In a major shift that would modify laws set half a decade ago, states and cities around the United States are moving to legalize psychedelics for use as a medical treatment.

The sudden change of heart has a lot to do with who is asking for the substances.

Guest: Andrew Jacobs, a health and science reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Lawmakers find it hard to “just say no” to combat veterans seeking support for drug decriminalization efforts.
• In January, Oregon became the first state to allow adult use of psilocybin “magic” mushrooms.

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The great supply chain disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic scrambled the shipping system across the Pacific.

Although mostly over, the turmoil has led to alterations in the way the global economy functions. One such change can be seen in Mexico, where companies from China are increasingly setting up shop.

Guest: Peter S. Goodman, a global economics correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Alarmed by shipping chaos and geopolitical fractures, exporters from China are setting up factories in Mexico to preserve their sales to the United States.
• Laredo, a Texas border city, is primed to become one of the world’s most important land ports as American companies reduce their reliance on factories in Asia.

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Times tech columnist Kevin Roose stopped by The Daily twice this week to chronicle the debut of Bing’s new chatbot — and the creepy things that transpired. Today, we’re bringing you the latest episode of Kevin’s podcast, Hard Fork. Kevin, along with his co-host Casey Newton, expand the discussion about why Microsoft’s A.I. search tool appears more powerful — and more unsettling — than they initially believed. Plus: a conversation about Elon Musk’s quest to be the most popular user on Twitter, and why online ads have gotten so much worse (like, much worse).

Hard Fork is a podcast about the future of technology that’s already here. You can search for Hard Fork wherever you get your podcasts. Visit nytimes.com/hardfork for more.

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Microsoft recently released a new version of its search engine Bing that is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

On Valentine’s Day, after a meal with his wife, Kevin Roose, a New York Times technology columnist, had a two-hour conversation with the chatbot.

The chatbot, which revealed that it identified as Sydney, told Kevin that it wanted to be human, that it loved him and that he should leave his wife.

“There is something going on here that I don’t think Microsoft intended to build into a search engine,” Kevin said on today’s episode. “Something is not right.”

Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”

Background reading: 

• A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left Kevin “deeply unsettled.” Read the transcript.
• Microsoft knew the new technology had issues like occasional accuracy problems, but users have experienced surprising and unnerving interactions.

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When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Syria and Turkey last week, it killed thousands and created a crisis within a crisis.

International aid began pouring into Turkey, but northwestern Syria, which was also hard-hit, received only a trickle. It was a bitter blow for Syrians, whose lives had already been uprooted by years of civil war, mass displacement and death.

Today, we hear from some Syrians and look at why it is so difficult for the world to help them.

Guest: Raja Abdulrahim, a correspondent in Jerusalem for The New York Times who traveled to northwestern Syria after the earthquake.

Background reading: 

• Little international aid has come to hard-hit northwestern Syria. Residents there said they felt abandoned by the world, and rescue workers said they felt “helpless.”
• Syrians have experienced relentless death and destruction during more than a decade of civil war, but some say the earthquake was worse than anything else they had endured.
• War, territorial divisions and acrimonious relations between President Bashar al-Assad and many Western nations have complicated aid efforts. Here’s what to know.

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Microsoft recently released a new version of Bing, its search engine that has long been kind of a punchline in the tech world.

The company billed this Bing — which is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT — as a reinvention of how billions of people search the internet.

How does that claim hold up?

Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”

Background reading: 

• When Microsoft released the new Bing, it was billed as a landmark event and the company’s “iPhone moment.”
• On the latest episode of “Hard Fork,” OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, talk about an A.I.-powered Bing.

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Last week, after the Air Force shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon, examination of its wreckage revealed that it could not only take images, but also scoop up radio and cellphone communications. 

The balloon, the U.S. military said, was part of a bigger global program by China to collect information about military operations.

Since then the U.S. has shot down three other objects from the skies over North America — apparently without knowing much about them.

Guest: Julian E. Barnes, a national security reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• The U.S. and Canada are investigating three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America in recent days. Militaries have adjusted radars to try to spot more incursions.
• A timeline of the unidentified flying objects that have been brought down this month.
• Here is what we know about the objects and the Chinese spy balloon.

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Amid growing threats from rivals like China, the United States military is determined to invest in new forms of defense and abandon those that no longer meet its needs.

On that list: a combat ship rife with flaws. But getting rid of the ship has proved unexpectedly difficult.

Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• After years of crippling problems and a changing mission, the Navy pushed to retire nine of its newest ships. Then the lobbying started.

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Menopausal hormone therapy was once the most commonly prescribed treatment in the United States. In the late 1990s, some 15 million women a year were receiving a prescription for it. But in 2002, a single study, its design imperfect, found links between hormone therapy and elevated health risks for women of all ages. Panic set in; in one year, the number of prescriptions plummeted.

Hormone therapy carries risks, to be sure, as do many medications that people take to relieve serious discomfort, but dozens of studies since 2002 have provided reassurance that for healthy women under 60 whose hot flashes are troubling them, the benefits of taking hormones outweigh the risks. The treatment’s reputation, however, has never fully recovered, and the consequences have been wide-reaching.

About 85 percent of women experience menopausal symptoms. Rebecca Thurston, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who studies menopause, believes that, in general, menopausal women have been underserved — an oversight that she considers one of the great blind spots of medicine.

“It suggests that we have a high cultural tolerance for women’s suffering,” Thurston said. “It’s not regarded as important.”

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This weekend, one of the most watched sporting events of the year, the Super Bowl, will draw an estimated $16 billion in bets from Americans, more than double last year’s total.

The booming trade is a sign of how gambling has gone from illegal to legal very quickly in many states — and hints at the enormous risks posed by the change.

Guest: Kenneth P. Vogel, an investigative correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Cigars, booze, money: A lobbying blitz helped to make sports betting ubiquitous.
• Government oversight of gambling in the United States offers scant consumer protections and looks to the industry to police itself, The Times found.

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. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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