Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s political news, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s response to an allegation of sexual assault, which U.S. officials Americans trust during the pandemic, a new proposal for more coronavirus relief and an insider trading investigation of prominent senators.
Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status.
Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long.
This week, Elisabeth Bik tells us about her work uncovering potential image manipulation, and a new route for particulate pollution formation.In this episode:
00:45 Seeing double
Elisabeth Bik spends her days identifying duplicated images in science papers. She tells us about her efforts, and why they’re important. Feature: Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers; News: Publishers launch joint effort to tackle altered images in research papers
08:11 Research Highlights
New insights on the mysterious Tully Monster, and how football fans can stoke air pollution. Research Highlight: Unmasking the Tully Monster: fossils help to tackle a decades-old mystery; Research Highlight: The meaty link between a city’s football matches and its foul air
10:29 Understanding air pollution
Particulate pollution is a serious threat to human health, but the way that new particles form is poorly understood. This week, new research suggests a new mechanism for it to happen. Research article: Wang et al.; News and Views: Airborne particles might grow fast in cities
15:09 Pick of the Briefing
We pick some highlights from the Nature Briefing, including the closest discovered black hole to Earth, and how wriggly worms are helping physicists model microscopic processes. National Geographic: Closest black hole to Earth found ‘hiding in plain sight’; Physics: Worm Viscosity
The federal government is spending big to combat the economic damage of the coronavirus crisis, and federal debt has climbed to record levels. WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath explains the debate over the impact of all that debt.
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including how the spread of COVID-19 inside the White House complicates the administration’s pandemic messaging, whether Americans will feel safe returning to work and what voting looks like during the pandemic.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the dangerous gap between Wall Street and Main Street in America, (10:22) high-speed science—new research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. (21:00) And, casual sex is out, companionship is in.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including the Department of Justice’s request to throw out the case against Michael Flynn, the politicization of American government institutions and how President Trump’s reelection ambition is driving his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here, and all of our Research and Editorials here. And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree-planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet.
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