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The story of two journalists who investigated an unsolved mass murder in Northern Ireland.

Episode 1 – Early One Morning

Investigative journalist Barry McCaffrey has slept in and he’s late for work. When his doorbell rings at 7am, Barry wonders if the day he’s been dreading has finally arrived – are his worst fears about to come true?

A BBC Northern Ireland Production

Because it has the word "engineering" right in there, the field of traffic engineering is something most people assume is governed by science and rational rules. But a new book, written by a traffic engineer himself, argues that is not the case at all. In Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System, Wes Marshall — a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver — says that the idea that the design of our transportation system is based on science couldn't be further from the truth. By examining a century's worth of history, studies, old professional journals and current standards, Marshall argues that his colleagues need to do some deep soul searching about the rules they follow so that they no longer design a system that kills tens of thousands of people per year.

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This episode was sponsored by Cleverhood and Bullmoose Softgoods. Listen for the latest discount codes.

Pick up a copy of Killed by a Traffic Engineer and books by all of our podcast guests at our official Bookshop.org page.

Grab some merch in our official store!

This episode was edited by Yessenia Moreno. It was recorded by Josh Wilcox at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio.

https://thewaroncars.org/

Today you can convert speech to text with the click of a button. Youtube does it for all our videos. Our phones will do it in real time. It’s frictionless. And yet, if it weren’t for an unlikely crew of protesters and office workers, it might still be impossible. 

This week, the story of our attempts to make the spoken visible. The magicians who tried. And the crazy spell that finally did it. 

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Simon Adler
Produced by - Simon Adler
Original music from - Simon Adler
Sound design contributed by - Simon Adler 
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini

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In March of 2024, a park ranger and volunteer were taking their regular walk together around Big Bend National Park. They came across a teeny tiny fuzzy little plant with unusual ribbon-like flowers bursting out of the center – something neither of them had ever seen before. As it turned out, they had stumbled on a rare scientific discovery.

Learn more about the woolly devil, and check out iNaturalist.

For more unusual stories, lists, and offbeat itineraries, check out the Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to the National Parks.

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Substack was founded to create an escape vehicle for writers: Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie imagined a world where writers didn’t have to rely on legacy publications or corporate advertisers, but could instead create a more direct and meaningful relationship with their audience. Despite early skepticism, Chris and Hamish were confident that many people would pay a few dollars a month to subscribe to their favorite newsletters, on subjects ranging from politics to sports to tech. Today, Substack has over 35 million active users, and while many of its offerings are free, a number of its content-creators make upwards of $500,000 a year.

This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Iman Maani.

You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [email protected]. Sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.

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There is nothing that Artnet’s Art Critic Ben Davis likes better than finding a name for a phenomenon that’s all around him, but that he doesn’t have a name for yet. The writer and theorist Nadia Asparouhova has a new book out that offered exactly this. It’s called Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading.

We tend to think of cultural influence as being tied to popularity and visibility. What Asparouhova wants us to pay attention to is a whole other class of cultural stuff whose influence is linked instead to being hard to find or difficult to understand. These are what she calls “anti-memes.”

It’s the opinion puts you at odds with some people but really connects you to others, so you’re careful how you share it. It’s the artwork that looks like nonsense to the majority of the audience but is full of intricate meaning to fans.

The theory of "anti-memes” is about how some of our most intense cultural investments are below the radar—not because they haven’t been found yet, but because that’s how they are built.

All this touches on themes that a lot of artists have been thinking about. Asparouhova’s book, in fact, is published by a group of artists and thinkers called the Dark Forest Collective, named after writer Yancey Strickler’s idea of the internet as a “dark forest,” a space that has become so contentious and commercial that the smart people retreat to more private digital spaces for authenticity and cachet. Asparouhova’s book helps focus in on the question of how difficult ideas and art that’s not built to go viral survive and find real fans now.

Rob and Britta discuss a ten year old story from This American Life called "The Problem We All Live With" produced by Chana Joffe-Walt and reported by Nikole Hannah-Jones. It's an example of the kind of documentary journalism we need more than ever, in a world where such journalism is increasingly under threat.

Show Notes:

TAL Episode 562: The Problem We all Live With

Longform Podast interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones

Third Coast Audio Festival Session: Make Them Care

Saint Louis Public Radio's coverage of the Francis Howell town meeting

"Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City" by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Music - Blue Dot Sessions

When Wrest Park’s Jemima, Marchioness Grey, was widowed, she unleashed her purse strings to install lavish Chinese art across the Bedfordshire estate: perfect for taking tea with friends. 

You can get lost in the intricate birds, plants and people featured in Wrest Park’s Chinese wallpapers, but how was this part of a wider fashion in textiles, design and landscaping?  

Dr Andrew Hann and volunteer Richard Luscombe join writer and comedian Amy Matthews to find out how trade between Europe and China started a centuries long love affair with Chinese design and textiles, and how consumer demand and exotic ideals were used by skilled manufacturers to develop the Chinoiserie style we still enjoy in our clothes, homewares and furnishings today.  

You can plan your visit to see Wrest Park and its Chinese wallpapers at https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/wrest/  

Don’t forget to follow this podcast and leave a review if you love the show. 

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Who is out there behind the howling midnight parties in the distance? For generations we have coexisted in varying degrees of rivalry, conflict, and admiration with the North American canine known as the coyote. From pre-colonization to our modern backyards, through the wild west and the streets of San Francisco, award-winning NPR science reporter and YWA Maligned Animal correspondent Lulu Miller takes our pack on a journey toward a better understanding of these resilient creatures.

*EDITOR'S NOTE: Lulu Miller would like to submit a correction to her statement that Ronald Reagan put a band on coyote poison, she actually meant Richard Nixon. Sarah would like to add that he grew up drinking raw milk and at least one of his brothers died of tuberculosis which really makes you think, doesn't it?

Terrestrials // “The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack”
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/articles/the-howler-the-dog-who-joined-a-coyote-pack

More about Lulu Miller:
https://radiolab.org/team/lulu-miller

Visit Christine E. Wilkerson's website
https://scrappynaturalist.com/

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Bonus Episodes on Patreon
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Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, You Are Good

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