In the past half-century, 17 percent of the Amazon — an area larger than Texas — has been converted to croplands or cattle pasture. Less forest means less recycled rain, less vapor to cool the air, less of a canopy to shield against sunlight. Under drier, hotter conditions, even the lushest of Amazonian trees will shed leaves to save water, inhibiting photosynthesis — a feedback loop that is only exacerbated by global warming.

According to the Brazilian Earth system scientist Carlos Nobre, if deforestation reaches 20 to 25 percent of the original area, “flying rivers” — rain clouds that recycle the forest’s own moisture five or six times — will weaken enough that a rainforest simply will not be able to survive in most of the Amazon Basin. Instead it will collapse into scrubby savanna, possibly in a matter of decades.

Losing the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, would be catastrophic for the tens of thousands of species that make their home there. What scientists are most concerned about, though, is the potential for this regional, ecological tipping point to produce knock-on effects in the global climate.

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This episode contains descriptions of violence and injury. 

In September, protests began in Iran over the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the government. The demonstrations have since intensified, as has the government’s response, with thousands arrested and a terrifying campaign of public executions underway.

Today, Iranians who have taken part in the demonstrations tell us — in their own words — why they are willing to brave such severe punishments to help bring about change.

Guest: Cora Engelbrecht, an international reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• The protests in Iran have escalated amid anger over religious rules and a rock-bottom economy.
• A look at the Iranians who have been hanged, and those on death row, as the government tries to crush the monthslong uprising.

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Recent advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a bold approach to treating the millions of children in the United States who are affected by obesity. Counseling, drug treatment and even surgery should be considered, the group says.

The guidelines are a response to a deeper understanding of what obesity is — and what to do about it.

Guest: Gina Kolata, a medical reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• The new guidelines have underscored how complicated childhood obesity is for patients and health providers.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

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Nonprofit hospitals — which make up around half of hospitals in the United States — were founded to help the poor.

But a Times investigation has revealed that many have deviated from those charitable roots, behaving like for-profit companies, sometimes to the detriment of the health of patients.

Guest: Jessica Silver-Greenberg, an investigative business reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• With the help of a consulting firm, the Providence hospital system trained staff members to wring money out of patients, even those eligible for free care.
• Dozens of doctors have said that this New York nonprofit hospital pressured them to give preferential treatment to donors, trustees and their families.
• Bon Secours Mercy Health, a major nonprofit health system, used a poor neighborhood to tap into a lucrative federal drug program.

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Over the weekend, F.B.I. agents found classified documents at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., after conducting a 13-hour search.

The search — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — resulted in the latest in a series of discoveries that has already led to a special counsel investigation.

What miscalculations have Mr. Biden and his team make throughout this ordeal?

Guest: Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Inside the decision by Mr. Biden and his top advisers to keep the discovery of classified documents secret from the public and even most of the White House staff for 68 days.
• Investigators for the Justice Department recently seized more than a half-dozen documents, some of them classified, at the president’s residence in Delaware.

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In the past decade or more, votes over increasing the U.S. debt ceiling have increasingly been used as a political tool. That has led to intense showdowns in 2011, 2013 and, now, 2023. 

This year, both sides of the argument are dug in and Republicans appear more willing to go over the cliff than in the past. 

What does this year’s showdown look like and how, exactly, did the United States’ debt balloon to $31 trillion?

Guest: Jim Tankersley, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Two decades of tax cuts, recession responses and bipartisan spending fueled more borrowing has set the stage for another federal showdown over the debt limit.
• Last week, America hit its debt limit. Here’s what to know. 

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In a room in a modest concrete building in a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception. Technically an “anechoic chamber,” the room is the quietest place on the planet — according to some.

What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible speculation. Public fascination with it exploded 10 years ago, with an article on The Daily Mail’s website. The article left readers to extrapolate their own conclusions about the room from the short, haunting observations of its proprietor, Steven J. Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories.

“You’ll hear your heart beating,” Orfield was quoted as saying. And, “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.”

Much of the lore about the chamber’s propensity for mind-annihilation centers on the concept of blood sounds. Hearing the movement of blood through the body is supposedly something like an absolute taboo, akin to witnessing the fabrication of Chicken McNuggets — an ordeal after which placid existence is irreparably shattered.

Despite this, Caity Weaver, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, wanted to give the chamber a go.

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With mountains, intense mud, fast-running rivers and thick rainforest, the Darién Gap, a strip of terrain connecting South and Central America, is one of the most dangerous places on the planet.

Over the past few years, there has been an enormous increase in the number of migrants passing through the perilous zone in the hopes of getting to the United States.

Today, we hear the story of one family that’s risking everything to make it across.

Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• The pandemic, climate change and growing conflict are forcing a seismic shift in global migration.
• Two crises are converging at the Darién Gap: an economic and humanitarian disaster underway in South America, and the bitter fight over immigration policy in Washington.

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Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United States and allies have held back from sending Kyiv their most potent arms.

Over the past few weeks, that has started to change.

Guest: Eric Schmitt, a national security correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Ukraine has a narrow window of time to retake more territory ahead of an expected Russian spring offensive.
• The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

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With little warning or regulation, companies are increasingly using facial recognition technology on their customers — as a security measure, they say.

But what happens when the systems are actually being used to punish the companies’ enemies?

Guest: Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter for The New York Times. 

Background reading: 

• Madison Square Garden Entertainment, the owner of the arena, has put lawyers who represent people suing it on an “exclusion list” to keep them out of concerts and sporting events.
• Some have undermined the company’s ban by using a law passed in 1941 to protect theater critics.

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