We discuss President Biden’s trip to Asia and his goals to strengthen ties in the region. Plus: we preview this weekend’s elections in Australia, catch up on the latest from the Cannes Film Festival, and hear about a symphony that is out of this world.
Tag Archives: Podcasts
Morning News: North Korea Covid Surge, Turkey Voters, Arab School Girls
North Korea’s zero-covid strategy appears to have failed. The country has officially acknowledged 162 cases; the true number is probably orders of magnitude more.
The country’s health-care system is inadequate, and pre-existing conditions such as tuberculosis and malnutrition are rampant. With elections impending in Turkey, politicians have begun competing with each other to scapegoat refugees. And why girls outperform boys in the Arab world’s schools.
Science: Galaxies Without Dark Matter, High Helium Levels, Solar Energy Jump
Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the Universe, and is thought to be needed for galaxies to form. But four years ago, astronomers made a perplexing, and controversial discovery: two galaxies seemingly devoid of dark matter.
This week the team suggests that a cosmic collision may explain how these, and a string of other dark-matter-free galaxies, could have formed.
Research article: van Dokkum et al
News and Views: Giant collision created galaxies devoid of dark matter
08:39 Research Highlights
How fossil fuel burning has caused levels of helium to rise, and a high-efficiency, hybrid solar-energy system.
Research Highlight: Helium levels in the atmosphere are ballooning
Research Highlight: Flower power: ‘Sunflower’ system churns out useful energy
10:49 Researchers experiences of the war in Ukraine
We hear the stories of scientists whose lives have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including researchers who have become refugees, soldiers and activists in the face of a horrifying conflict.
Nature Feature: How three Ukrainian scientists are surviving Russia’s brutal war
20:46 Imaging the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
Last week, a team of researchers released an image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive blackhole at the centre of our galaxy. We hear how they took the image and what it is revealing about these enormous objects.
Nature News: Black hole at the centre of our Galaxy imaged for the first time
Opinion: India’s Economy, Workplace Surveillance, Infant Genome Screening
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the forces that stand to transform India’s economy over the next decade (11:06), how surveilling workers could enhance productivity (21:07), and full-genome screening for newborn babies is now on the cards.
Morning News: Northern Ireland-UK, Mariupol Siege, Cannes Film Festival
We discuss the possibility of unilateral action on the Northern Ireland protocol and hear the latest on the conflict in Ukraine from Kharkiv. Plus: Yemen’s Sana’a airport finally reopens, and it’s the first day of the Cannes Film Festival.
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Georgina Godwin on the weekend’s biggest discussion topics; Charles Hecker reviews the papers; and Monocle’s Fernando Augusto Pacheco gives his prediction of who will win the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ final in Turin.
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
This week: is heritage in Ukraine being attacked and looted, and what can be done to protect it?
Ben Luke talks to The Art Newspaper’s museums and heritage editor, Tom Seymour, who has been to the Ukrainian-Polish border with the International Council of Museums (ICOM), to witness museum materials being sent into Ukraine to help institutions there. Then, Tom talks to Sophie Delepierre, the head of heritage protection at ICOM, about the organisation’s efforts in Ukraine and elsewhere.
As a major exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne opens at The Art Institute of Chicago, ahead of its journey to Tate Modern later in the year, Ben talks to Gloria Groom and Caitlin Haskell, the curators of the Chicago exhibition. And for this episode’s Work of the Week, our acting digital editor, Aimee Dawson, asks Oliver Lanzenberg, the grandson of the artist Nicola L., about his grandmother’s work Gold Femme Commode (1969/1993). The piece is part of a show at Alison Jacques, one of a number of exhibitions opening to coincide with the second edition of London Gallery Weekend.
Tom’s full report into ICOM’s work for Ukraine is in the next print edition of The Art Newspaper and online soon.
The organisation Sophie mentions is NEMO, the Network of European Museum Organisations, ne-mo.org.
Cezanne, The Art Institute of Chicago, 15 May-5 September; Tate Modern, London, 5 October-12 March 2023.
Nicola L., Alison Jacques, London, until 23 July.
London Gallery Weekend, 13-15 May.
Morning News: Ukraine Military Aid, Finland-NATO, Spanish Spying, Hong Kong
The latest on the war in Ukraine and Finland’s move to become part of Nato. Plus: a spying scandal rocks the Spanish government, a senior Catholic cleric is arrested in Hong Kong, and a report from Turin on Eurovision.
Science: Reviving Retinas, Floral Chocolates, First Life From RNA + Proteins
Reviving retinas to understand eyes
Research efforts to learn more about diseases of the human eye have been hampered as these organs degrade rapidly after death, and animal eyes are quite different to those from humans.
To address this, a team have developed a new method to revive retinas taken from donors shortly after their death. They hope this will provide tissue for new studies looking into the workings of the human eye and nervous system.
Research article: Abbas et al.
8:05 Research Highlights
A technique that simplifies chocolate making yields fragrant flavours, and 3D imaging reveals some of the largest-known Native American cave art.
Research Highlight: How to make a fruitier, more floral chocolate
Research Highlight: Cramped chamber hides some of North America’s biggest cave art
10:54 Did life emerge in an ‘RNA world’?
How did the earliest biochemical process evolve from Earth’s primordial soup? One popular theory is that life began in an ‘RNA world’ from which proteins and DNA evolved. However, this week a new paper suggests that a world composed of RNA alone is unlikely, and that life is more likely to have begun with molecules that were part RNA and part protein.
Research article: Müller et al.
News and Views: A possible path towards encoded protein synthesis on ancient Earth
17:52 Briefing Chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, the ‘polarised sunglasses’ that helped astronomers identify an ultra-bright pulsar, and how a chemical in sunscreen becomes toxic to coral.
Nature: A ‘galaxy’ is unmasked as a pulsar — the brightest outside the Milky Way
The Getty: Photographer Imogen Cunningham
May 11, 2022 – In this episode of Getty Art + Ideas, Getty photographs curator Paul Martineau discusses Imogen Cunningham’s trajectory, focusing on key artworks made throughout her life.
“When Cunningham passed away, I think in part her reputation was based on her personality, the fact that she had lived so long, the fact that she was full of witty quips, and she wouldn’t let anyone boss her around. But I think in some ways that eclipsed the work.”
Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1883, photographer Imogen Cunningham joined a correspondence course for photography as a high schooler after seeing a magazine ad. Over the course of her 70-year career, Cunningham stirred controversy with a nude portrait of her husband, photographed flowers while minding her young children in her garden, captured striking portraits of famous actors and writers for Vanity Fair, and provided insight into the life of nonagenarians when she herself was in her 90s. Although photography was a male-dominated field, Cunningham made a name for herself while also supporting the work of other women artists. Her long, varied career is the subject of the new exhibition Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective at the Getty Center.
Boomers Daily 