Lauren Katz

Franklin’s 60-plus-year career was one of broken boundaries and broken records.

Special guests Julián Castro and Pete Buttigieg join hosts Matt Yglesias, Dara Lind, and Jane Coaston for two episodes of Vox’s politics and policy podcast.

Vox’s Today, Explained podcast chronicles Lil Nas X’s challenges with the charts.

America is facing a harrowing opioid epidemic, one that kills thousands of people each year. But the rehab system that could help combat the crisis is failing. It is far too expensive for typical families and often provides addiction treatments that aren’t proven or actually have evidence against their use. “The problem in the industry isn’t that we have a few bad actors,” Tami Mark, a health economist at the research foundation RTI International, told me. “It’s that a large portion of the addic…

On October 15, Google announced its latest phone: the Pixel 4. There’s been hype around this phone for months. Its features were the worst-kept secret in tech. So the stuff that Google said at the launch was kind of old news. But there’s one specific feature that’s gotten a lot of attention: using your face to unlock the phone. Facial recognition isn’t new in tech; iPhones have been able to do this since 2017. But a promotional video about the Pixel 4 suggested the company was trying to solve a…

Algorithms are grading student essays across the country. So can artificial intelligence really teach us to write better? Todd Feathers, who wrote about AI essay grading for Motherboard, called up every state in the country and found that at least 21 states use some form of automated scoring. Feathers wasn’t able to pin down exactly how many students are affected by this. But here’s what we do know: These programs are being used to grade students of all ages and levels, from high school students…

On October 31, the House of Representatives voted to approve its first resolution related to their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The resolution passed by a vote of 232 to 196, with Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) and Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) dissenting from their party to vote no. Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who left the party earlier this year, joined Democrats to vote yes. All current Republicans voted no. The resolution was a set of procedures proposed by Democratic…

President Donald Trump has been holding rallies since 2015 — even in the first two years of his presidency, when he wouldn’t normally be campaigning. So what is it about these rallies that keeps people coming back? To answer that question, you have to know exactly what goes on at these events. Trump rallies aren’t a sideshow — they’re his entire campaign, explains Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Bender. The best analogy for these rallies, he says on Today, Explained, is a professional WWF even…

Nov 20, 2019 ... Two Today, Explained episodes explore what we learned from Vindman, Volker, Williams, and Morrison.

Noise is an extremely old problem. The earliest recorded noise complaint is 4,000 years old. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the gods was so irritated by the racket caused by humans that he exterminated them. There are examples of people killing each other in part because they were fed up with noise. Noise has even been used as a weapon by the US military; heavy metal was blasted at dictator Manuel Noriega’s hideout to force him to surrender, explains The Atlantic contributing writer Bianca Bos…

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Vox’s Julia Belluz explains the keto diet on this episode of Today, Explained.

From Buttigieg on rural America to Warren on breaking up Big Tech, these episodes dive into how candidates think about policies that affect your lives.

Listen to everything from what it’s like to be quarantined to America’s level preparedness for Covid-19.

Carl Goldman gifted his wife, Jeri Seratti-Goldman, a combined Christmas and birthday present this year of a trip to Southeast Asia on a Princess Cruise. The Diamond Princess, to be exact. Along with two of their close friends, he left for Tokyo on January 17 and boarded the ship three days later. On the final day of the sail, the captain announced that a passenger who had left the ship in Hong Kong four days earlier now had the coronavirus. The ship went back to Yokohama Harbor in Japan, Goldma…

“This is an opportunity that you just don’t see very often in politics. ... We have a chance to run the table in November,” Carville says on Today, Explained.

Listen to Today, Explained to learn about the go-to rules for this public health intervention that slows the spread of coronavirus.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus — and the disease it causes, Covid-19 — continues to evolve at a rapid pace. We want to hear from you.

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The healing powers of Netflix’s Heartstopper.