the aspects of our lives that matter to us the most: how we live, raise our children, and tend to our most meaningful relationships.

    Ghodsee’s new book, “Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life,” is an attempt to change that. The book is a tour of radical social experiments from communes and ecovillages to “platonic parenting” and intentional communities. But, on a deeper level, it’s a critique of the way existing structures of family and community life have left so many of us devoid of care and connection, and a vision of what it could mean to organize our lives differently.

    Mentioned:

    “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” by David Brooks

    Saving Time by Jenny Odell

    Book Recommendations:

    Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber

    The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

    Gender and the Politics of History by Joan Wallach Scott

    Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp

    Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

    You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

    This episode was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.