Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In our weekly roundup of stories that may have passed you by, the World Trade Organization makes some new deals, Amazon expands to more countries and drone delivery, and transgender women won’t be allowed to compete in swimming competitions. Our feature story looks at how the data from period tracker apps could turn out to be dangerous if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Then, in our first conversation starter, we take a dive into why people trust fraudsters and what that means for our chances of being conned. Later we find out how scientists are in a race against time to breed wheat to survive the climate crisis.

00:00.49 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:15 - Section 2 - Feature - The Wall Street Journal 
00:12.25 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Financial Times & The Guardian

The Weekend Edit

#48 - Dangerous period tracker app data and why we trust fraudsters

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In our weekly roundup of stories that may have passed you by, MacDonald’s pulls out of Russia, there’s some good video gaming news, but bad environmental news from Antarctica. In honour of Pride Month, our feature story looks into the challenge of loneliness in the LGBTQ+ community, especially for older folks. In our conversation starters, we ask whether the world of streaming has just gotten a bit too big. And then we look at the troubles Walmart has when it comes to expanding in China.

00:00.47 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:52 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:08.45 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Wired & The Wall Street Journal

#47 - LGBTQ+ befriending schemes and Walmart's woes in China

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In our weekly roundup of stories that may have passed you by, we look at the trouble NASA is having with space fashion, trials of a four day work week, and an Australian politician suing Google. As the Northern Hemisphere enters summer, our Feature story is about how to sleep better in the heat. Then, we ask whether anyone really reads privacy policies and whether they should be done away with. Our second Conversation Starter is about how Slack, the professional messaging platform, is becoming a prime space for job-hunters.

00:00.54 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:40 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:13.54 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Washington Post & The Wall Street Journal 

#46 - Better summer sleep and no more privacy policies 

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In our weekly roundup of stories that may have passed you by, we look at holidays happening around the world, Singapore using robot labour, and mass shootings in the US. Our Feature story is about the new generation of royal commentators weighing in on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on social media. We’ll tell you how it’s possible that you may be eating a credit card's worth of plastic every week, ahead of World Environment Day. Our second Conversation Starter looks at what the new Top Gun movie says about the state of America’s military power.

00:01:20 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:04:00 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:10:52 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Nautilus & Financial Times

#45 - A Jubilee on TikTok and how much plastic you're eating every week

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories that may have passed you by, we look at the Colombian presidential elections, Black Lives Matter anniversaries, and Spain’s proposed period pain leave. Our Feature story is a perspective on the shortage of baby formula currently happening in the United States. Later we find out why the problem with having flying cars is on the ground. And our last Conversation Starter is looking at the social commentary of Kendrick Lamar’s latest offering.

00:00.55 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:46 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:09.04 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Wall Street Journal & Vulture

#44 - Baby formula shortages and flying cars

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, we tell you about Google’s new products, Thailand giving away cannabis plants, and the Eurovision winners. Our first story looks at what it’s really like to quit your job during the Great Resignation. Later, we ask what reversing the Roe vs Wade abortion rights court judgment might mean for women in America. Our second Conversation Starter explores the future of gene-edited meat.

00:00.57 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:25 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:23:12 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Financial Times & Vox

#43 - Great resignations and gene-editing meat

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, we cover increased migrant deaths, Tesla paying for employee abortions, and the upcoming lunar eclipse. Our Feature story looks at the Ukrainian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest amid the war there. Later, we tell you about how people are walking through as much of their cities as possible to better connect with them. Lastly, our second Conversation Starter takes a critical look at whether annual performance reviews for employees work, and how they could be improved.

00:00.54 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:30 - Section 2 - Feature - The Economist’s 1843
00:13:10 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Guardian & The Wall Street Journal

#42 - Singing Ukrainians and bad performance reviews

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, find out about Roe v. Wade, eased COVID-19 restrictions, and Warren Buffet’s money advice. We kick off the show by asking whether ordinary people may be in danger of having their portraits pirated in the world of NFTs. Next, we find out why humans have been leaving space junk behind and how to clean it up. Lastly, we have a story for you about aging clocks that can predict how long you might live but could be inaccurate.

00:00.54 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:48 - Section 2 - Feature - WIRED
00:22:28 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Guardian & MIT Technology Review

#41 - NFTs dangers and cleaning up space junk

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, we look at Piers Morgan’s controversial new show, stunted global growth and the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. We explore whether manifesting your future is helpful visualisation or harmful daydreaming in our Feature story. Then, we explore how new businesses and entrepreneurship is booking since the pandemic began. In our second Conversation Starter, we mark the International Girls in ICT Day by looking at the forgotten history of women in British computing.

00:01:10 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:33 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:30:58 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Economist & MIT Press Reader

#40 - Booming entrepreneurship and forgotten female computing

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, we look at marijuana legalisation, electric vehicle battery shortages, and Amazon’s newest in augmented reality. Our Feature story in celebration of Earth Day explores whether therapy can help with climate anxiety. We look at the Chines fast fashion seller Shein and its unique popularity in our first Conversation Starter. Later, we find out how stereotypes of scamming princes hurt Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.

00:00.50 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:58 - Section 2 - Feature - The Guardian
00:20:22 - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Economist & Wired

#39 - Climate anxiety therapy and Nigerian cybercrimes

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

In this week’s roundup of stories you may have missed, we look at the Joe Rogan death hoax, Equal Pay Day, and the record traffic numbers this Easter long weekend. 

Our Feature story is an exploration of how trends in cosmetic surgeries and procedures are problematic if based on the natural features of people of colour. 

Later, our first Conversation Starter is about the recently increased interest in spooky or paranormal activity in Britain. Then we cut through the noise around quantum computing to understand why this great futuristic technology may have a hype problem. 

00:01.05 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:20 - Section 2 - Feature - Gal-dem
00:21:51  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Guardian & MIT Technology Review 

#38 - Cosmetic surgery trends and spooky Britain

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

We do a roundup of stories from the week including airlines allowing hundreds of empty planes, some Amazon employees unionising, and the newest space missions.

Our Feature story, in light of the upcoming French elections, is a fascinating profile of current president Emmanuel Macron. It examines how the popular politician is not necessarily liked. Later in the show, the first Conversation Starter tries to understand why Netflix cancels some of your favourite shows. Lastly, we dive into the history of duels, and how public shows of honour are still attempted… say if your wife is insulted by a popular comedian at an awards show.

00:01:10 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:02:47 - Section 2 - Feature - The Economist’s 1843 magazine
00:33:34  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Financial Times & JSTOR Daily

#37- Macron's charm and Netflix cancellations 

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

This week, we do a roundup of stories from the week including opposition to the Royals’ visit to the Caribbean, how helpful acts of kindness have increased in the last years, and that Machu Picchu is not actually the correct name for the Inca ruins. 

Our Feature story looks at how bombastic tech founders of companies like WeWork, Uber, and Theranos have been depicted recently in TV series. These shows may appear to dismantle the cult-like appreciation of these figures, but do not do this as well as they want to. 

Our first Conversation Starter looks at how marketers used people’s love/hate relationship with Marmite to sell the sticky spread. Our last story turns towards the beautiful Yosemite National Park to learn why fire is not necessarily a bad omen in nature conservation. 

00:01:18 - Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:35 - Section 2 - Feature - Vox Recode
00:16:09  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters -The Economist & Aeon

#36 - Tech founders on TV and the love/hate for Marmite

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

This week, we start with a roundup of stories including a new record-breaking bridge in Turkey, school uniform reforms in Tokyo, and what to expect at the Oscars. Our Feature story tells you more about the over 200 workers that were recently held hostage at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The situation remains volatile and is developing.

Our first Conversation Starter is right on time with the new spring season. In it, sleep experts question whether the US Senate’s recent decision to switch to daylight savings time permanently is good for people’s bodies. Later, given that it is Lent and some people may change their behaviours, we look at the power of habits, and how to best think about them.

00:01:58- Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:32 - Section 2 - Feature - Wall Street Journal
00:18:39  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Guardian & Psyche 

#35 - Chernobyl hostages and sleepy daylight savings

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

On today’s show, we are taking on new or unusual perspectives to topics you may already be talking about. Our roundup of stories from the week touches on countries wanting to join the European Union, renewed COVID-19 lockdowns in China, and some positive recycling news. Our Feature Story this week is heading back into the world of crypto — but instead — from a burgeoning religious debate about whether crypto is permissible in Islam or not.

In our first Conversation Starter, we’ll be unpacking the effects of sanctions in Russia through a lesser-known story from the past. Surprisingly, this article by Joshua Yaffa for The Economist’s 1843 magazine is all about cheese. Later in the show, we look at the social media platform TikTok through the eyes of art historian Kim Beil and performer Ryan Tacata in their piece for Psyche magazine. They parallel how the modern platform is used with Victorian parlour games.

00:00:58- Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:03:00 - Section 2 - Feature - The Washington Post
00:24:40  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - 1843 & Psyche

#34 - Islam's crypto debate and Russian mozzarella

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

This week was International Women’s Day, so all of our stories are by or about women. We start with a roundup of stories you might have missed, including the Sydney floods, British popstars in court over copyright infringement and Ukraine's success at the Winter Paralympics. We move on to a special conversation with Emily Stewart, who is a senior reporter for Vox. She has a knack for making the complex world of business and money accessible to ordinary people.

Our first Conversation Starter is an essay from Aeon by philosopher Andy West, who applies the icon Simone de Beauvoir's teachings into the context of life inside prison. Finally, we end with a nod to the history of feminism, but in a very different way. Jessa Crispin writes for JSTOR Daily that activism for gender equality has for a long time been bedfellows with practices of witchcraft, and the two have intersected in a multitude of ways over decades.

Prior to joining Vox, Emily Stewart covered politics for The Street amid the rise of Donald Trump. She writes about the intersection of business, politics, and the economy. Her story "The supply chain crisis, explained by Adele", offers great insight into the current crunch of the music industry. You can listen to it and other of Emily's stories on Curio; search for her name on your Discover page.

00:00:52- Section 1 - Weekly Roundup
00:01:50 - Section 2 - Features - Emily Stewart of Vox
00:11:18  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Aeon & JSTOR Daily

#33 - Special ep: In conversation with Emily Stewart

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

It's safe to say there's been a lot of news in the last week, from Joe Biden's first State of the Union address to the Queen contracting COVID. But you'd be forgiven for being unable to focus on anything but Ukraine. In our weekly roundup, we discuss Russia's military invasion a week on.  In an attempt to get your mind off things, our first feature from Vox questions the role of comedians. After Joe Rogan was cast into the spotlight around COVID misinformation, we ask whether comedians are taking claim to authority or if they've become authorities in and of themselves? 

In January this year companies from the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand began pilots for a 4-day working week. Our first Conversation Starter from Nautilus is an argument many of us can lean into: should we prioritise leisure overwork? Then finally we end with a pretty tall tale. It involves a man vomiting his dentures into a Spanish trash bin, only for them to be returned to him using DNA analysis. 

00:00:24 - Section 1 - Weekly roundup 
00:01:49 - Section 2 - Features - Vulture
00:19:00  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - Nautilus & WIRED

#32 - Comedy’s existential crisis, four-day working and the viral false teeth that fooled the world

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

We begin the show with a roundup of the week's trending topics, including a viral article about a so-called "vibe shift", storms in the UK and a leaked questionnaire sent to senior politicians about their involvement in lockdown breaches. In our feature story this week, we’re heading back 60 years to 1961, when a United Nations plane carrying the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, and 15 others, crashed near present-day Zambia. Does the answer to what really happened lie in Washington’s and London’s archives? Our first Conversation Starter is a look at the tech billionaires pouring their money into startups trying to reverse the ageing process. And it would be remiss not to talk about Russia. In our final piece, how in 1946 an American diplomat predicted much of Russia’s 21st-century foreign policy.

00:00:18 - Section 1 - Weekly roundup 
00:00:55 - Section 2 - Features - Foreign Policy
00:19:00  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Guardian & The Financial Times

#31 - UN mystery plane crash, billionaire Benjamin Buttons and the 1946 telegram predicting Russia's actions

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

We've got an extra special episode for you this week, which starts off with a roundup of what's been trending — the Canadian protests, the Superbowl and cryptocurrency. Then we move on to our first feature, which is a very exciting submission to The Economist’s "By Invitation" series. Best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari offers his perspective on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and what’s at stake for the direction of human history. In our first conversation starter, we’ve got an immersive story about writing poetry in prison. Bunny McFadden recounts her uncle’s experiences writing poetry in prison and advocating for Indigenous rights. In our final story, what does the future hold for Peloton? With Amazon and Nike sniffing around, can the company retain its independence?

00:00:32 - Section 1 - Weekly roundup 
00:01:38 - Section 2 - Conversation Starters  - The Economist
00:14:11  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - JSTOR Daily & WIRED

#30 - Yuval Noah Harari, prison poetry and Peloton

Your audio magazine curated by Ryan Broderick to help you sail into the weekend.

This week, February's special guest is no other than Bloomberg Opinion's finance columnist, Matt Levine, who joins us to talk about the disparities of cryptocurrency, meme stocks and new financial systems. Then, in our first Conversation Starter, we explore whether we should believe viral studies that suggest cannabis could help with COVID-19. And to end the show, 11th February marks the UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science. We look at how female students, specifically female students of colour, persist in STEM despite racial stereotypes.

Matt Levine was an editor of Dealbreaker, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. His popular Bloomberg column, Money Stuff, covers finance and Wall Street, and you can listen to some of them in Curio; search 'Money Stuff' on your Discover page.

00:01:16 - Section 1 - Matt Levine 
00:13:26 - Section 2 - Conversation Starters  - Salon
00:20:37  - Section 3 - Conversation Starters - The Washington Post