The New Yorker Radio Hour

Are U.F.O.s a National Security Threat?

<p><span>In June, the director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense are expected to deliver a report about what the government knows on the subject of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” more commonly known as U.F.O.s. The issue is nonpartisan: while he was the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat, secured funding for a secret Pentagon project to investigate the subject; John Podesta, a chief of staff in the Clinton White House, argued for government transparency on the topic; most recently, the Republican senator Marco Rubio introduced language in last year’s Intelligence Authorization Act calling for the forthcoming report.</span></p> <p><span>This is a shocking turn of events. For generations, U.F.O.s were in the purview of late-night call-in radio shows and supermarket tabloids, not the Department of Defense. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/gideon-lewis-kraus"><span>Gideon Lewis-Kraus</span></a><span> reports on how this change came about. The journalist Leslie Kean, who published a </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html"><span>bombshell story</span></a><span> in the New York </span><i><span>Times</span></i><span>, explains how the C.I.A. got involved in casting doubt on U.F.O. sightings. Reid tells Lewis-Kraus that the Pentagon refused to authorize his inspection of contractor facilities which, it was rumored, held U.F.O. crash debris. And a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Christopher Mellon, says that the phenomena observed in many sightings cannot be explained as advanced technology built by one of our rivals. “I really doubt that the Russians or Chinese could be that far ahead of us,” he says. “It looks like centuries ahead.” So, whereas the word “aliens” still seems like taboo in serious conversation, he adds, “it's hard to come up with a hypothesis to explain that without considering the possibility that some other civilization is involved.”</span></p> <p><span>Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s “</span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously"><span>How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously</span></a><span>” appears in the May 10th issue of </span><i><span>The New Yorker.</span></i></p> <p><i><span>This segment features scoring by Pablo Vergara. Additional archival clips were provided courtesy of James Fox.</span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

A Surge at the Border, and the Children of Morelia

<p><span>Nearly a century ago, during the Spanish Civil War, a group of parents put five hundred of their children on a boat and sent them across the ocean to find safety in Mexico. Few of the refugees ever saw their parents again. The youngest of the children was Rosita Daroca Martinez, who was just three. On this week’s show, her granddaughter, the writer and radio producer Destry Maria Sibley, traces the impact of her grandmother’s trauma down through the generations. Plus, the immigration reporter Jonathan Blitzer ties the story to today’s refugee crisis at the U.S. southern border, where a surge in arrivals has put the Biden Administration on its heels. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Jelani Cobb on Derek Chauvin’s Conviction and the Future of Police Reform

<p><span>The murder of George Floyd galvanized the public and led to the largest protests in American history. Even Donald Trump said of the videos of Floyd’s killing, “It doesn't get any more obvious or it doesn't get any worse than that,” presumably referring to the use of force by police. America waited anxiously for the outcome of the murder trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin. The prosecution’s case was notable for the unusually candid and definitive statements against Chauvin’s actions that were made by senior figures in the Minneapolis Police Department. </span><i><span>The New Yorker’s</span></i> <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jelani-cobb"><span>Jelani Cobb</span></a><span> covered the trial and says that this testimony sends a message to law enforcement. “There are now circumstances where public scrutiny and public outrage and egregious offenses that come to light can actually generate enough outrage that you actually will not be defended by your fellow-officers,” he tells David Remnick. “It may seem like a low bar. But, given what we’ve seen previously, that’s a pretty astounding development.” </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

What Is Happening in the Internment Camps in Xinjiang

<p><span>In a special episode on the crisis in Xinjiang region of China, the staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian investigates Xi Jinping’s government’s severe repression of Muslim minorities, principally Uyghurs and Kazhaks. Accounts from a camp survivor and a woman who fled detainment show how, even outside the camps, life in the province of Xinjiang became a prison. The crisis meets the United Nations’ definition of genocide, and the U.S. State Department has also made that determination. With the 2022 Winter Olympics coming up in Beijing, what can the world do about Xinjiang? </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Rickie Lee Jones’s Life on the Road

<p><span>Rickie Lee Jones emerged into the pop world fully formed; her début album was nominated for five Grammys, in 1980, and she won for Best New Artist. </span><span>One of the songs on that record was “The Last Chance Texaco,” and Jones has made that the title of her new memoir. The song evokes a service station on a long stretch of highway, and Jones’s book reflects on her almost obsessive need to travel and uproot herself at almost any cost. </span><span>“All I wanted to do was leave” from a very young age, she says.“When I talk about it from here, it seems like it was so horribly dangerous.” She adds, “Suddenly I’ll [say], ‘I think I’ll go to Big Sur,’ and I’m in a car, going. But the chaos and trouble that brings to a life!” The </span><span>producer Scott Carrier, who hosts the podcast “Home of the Brave,” interviewed Jones near her home in New Orleans. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Brody Awards, and Louis Menand on “The Free World”

<p><span>Oscars, schmoscars! Richard Brody is a critic of wide tastes and eccentric enthusiasms. His list of the best films of the year rarely lines up with the Academy’s. Each year, he joins David Remnick and the staff writer Alexandra Schwartz to talk about the year’s cinematic highlights. Plus, the staff writer Louis Menand talks with Remnick about his new work of cultural history, “The Free World.” Menand writes about the postwar flowering </span><span>of American culture, when the United States evolved from an economic and military giant into a global creative force. Modern jazz and rock and roll were exported and celebrated around the world. Painters got out from under the long shadow of Europe and led the way into new forms of abstraction and social commentary. Writers like James Baldwin turned a spotlight back on America’s fundamental, unexamined flaws. </span><span>It was a time, Menand writes, when “ideas mattered. Painting mattered. Movies mattered. Poetry mattered.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

David Fincher on “Mank,” and Daniel Alarcón’s Favorite Children’s Books

<p><span>David Fincher made his name in Hollywood as the director of movies that pushed people’s buttons—dark thrillers like “Fight Club,” “The Game,” “Seven,” and “Gone Girl”—but his new film belongs to one of Hollywood’s most esteemed genres: stories about Hollywood. Around thirty years ago, his father, the late Jack Fincher, gave him the draft of a screenplay about Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote “Citizen Kane” and other classics. Fincher tells David Remnick that Mankiewicz was a key figure in film—one of that first generation of writers who invented a vibrant language for movies as they came into the sound era.  Nominated for ten Academy Awards (including a Best Director nomination for Fincher), “Mank” is the story of the writer’s conflict with Orson Welles in the making of “Citizen Kane,” and their struggle is one that has bedevilled creators and critics down the decades: Who really authors a film? </span><span>Plus, the journalist and fiction writer Daniel Alarcón talks about three children’s books he’s been enjoying with his son during the pandemic.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Race and Taxes, and Jane Mayer on How to Kill a Bill

<p><span>The investigative reporter </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jane-mayer"><span>Jane Mayer</span></a><span> recently received a recording of a meeting attended by conservative power brokers including Grover Norquist, representatives of PACs funded by Charles Koch, and an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell. The subject was the voting-rights bill H.R. 1, and the mood was anxious. The bill (which we </span><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/segments/will-most-important-voting-rights-bill-1965-die-senate"><span>discussed</span></a><span> in last week’s episode) would broadly make voting more accessible, which tends to benefit Democratic candidates, and it would raise the curtain on “dark money” in elections with stringent disclosure requirements. The problem for this group, a political strategist says, is that the bill is popular among voters of both parties, but H.R. 1, they insist, must die. As we hear the participants tick through options to tarnish the bill’s public appeal, Mayer notes how the political winds have shifted in Washington, leaving the Republican coalition newly fragile. Plus, Dorothy Brown, <span>a professor of tax law, uncovers how the seemingly race-neutral tax code compounds many inequalities in American life, and prevents Black people from building wealth. She talks with Sheelah Kolhatkar about her new book, “The Whiteness of Wealth.” </span></span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Complex Story of Being Trans in Africa, and Derek DelGaudio on Deception

<p><span>Our producer talks with the South African scholar Dr. B Camminga, whose essay “Disregard and Danger” deconstructs the viewpoints of so-called </span><span>TERF</span><span>s—trans-exclusionary radical feminists—through an African-feminist lens. And we speak with Derek DelGaudio, whose magic special on Hulu is “In & Of Itself.” DelGaudio says that he’s never liked tricking people, and he credits his brief stint as a “bust-out dealer”—a professional card dealer who cheats the players on behalf of the house—with changing his perspective on the power of deception. DelGaudio compares the claims of a rigged election that preceded the actual election to his work as a crooked dealer: he made his legitimate deals look shady in order to camouflage the bad ones. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Will the Most Important Voting-Rights Bill Since 1965 Die in the Senate?

<p><span>No sooner had Joe Biden won the Presidential election than Republican state legislatures began introducing measures to make voting more difficult in any number of ways, most of which will suppress Democratic turnout at the polls. Stacey Abrams, of Georgia, has called the measures “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” Congress has introduced the For the People Act, known as H.R. 1. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jelani-cobb"><span>Jelani Cobb</span></a><span> looks at how the bill goes beyond even the 1965 Voting Rights Act in its breadth, and how it will likely fare in the Senate. And </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jeannie-suk-gersen"><span>Jeannie Suk Gersen</span></a><span> speaks with David Remnick about the Supreme Court’s views on voting rights. The Court is currently weighing an Arizona case that will help decide what really counts as discrimination in a voting restriction.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Remembering a City at the Peak of Crisis

<p><span>April 15, 2020, was near the apex of the </span><span>COVID</span><span>-19 pandemic in New York City, which was then its epicenter. On that day, a crew of </span><i><span>New Yorker</span></i><span> writers talked with people all over the city, in every circumstance and walk of life, to form a portrait of a city in crisis. A group station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can’t live without it; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying; a graduating class of medical students gets up the courage to confront the worst crisis in generations; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families. The hour includes contributions from writers including </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/william-finnegan"><span>William Finnegan</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/helen-rosner"><span>Helen Rosner</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jia-tolentino"><span>Jia Tolentino</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/kelefa-sanneh"><span>Kelefa Sanneh</span></a><span>, and </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/adam-gopnik"><span>Adam Gopnik</span></a><span>, who says, “One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life, or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life. That’s the mystery of the pandemic.” </span></p> <p> </p> <p><i><span>This episode originally aired on April 24, 2020.  </span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

“2034,” and Torrey Peters on the Taboo of Detransitioning

<p><span>The retired admiral James Stavridis teamed up with Elliot Ackerman, a journalist and former Marine, to imagine how, in the shadow of an increasingly tense relationship between the U.S. and China, a small incident in contested waters could spiral into catastrophe. The result is “2034: A Novel of the Next World War.” The book is a thriller, and also a cautionary tale about a failure of military planning: “</span><span>We have plenty of intelligence,” Ackerman says. “What we often lack is imagination.” And Torrey Peters describes how her book “Detransition, Baby”—a dishy novel on a taboo subject—aims to move beyond the marginal spaces in which trans writing has flourished, into mainstream success with a major publisher. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Can the Royal Family Withstand Oprah’s Scrutiny?

<p><span>Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry, the Duchess and Duke of Sussex, was riveting celebrity television, but it may also be a significant turning point in the history of the British royal family. Revelations about racism and about Meghan’s struggles with mental health are already reshaping public perception of the powerful institution. The interview also touched on racism and mental health, issues that are familiar to many families. </span><span>“In the future, we will look to this interview as a real touchstone marking the change of who it is we see as authorities of their own experience,” </span><span>says </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/doreen-st-felix"><span>Doreen St. Félix</span></a><span>. In conversation with St. Félix and the eminent historian Simon Schama, the author of a three-volume history of Britain, David Remnick discusses how the interview plays into culture wars in the U.K. and in American. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Bonus Episode from La Brega: Basketball Warriors

<p><span>Despite being a U.S. colony, Puerto Rico competes in sports as its own country on the world stage. Since the 70s, Puerto Rico’s national basketball team has been a pride of the island, taking home trophy after trophy. But in the 2004 at the Athens Olympics, the team was up against the odds, with an opening game against a U.S. Dream Team stacked with players like Lebron James and Allen Iverson. T</span>his episode of La Brega, f<span>rom </span>Futuro Media and WNYC Studios,<span> </span><span>tells the story of a basketball game that Puerto Ricans will never forget, and why he thinks now, more than ever, is a crucial moment to remember it. </span></p> <p><em>The documentary "Nuyorican Basquet"<span> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nuyorican-B%C3%A1squet-Raymond-Dalmau/dp/B08B1K5ZG8">is here</a>.</em></p> <p><em>If you want to see the famous photo of Carlos Arroyo,<span> </span><a href="https://www.elnuevodia.com/deportes/baloncesto/notas/una-foto-que-le-dio-la-vuelta-al-mundo/">click here</a>.  </em></p> <p><em>To read more about sovereignty and sports, we recommend<span> </span><a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803278813/">The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico</a>, by Antonio Sotomayor. </em></p> <p><em>CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Hiram Martinez’s workplace in 2004 as El Nuevo Dia. It was El Vocero. The story has been updated.</em></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Living in the Shadow of Guantánamo

<p><span>When Mohamedou Salahi arrived at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in August of 2002, he was hopeful. He knew why he had been detained: he had crossed paths with Al Qaeda operatives, and his cousin had once called him from Osama bin Laden’s phone. But Salahi was no terrorist—he held no extremist views—and had no information of any plots. He trusted the American system of justice and thought the authorities would realize their mistake before long. </span></p> <p><span>He was wrong. </span></p> <p><span>Salahi spent fifteen years at Guantánamo, where he was subjected to some of the worst excesses of America’s war on terror; Donald Rumsfeld personally signed off on the orders for his torture. And, under torture, Salahi confessed to everything—even though he had done nothing. “If they would have wanted him to confess to being on the grassy knoll for the J.F.K. assassination, I’m sure we could have got him to confess to that, too,” Mark Fallon, who led an investigation unit at Guantánamo, said.</span></p> <p><span>Ben Taub<span> </span></span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-darkest-secret"><span>reported</span></a><span><span> </span>Mohamedou Salahi’s story for<span> </span></span><em><span>The New Yorker</span></em><span><span> </span>and tried to understand what had gone wrong in the fight against Al Qaeda. Salahi met Ben in Mauritania, because, when the U.S. released him, it was under the condition that Mauritania would withhold his passport. He would like to go abroad—he needs medical treatment, and he hopes to live in a democracy. But, for an innocent victim of Guantánamo, being released isn’t the same as being free. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><em><span>This episode originally aired August 2, 2019. Ben Taub’s reporting on Mohamedou Salahi won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2020.</span></em></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Clubhouse Opens a Window for Free Expression in China

<p><span>Clubhouse is an audio-only social-media platform offering chat rooms on any subject, allowing thousands of people to gather and listen to each other. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jiayang-fan"><span>Jiayang Fan</span></a><span>, who often reports on China, tells David Remnick that the chance to talk in private and without a text trail has opened a window of free expression for Chinese users. (Recently, some questions have been raised about whether the app is as secure as its makers claim.) Suddenly, in chat rooms with names like “There is a concentration camp in Xinjiang?,” Chinese users are able to address politically taboo subjects out loud in large groups. A Clubhouse chat-room moderator explains to Fan that for Han Chinese, who are the beneficiaries of the government’s persecution of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, the app offers a space for reckoning and protest comparable to America’s Black Lives Matter movement. The government has clamped down on Clubhouse, but tech-savvy young people are used to finding workarounds. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Anthony Hopkins on “The Father,” and Patricia Lockwood’s First Novel

<p><span>At an age when many actors are slowing down or long retired, Anthony Hopkins has kept up a feverish pace, with recent roles including Pope Benedict XVI in “The Two Popes” and Odin in Marvel’s “Thor” movies. In his new film, “The Father,” Hopkins’s character, Antony, is beginning to suffer from dementia, but he doesn’t want to accept a caregiver when his daughter, played by Olivia Colman, can no longer live with him. The film brings the viewer into Antony’s experience, particularly his confusion about what’s happening around him. Hopkins tells </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/michael-schulman"><span>Michael Schulman</span></a><span><span> </span>that he hasn’t dealt with dementia in his own family, thankfully, but that he wasn’t daunted by the role. “When you’re working with a superb script, it’s a road map, and you follow it,” he says. He advises younger actors, “Don’t act too much. Keep it simple.” Plus, the writer Patricia Lockwood, who’s just published her first novel, on how she created literature out of the fractured consciousness of an obsessive Twitter user.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Atul Gawande on the COVID Vaccine, and Daniel Kaluuya on “Judas and the Black Messiah”

<p><span>Atul Gawande, the staff writer and public-health expert, talks with David Remnick about the progress of the vaccine rollout, the new strains of the coronavirus, and whether we will ever take our masks off. And the actor Daniel Kaluuya talks about playing a man many regard as a martyr, in the new film “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Kaluuya stars as Fred Hampton, a young leader in the Black Panther Party, who was shot in his bed by Chicago police in a predawn raid. The actor talked with Kai Wright, the host of WNYC’s “</span><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety"><span>The United States of Anxiety</span></a><span>,” about how the F.B.I. and many whites saw Hampton’s affirmation of Black people as tantamount to terrorism. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Congressman Jamie Raskin on Impeaching Donald Trump—Again

<p><span>Tommy Raskin, a twenty-five-year-old law student, took his own life on New Year’s Eve, after a long battle against depression. His family laid him to rest on January 5th, and, the next day, his father went to the United States Capitol, where he serves in Congress. Representative Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland’s Eighth District, had an enormous task ahead of him: he was mounting the defense of the Electoral College vote. When a violent mob incited by Donald Trump breached the building, Raskin’s life was in danger, along with the lives of his daughter and son-in-law, who had joined him that day for support. Just weeks later, when the House impeached Donald Trump for his role in inciting that insurrection, Raskin was the lead manager prosecuting the case. Raskin told David Remnick about the devastation of a suicide in the family, his condolence calls from President Biden and Vice-President Harris, and how he believed the entire Senate would unite to convict Donald Trump. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The People Who Will Decide Donald Trump&apos;s Fate on Facebook

<p><span>Facebook created the Oversight Board to adjudicate high-level claims about what can and can’t be posted, independent of the company’s leadership. This is a big deal: when Donald Trump was displeased by one of the board’s appointees, he contacted Mark Zuckerberg directly, as Kate Klonick learned in her </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/inside-the-making-of-facebooks-supreme-court"><span>reporting</span></a><span>. And then Trump himself became the new board’s biggest test case. Facebook asked the board to rule on whether the former President should be reinstated, after he was banned from the platform for his role in inciting the Capitol riot. Klonick, an assistant professor of law at St. John’s University, had an unusual degree of access to Facebook to document the creation of the board. She talked with David Remnick about how independent the Oversight Board can be, how it may rule on Donald Trump, and why it’s so hard to get Jewish space lasers off Facebook. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Supreme Court of Facebook

<p><span>Facebook is at the center of the hottest controversies over freedom of speech, and its opaque, unaccountable decisions have angered people across the political spectrum. Mark Zuckerberg’s answer to this mess is to outsource: Facebook recently created and endowed a permanent body it calls the Oversight Board—like a Supreme Court whose decisions will be binding for the company. And Facebook immediately referred to the board a crucial question: whether to reinstate Donald Trump on the platform, after he was banned for inciting the January 6th riot at the Capitol. In this collaboration between the New Yorker Radio Hour and </span><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab"><span>Radiolab</span></a><span>, the producer Simon Adler explores the creation of the Oversight Board with Kate Klonick, whose </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/inside-the-making-of-facebooks-supreme-court"><span>reporting</span></a><span> appears in </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span>. What they learn calls into question whether Zuckerberg’s fundamentally American-style view of free speech can be exported around the world without resulting in sometimes dire consequences. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Amanda Petrusich Talks with the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman

<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/amanda-petrusich"><span>Amanda Petrusich</span></a><span> describes herself as a “diehard fan” of folk music, but not when it feels precious or sentimental. That’s why she loves the Weather Station, whose songs, she thinks, “could take a punch to the face.” A solo project of the songwriter and performer Tamara Lindeman, the Weather Station’s new album, “Ignorance,” focusses on the theme of climate grief: Lindeman was responding to a devastating report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about the consequences of elevated carbon levels for human societies. If that sounds heady, Lindeman tells Petrusich that it may be her heritage. “There’s this thread in Canadian music of philosophical songwriting, and that’s how I like my lyrics to be. I like them to be about ideas as well as stories. . . . Most people want songs that just tell a story; they don’t want the complicated ideas. But I do.”</span></p> <p><span>The Weather Station performs “Robber” and “Tried to Tell You,” with Evan Cartwright on percussion and Karen Ng on saxophone.  </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Trump Closed the U.S. to Asylum Seekers. Will Biden Reopen It?

<p><span>Immediately after Inauguration, the Biden Administration began trying to unwind some of Donald Trump’s most notorious policies on immigration. But, over four years, Trump’s advisers made more than a thousand seemingly bureaucratic, technical rule changes that have had profound consequences. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/sarah-stillman"><span>Sarah Stillman</span></a><span> reports on the case of a mother and daughter who arrived at the southern border from Honduras. After the family ran afoul of local politicians and crime figures, the father was assassinated and an older daughter was raped in the presence of a police officer. Yet their appeal for asylum was rejected by a Trump-appointed judge, who went to unusual lengths to explain her reasoning. Replaying a recording of the hearing, Stillman walks through the series of legal barriers designed to send the women back into severe danger. “In order to qualify for asylum</span><span>,” Stillman remarks, </span><span>“</span><span>you almost have to have been murdered to show that you could be murdered.”  </span></p> <p><span>(Many of the Trump Administration policies were driven by Stephen Miller, the ultra-hard-line immigration adviser; The New Yorker Radio Hour </span><a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/stephen-miller-architect-trumps-immigration-plan-pm/"><span>reported</span></a><span> in 2020 on Miller’s influence.)  </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Kurt Vile Talks with Amanda Petrusich

<p><span>Kurt Vile—that’s his real name—helped found the rock band the War on Drugs. But he left that band shortly after its début to make records of his own. His albums include “Childish Prodigy,” “Smoke Ring for My Halo,” and the recently released “Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep.)” Vile’s music has been characterized as “slacker rock,” but he takes songwriting seriously. He’s popular enough to have been honored with Kurt Vile Day in his home town of Philadelphia, but he tells the music critic Amanda Petrusich that he still can’t get a reaction from his hero, Neil Young. He joined Petrusich in the fall of 2018, at the New Yorker Festival, for a conversation and to perform a live version of “Pretty Pimpin.” </span></p> <p> </p> <p><i><span>This segment originally aired April 12, 2019. </span></i><span> </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

William Barber, and the Question of Faith and Politics

<p><span>The North Carolina pastor William Barber, who spoke at the inaugural prayer service at the start of the Biden Administration, wants politics to be guided by faith and morality. But conservatives, Barber thinks, are deeply confused about Christ’s teachings. Then </span><span>Paul Elie considers Biden as only the second Catholic President. Elie thinks that Catholics demoralized by decades of the Church’s abuse scandals are welcoming Biden as a “moral authority” outside the religious hierarchy. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Unearthing Entombed

<p><span>Now that we are some sixty years into the digital era, </span><span>the early days of modern computers are growing distant and mysterious to us. The field of game archeology seeks to uncover the origins and uses of these technological artifacts, and to determine what they tell us about the industry that created them. The </span><i><span>New Yorker</span></i><span> writer </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/simon-parkin"><span>Simon Parkin</span></a><span> and his producer </span><a href="https://www.wnyc.org/people/alex-barron/"><span>Alex Barron</span></a><span> try some archeology of their own on a video game from 1982 called Entombed. With the tiny amount of memory on an Atari 2600 cartridge, Entombed accomplished something new, and to this day nobody can figure out how it worked. Was it really developed during a programmer’s drunken blackout? </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos on the Balance of Power at the Start of the Biden Administration

<p><span>With Donald Trump rated the least popular President in the span of modern polling, President Biden might feel confident in claiming a mandate to advance his progressive agenda. Yet Democratic majorities in Congress are slim in the House of Representatives, and razor-thin in the Senate. That gives a small number of Democratic conservatives and moderate Republicans outsized influence over what legislation can pass. Senator Mitch McConnell, in a power-sharing arrangement with the Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, remains a force to be reckoned with. What will this balance of power mean for the new Administration? David Remnick poses this question to </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jane-mayer"><span>Jane Mayer</span></a><span>, who has reported on McConnell’s tenure as a political operator, and to </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/evan-osnos"><span>Evan Osnos</span></a><span>, who covered Biden’s campaign and wrote a biography of the new President. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

How Far Has the F.B.I. Gone to Protect White Supremacy?

<p><span>Today, Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s work on civil rights is celebrated as bringing about one of the turning points of the twentieth century in America. But, in his own time, King was a divisive figure, unloved by millions of Americans—many members of government among them. The F.B.I. surveilled him constantly. President Lyndon Johnson worked with King to shape benchmark civil-rights legislation, but, after King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he was effectively alienated by the Administration. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover’s agents at the F.B.I. began active measures to destroy King’s reputation and end his public influence, threatening to expose an extramarital affair. The documentary “MLK/FBI,” directed by Sam Pollard, examines this low point in the federal government’s abuse of power. Pollard tells </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jelani-cobb"><span>Jelani Cobb</span></a><span> that Hoover must have wondered, “ ‘How dare a Black man try to change the America I grew up in?’ The America he knew and loved was on a road to change. And he was totally against it.” Even today, as a leaked document shows, some within the F.B.I. see Black activists’ calls for justice and recognition as potential dangers to be watched carefully.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Donald Trump’s American Carnage Comes to Washington

<p><span>Luke Mogelson and Susan B. Glasser report on the convulsions of Donald Trump’s final days in office, an unprecedented second impeachment of a President, and the threat of insurrectionary violence hovering over the entire nation. And a game designer offers insights on how the fantastical, wholly fictional narrative of QAnon has captivated so many people—to such dangerous effect.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Questions about the Variant Virus, and Posthumous Albums by Pop Smoke and others

<p><span>A new variant of </span><span>SARS</span><span>-CoV-2 is making its way around the world; in the U.S., it has been found in at least three states: California, Colorado, and New York. Joe Osmundson, an assistant professor of biology at New York University, speaks with the<span> </span></span><em><span>New Yorker</span></em><span><span> </span>staff writer<span> </span></span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/carolyn-kormann"><span>Carolyn Kormann</span></a><span><span> </span>about why this new strain is particularly concerning. It has twenty-three mutations—far more than scientists would expect an RNA virus to have—which makes it at least fifty per cent more contagious than the original virus. The response, Osmundson says, should be to double down on reducing transmission by encouraging a culture of caution. Mask wearing, he warns, might be with us for a long time. Osmundson came of age as a gay man during the<span> </span></span><span>AIDS</span><span><span> </span>crisis, and he compares our pressing need for social distancing to the cultural change that took place during that era. “It was not a joy, growing up, to worry about H.I.V. every time I had sex, and to feel like if I don’t wear a condom, I might die,” he tells Kormann. “And yet that was part of how we cared for each other. It is a way to care.” </span><span>Plus, a music editor and writer picks some favorites from a very specific genre: posthumous rap albums. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>