The Daily

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everythin

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.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podc

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything fr

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. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple

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

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

For nearly three years, China had one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world, thanks to its strict yet effective “zero Covid” approach.But last month, the government suddenly abandoned the policy. Since then, there have been millions of coronavirus cases across the country.Guest: Alexandra Stevenson, the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: After micromanaging the coronavirus strategy for nearly three years, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has suddenly left people to improvise.China said that it recorded nearly 60,000 fatalities linked to the coronavirus in the month since the country lifted the “zero Covid” policy.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In states where abortion is severely limited or illegal, clinicians face imminent prosecution if they continue to provide abortions. What is much less clear is what happens if providers in blue states offer telemedicine abortions to women in states where that’s against the law. These clinicians, too, could be arrested or sued or lose their medical licenses. To protect themselves, they may have to give up traveling to certain parts of the country — and it’s still no guarantee.In the face of so much uncertainty and an invigorated anti-abortion movement, large organizations and most clinicians are loath to gamble.But some providers think that the end of Roe v. Wade calls for doctors to take bold action.This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Justice Department is scrutinizing how both former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden came to have classified records after they left office.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel after the discovery of two batches of classified documents from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president.How are the two cases similar, how are they different and what might that mean for both?Guest: Glenn Thrush, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Special counsels are looking into both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Here’s how the situations differ.Robert K. Hur has been appointed to oversee the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents. Who is he?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and

For weeks, a string of major storms have hit California, causing extreme flooding. While it might seem as if rain should have a silver lining for a state stuck in a historic drought, the reality is far more complicated.Today, how California’s water management in the past has made today’s flooding worse and why it represents a missed opportunity for the future of the state’s water crisis.Guest: Christopher Flavelle, a climate reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: In the wake of recent storms, California is facing questions about whether its approach to handling crippling storms is suited to 21st-century climate threats.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

After Jair Bolsonaro lost October’s Brazilian presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, many believed that the threat of violence from the defeated leader’s supporters would recede. They were wrong. Mr. Bolsonaro had spent years sewing doubt and undermining Brazil’s election system, and last week, thousands of rioters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices. What happened — and how did Brazil get here?Guest: Jack Nicas, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: What drove a mass attack on Brazil’s capital? Mass delusion.The riots in Brazil had echoes of Jan. 6 in the United States. The comparison is inevitable and useful but here are some major differences. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podca

Air travel was a mess over the holidays — in the last 10 days of December, 30,000 flights were canceled. While every airline was affected, one stood out: Southwest, which over the past few decades has transformed how Americans fly, melted down. In the last 10 days of the year, it canceled as many flights as it had done in the previous 10 months. So what went wrong?Guest: Niraj Chokshi, a business reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Southwest’s crisis shows what can go wrong when a company relied on by millions of people moves too slowly to invest in unglamorous parts of its operation.The airline’s customers incurred thousands in expenses as they scrambled to get home. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House turned into a rolling disaster last week, played out over five long days and 15 rounds of voting. Today, the inside story of how it went so wrong — and what he was forced to give up in order to finally win.Guest: Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. McCarthy’s slog to the speakership ended with a remarkably public show of intraparty strife during a history-making overnight session.The speaker’s concessions have given the rebels on the right flank of his party more tools to sow disarray.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

On Christmas Eve in 1971, Juliane Diller, then 17, and her mother boarded a flight in Lima, Peru. She was headed for Panguana, a biological research station in the belly of the Amazon, where for three years she had lived, on and off, with her mother, Maria, and her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, both zoologists.About 25 minutes after takeoff, the plane flew into a thunderstorm, was struck by lightning and broke apart. Strapped to her seat, Juliane fell some 10,000 feet, nearly two miles. Her row of seats is thought to have landed in dense foliage, cushioning the impact. Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash.LANSA Flight 508 was the deadliest lightning-strike disaster in aviation history.In the 50 years since the crash, Juliane moved to Germany, earned a Ph.D. in biology, became an eminent zoologist, got married — and, after her father’s death, took over as director of Panguana and the primary organizer of expeditions to the refuge.To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, downl

The current level of biodiversity loss is extraordinary in human history: The global rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. At the end of 2022, countries around the world came together in Montreal for an agreement akin to the Paris climate accord to tackle the biodiversity crisis. Here’s more on the effort and how it seeks to confront the problem.Guest: Catrin Einhorn, who reports on biodiversity and climate for The New York Times.Background reading: Last year, roughly 190 nations, aiming to halt a dangerous decline in biodiversity, agreed to preserve 30 percent of the planet’s land and seas. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

George Santos, the Republican representative-elect from New York, ran for office and won his seat in part on an inspiring personal story.But when Times reporters started looking into his background, they made some astonishing revelations: Almost all of Mr. Santos’s story was fake.Guests: Michael Gold, a reporter covering New York for The New York Times. Grace Ashford, a reporter covering New York politics for The Times.Background reading: Mr. Santos said that he was the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé was largely fiction.On the first day of the 118th Congress, the Santos saga arrived on Capitol Hill.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence.When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, many believed the country’s army would quickly crush the Ukrainian forces. Instead, Russian military failures have defined the war.Today, we hear from Russian soldiers, and explore why a military superpower keeps making the same mistakes and why, despite it all, its soldiers keep going back to fight.Guest: Michael Schwirtz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Secret battle plans, intercepted communications and interviews with Russian soldiers explain how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.