The C.I.A.’s Moral Reckoning

Last week, Speaker Kevin McCarthy persuaded Republicans to narrowly pass a bill to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, setting up high-stakes negotiations with the Biden administration.Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress for The New York Times, explains the risks this might pose to his job and the country’s economy.Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: House Republicans have narrowly passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling while cutting spending by nearly 14 percent over a decade.Here’s a look at what is in the bill.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

1 Mai 202321min

In January 2022, Randi Schofield was a 34-year-old single mother who, not long before, left her full-time job of eight years as a personal bailiff to a local judge. She pulled $30,000 from her retirement savings and was planning to give herself all of 2022 to expand the small catering business she had always dreamed about. This would be the year she bet on herself. Then, that month, she received the news that medics were pulling her father out of his car.The collision splintered the bone in his left thigh down to his knee; three days later, a metal rod held the broken pieces together. Until his leg recovered from the surgery, he would not be able to walk without assistance. In hindsight, there were warning signs that her father’s health could upend Schofield’s life. But he was also youthful and spirited, and it was easy to believe that everything was fine, that he was fine and that if she were to take care of him some day, it would be occasional and in a distant future. She didn’t see this day coming the way it did, so abruptly and so soon.Increasing numbers of adult children are taking care of their parents, often shouldering the burden with no pay and little outside help — making their meals, helping them shower, bandaging their wounds and holding them up before they can fall. The social-work scholar Dorothy A. Miller once described this as the “peculiar position” in the modern American nuclear family, between the care people give to their aging parents and to their children. Today’s “sandwich generation” is younger than the version Miller described four decades ago, but it faces the same “unique set of unshared stresses” that she warned of then: acute financial strain, a lack of reciprocated support and “fatigue from fulfilling the demands of too many roles.”This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

30 Apr 202331min

This month, an anonymous producer jolted the music industry by using artificial intelligence to impersonate the singers Drake and the Weeknd, creating a fake track, “Heart on My Sleeve,” that quickly went viral.Joe Coscarelli, a culture reporter for The Times, talks about how the song’s rise and fall could presage widespread changes in the way music is made.Guest: Joe Coscarelli, a culture correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: A track like “Heart on My Sleeve” may be a novelty for now. But the legal and creative questions it raises are here to stay.Who owns a song created by A.I.?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

28 Apr 202324min

This month, India reached a notable milestone. The country’s population surpassed that of China, which had held the No. 1 position for at least three centuries.Alex Travelli, who covers South Asia and business for The Times, examines whether India can use its immense size to become an economic superpower.Guest: Alex Travelli, a South Asia business correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Turning India’s vast young work force into an engine for economic advancement will pose enormous challenges.Will this be the “Indian century”? Here are four key questions.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

27 Apr 202330min

President Biden has announced that he will seek another term in the Oval Office, despite the fact that he will be 81 on Election Day 2024.Not everyone is overjoyed about that prospect — more than half of Democrats don’t want him to run again. Nonetheless, the party’s leaders are increasingly confident about his chances. Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, explains why.Guest: Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. Biden has acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintains, is an argument for his re-election.Although his poll numbers remain low, structural advantages have Democrats insisting that Mr. Biden is better positioned than his Republican rivals.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

26 Apr 202326min

Less than a week after Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle the Dominion lawsuit, the network has abruptly fired Tucker Carlson — an anchor at the center of the case.Jeremy W. Peters, who covers media and politics for The Times, explains why the network decided to cut ties with one of its biggest stars.Guest: Jeremy W. Peters, a media and politics correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Tucker Carlson was one of the network’s top-rated hosts for many years.Here is the latest on Mr. Carlson’s departure.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

25 Apr 202329min

Sudan was supposed to be moving away from military rule and toward democracy. But over the past week, the country has been thrown into violent chaos as two factions battle for control.Declan Walsh, chief Africa correspondent for The Times, explains how an explosive rivalry between two generals turned into a catastrophic conflict.Guest: Declan Walsh, the chief Africa correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: In the days before fighting erupted, American and British mediators held out hope that crunch talks could defuse the tensions and even steer Sudan to democracy.Here are the latest developments in the conflict.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

24 Apr 202322min

One Sunday in February, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea would throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched. They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets or yowling like Braveheart. But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting with their total beings a deranged-seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging — a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand.The Battle of the Oranges is an annual tradition in Ivrea and part of a larger celebration described by its organizers as “the most ancient historical Carnival in Italy.” Several people in Ivrea told the writer Jon Mooallem that as three pandemic years had passed in which no oranges were thrown, they grew concerned that something bad would happen in the community — that without this catharsis, a certain pent-up, sinister energy would explode. And on that day in February, three years of constrained energy was due to explode all at once.This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

23 Apr 202327min