The Daily Presents “Caliphate,” Chapter 4

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.  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.

13 Jan 202320min

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.  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.

12 Jan 202326min

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. 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.

11 Jan 202331min

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.  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.

10 Jan 202328min

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.  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.

9 Jan 202334min

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, 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.

8 Jan 202324min

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.  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.

6 Jan 202325min

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.  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.

5 Jan 202328min