This American Life
This American Life
This American Life
816: Poultry Slam
During the highest turkey consumption period of the year, we bring you a This American Life tradition: stories of turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, fowl of all kinds—real and imagined—and their mysterious hold over us. * Prologue: Ira Glass talks with Scharlette Holdman, who works with defense teams on high profile death row cases, and who has not talked to a reporter in more than 25 years. Why did she suddenly end the moratorium on press? Because her story is about something important: namely, a beautiful chicken. (2 minutes) * Act One: Scharlette Holdman's story continues, in which she and the rest of a legal defense team try to save a man on death row by finding a star witness — a chicken with a specific skill. (10 minutes) * Act Two: Yet another testimony to the power chickens have over our hearts and minds. Jack Hitt reports on an opera about Chicken Little. It's performed with dressed-up styrofoam balls, it's sung in Italian and, no kidding, able to make grown men cry. (14 minutes) * Act Three: Ira accompanies photographer Tamara Staples as she attempts to photograph chickens in the style of high fashion photography. The chickens are not very cooperative. (15 minutes) * Act Four: Kathie Russo's husband was Spalding Gray, who was best known for delivering monologues onstage—like "Monster in a Box," and "Swimming to Cambodia." On January 10, 2004, he went missing. Witnesses said they saw him on the Staten Island Ferry that night. Two months later, his body was pulled out of the East River. Kathie tells the story of the night he disappeared, and about how, in the weeks following, she and each of their three children were visited by a bird, who seemed to be delivering a message to them. (9 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
58 min
Crime Junkie
Crime Junkie
audiochuck
CONSPIRACY: Phillip Island Part 1
When 23-year-old Beth Barnard is found murdered in her home, investigators immediately suspect a woman named Vivienne Cameron, whose husband had been having an affair with Beth. But the more investigators – and the wider public – dig into the mystery, the less the puzzle pieces seem to fit together. Visit the Crime Junkie Fan Club App to listen to Part 2 now, as well as hundreds of never before released bonus episode. If you would like to purchase Vikki Petraitis’ and Paul Daley’s book, “The Phillip Island Murder,” please visit this link! * If you or someone you know if experiencing thoughts of suicide, support can be reached by calling or texting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/conspiracy-phillip-island-part-1 Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie! * Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuck * Twitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuck * TikTok: @crimejunkiepodcast * Facebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllc Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. * Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawat * Twitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawat * TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie * Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at +1 (317) 733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, random photos of Chuck, and more!
58 min
The Ezra Klein Show
The Ezra Klein Show
New York Times Opinion
Best Of: This Is Your Brain on Deep Reading. It’s Pretty Magnificent.
Every day, we consume a mind-boggling amount of information. We scan online news articles, sift through text messages and emails, scroll through our social-media feeds — and that’s usually before we even get out of bed in the morning. In 2009, a team of researchers found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of information a day. Undoubtedly, that number would be even higher today. But what are we actually getting from this huge influx of information? How is it affecting our memories, our attention spans, our ability to think? What might this mean for today’s children, and future generations? And what does it take to read — and think — deeply in a world so flooded with constant input? Maryanne Wolf is a researcher and scholar at U.C.L.A.’s School of Education and Information Studies. Her books “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” and “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” explore the relationship between the process of reading and the neuroscience of the brain. And, in Wolf’s view, our era of information overload represents a historical inflection point where our ability to read — truly, deeply read, not just scan or scroll — hangs in the balance. In this conversation, recorded in November 2022, we discuss why reading is a fundamentally “unnatural” act, how scanning and scrolling differ from “deep reading,” why it’s not accurate to say that “reading” is just one thing, how our brains process information differently when we’re reading on a Kindle or a laptop as opposed to a physical book, how exposure to such an abundance of information is rewiring our brains and reshaping our society, how to rediscover the lost art of reading books deeply, what Wolf recommends to those of us who struggle against digital distractions, what parents can do to to protect their children’s attention, how Wolf’s theory of a “biliterate brain” may save our species’ ability to deeply process language and information and more. We’ll be back on Friday, Dec. 1, with a new episode. Mentioned: The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) by Hermann Hesse How We Read Now by Naomi S. Baron The Shallows by Nicholas Carr Yiruma Book Recommendations: The Gilead Novels by Marilynne Robinson World and Town by Gish Jen Standing by Words by Wendell Berry Love’s Mind by John S. Dunne Middlemarch by George Eliot Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (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. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.
1 hr 10 min
Morbid
Morbid
Morbid Network | Wondery
Episode 515: The Murder of the Grimes Sisters
On the evening of December 28, 1956, fifteen-year-old Barbara Grimes and her thirteen-year-old sister, Patricia, left their home in Chicago, Illinois headed for a movie theater in Brighton Park to see the latest Elvis Presley film. When the girls failed to return home that evening as expected, their mother sent the two other siblings to wait for them at the closest bus station, but when they returned later without Barbara and Patricia, she became anxious and began calling their friends, before eventually phoning the police. Three weeks later, Barbara and Patricia’s bodies were discovered on the side of a rural road by a construction worker in Willow Springs, about an hour outside Chicago. The murder of the Grimes sisters and the investigation that followed remains one of Chicago’s most notorious cold cases and one of the most costly and labor-intensive searches in the state’s history. Thank you to the incredible Dave White of Bring Me The Axe Podcast for research assistance! References Chicago Tribune. 1957. "Suspect's mom says he's lazy, shiftless bum." Chcago Tribune, January 25: 3. —. 1957. "Charged with murder of Grimes girls." Chicago Tribune, January 28: 1. —. 1957. "Dsicloses how 2 girls ditched him and companion in theater." Chicago Tribune, January 27: 1. —. 1957. "High points of the news." Chicago Tribune, February 3: 8. —. 1957. "'I knew it!' sobs mother." Chicago Tribune, 01 23: 1. —. 1957. "Nude bodies thrown beside country road." Chicago Tribune, January 23: 1. —. 1957. "Rule out sex attack, strangling theories." Chicago Tribune, January 24: 1. —. 1958. "Slayer of girl, 15, hopes he gets chair." Chicago Tribune, November 19: 1. —. 1957. "Widen search for 2 young sisters missing four days." Chicago Tribune, January 1: 5. —. 1956. "Young sisters reported seen in two places." Chicago Tribune, December 31: 6. Gowran, Clay. 1957. "Re-enacts crime, and shows how he dumped two in ditch." Chicago Tribune, January 28: 1. Lowry, Shirley. 1957. "Lost girls' mother keeps brave." Chicago Tribune, January 11: 3. McGill, Nancy. 1957. "Mom denies Skid Row tale." Chicago Tribune, Janaury 28: 6. Milwaukee Journal. 1957. "Grimes case tiff costs job." Milwaukee Journal, February 16. Nix, Naomi. 2013. "1950s case gets new look from pro, amateurs." Chicago Tribune, 30 May: 1. Taylor, Troy. 2015. The Two Lost Girls: The Mystery of the Grimes Sisters. Jacksonville, IL: Whitechapel Press. United Press. 1957. "Bennie admits part in crime." Daily Chronicle, January 28: 1. —. 1957. "New suspect is arrested." Daily Chronicle, January 24: 1. —. 1957. "Two teen-aged girls killed." Daily Chronicle, Janaury 23: 1. UWIRE. 2019. "'Chicago History Cop' making headway in Grimes sisters' murder case." UWIRE, October 25. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
1 hr 21 min
Radiolab
Radiolab
WNYC Studios
Shrink
The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking. Viruses are supposed to be sleek, pared-down, dead-eyed machines. But when one microbiologist stumbled upon a GIANT virus, hundreds of times bigger than any seen before, all that went out the window. The discovery opened the door not only to a new cast of microscopic characters with names like Mimivirus, Mamavirus, and Megavirus, but also to basic questions: How did we miss these until now? Have they been around since the beginning? What if evolution could go … backwards? In this episode from 2015, join former co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich as they grill Radiolab regular Carl Zimmer on these paradoxical viruses – they’re so big that they can get their own viruses! - and what they can tell us about the nature of life. Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
45 min
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