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Episode of the day: "Leanna Harris: Once implicated, never charged"

Listen to "Leanna Harris: Once implicated, never charged"

Podcast: Breakdown (S02 Episode 3)

A child left in a hot car. Accident or Murder?

Have been following the new season of this podcast. It's definitely a disturbing story but with so many unanswered questions and so much speculation. I can't begin to imagine what that baby went through.

Let this tragedy be the catalyst to raise awareness of hot-car deaths.

Harris Family
(image: from Facebook)

More information:

Fact sheet - Heat stroke deaths of children in vehicles

Preventing hot car related deaths on Today."The biggest mistake people make is thinking it can't happen to them," Janette Fennell says.

image: Jan Null, Department of Meteorology and Climate Science
San Jose University

Episode of the day: "Gary Oldman"

Listen to "Gary Oldman"

Podcast: Nerdist (Episode 798)

Great interview with Gary Oldman, the human being. I especially aplaude Chris' job in conducting the interview so masterfully. 

Podcast summary - "Gary Oldman chats with Chris about the highs and lows of being an actor, how he does not want to act in films he directs, and being reunited with Kevin Costner for their new film Criminal. He also talks about the interesting experience playing Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, how sobriety has affected his career, and his friendship with the late David Bowie."

More information:

Gary Oldman Bio on IMDb

Gary Oldman in 2014
(image: Gage Skidmore)

Episode of the day: "For Your Reconsideration"

Listen to "For Your Reconsideration"

Podcast: This American Life (Episode 584)

I swear that I try to branch out and listen to other podcasts in order to publish a wide variety here. But even though I listen to many podcasts, I choose today yet another This American Life episode!

This episode was absolutely incredible. An interesting story of a bogus social science study. A bit ironic that a new study, however, reveals some of the same findings the retracted study did.

And then, the most amazing story from the podcast "Beautiful Stories by Anonymous People", which is a new podcast I intend to follow closely. This story makes you think that so often we get trapped in our own inertia despite the opportunities presented around us. We have plans, dreams, ambitions, but inertia takes over and fear prevails. Sometimes we would be better off using Nike's philosophy and Just Do It!

More information:

Los Angeles LGBT Center

Michael LaCour's scandal in The New York Times and The New Yorker

Donald Green and Michael LaCour
(image from Michael LaCour's facebook page)

New study "Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing" published in Science.

Listen to "Ron Paul's Baby"

Episode of the day: "The Gun That Wouldn't Shoot"

Listen to "The Gun That Wouldn't Shoot"

Podcast: Planet Money (Episode 694)

"Imagine a safer kind of gun. Imagine a company with a plan to build it. Imagine customers ready to buy it. Imagine what could go wrong. A whole lot."

By itself or even as a transition to more strict gun laws, sounds like a great idea! But is it really?

More information:

Donald Zhilka on Newsweek

Read this interesting article on Smart Guns in Fortune Magazine

Smart gun.
(image: Joerg Koch, AFP/Getty Images)

Episode of the day: "Same Bed, Different Dreams"

Listen to: "Same Bed, Different Dreams"

Podcast: This American Life (Episode 556)

This was a rebroadcasted episode worth listening just for the unbelievable story of the kidnap of two South Korean celebrities by Kim Jong-Il.

Podcast's summary: "Stories of people who are tied together, but imagine radically different futures. In one case, a movie star and her ex-husband plot against Kim Jong-Il. In another, a woman stalks her doppleganger. And sometimes, one bed is the basis for an entire relationship, even for a man who almost never sees the person who shares his bed."

More information:

The book Kim Jong-Il Production on Amazon by Paul Fischer.

Episode of the day: "Soul City"

Listen to "Soul City"

Podcast: 99% Invisible (Episode 207)

A failed project for a city exclusively for African-Americans. Would that really help the racial divide? 

As stated in the podcast's website: "In the late 1960s, a civil rights leader named Floyd B. McKissick, at one time the head of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) proposed an idea for a new town.  He would call this town Soul City and it would be a place built for and by black people—a land of black opportunity in rural North Carolina."

More information:

Interesting article about Soul City in the Citylab

Sign marking the entrance to Soul City
(image: Tijuana Brass)

Episode of the day: "Cellmates"

Listen to "Cellmates"

Podcast: Radiolab

"There’s a black hole in the middle of the history of life: how did we go from tiny bags of chemicals to the vast menagerie of creatures we see around us? The story of one cosmic oops moment that changed the game of life forever."

Improbable randomness! But still randomness! What a great episode.

More information:

Nick Lane's book The Vital Question on Amazon

Ed Yong's book I Contain Multitudes on Amazon

Although not mentioned in this episode, Lynn Margulis contributed greatly to this theory.

Check out Suzana Herculano-Housel TED Talk for more about the link between cooking food and the human brain.

Episode of the day: "Real Doctors, Fake Medicine?"

Listen to "Real Doctors, Fake Medicine?"

Podcast: Only Human

"What actually makes you feel better when you go to the doctor? We explore the power of a placebo – the most misunderstood 'medicine' of all."

The placebo effect, explained.

More information:

Article in the New York Times

Article on Ted Kaptchuk in Harvard Magazine

The experimental trial

David Kallmes
(image: mayoclinic)

Ted Kaptchuk
(image: tedkaptchuk.com)

Episode of the day: "The House"

Listen to "The House"

Podcast: Embedded

"Inside A Small Brick House At The Heart Of Indiana's Opioid Crisis." This is the first episode of NPR's latest podcast "Embedded".

Very interesting and relevant story. Free clean needles should be provided to everyone to stop the spreading of HIV.

More information:

The drug Opana

Opana drug abuse article in Reuters

(image: drugs.com)

Episode of the day: "Sabotage!"

Listen to "Sabotage!"

Podcast: How To Do Everything (Episode 237)

"How to defeat the Nazis and wind the Great Clock." Great story on a lesser known fact about WWII.

More information:

Simple Sabotage Field Manual available on the CIA.

The original document can be accessed here.

(image: CIA)

Episode of the day: "Present for Duty"

Listen to "Present for Duty"

Podcast: Serial (S02 Episode 11)

(artwork credit: Serial Podcast)

What's Bowe's fault and what isn't.

Last episode of this season. Oh no.

More information:

The discharge of Bergdahl from the Coast Guard in Time magazine.

Episode of the day: "AKA Leo"

Listen to "AKA Leo"

Podcast: The Memory Palace (Episode 85)

    Leo's cage, built into the aircraft.
           (image: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive)

              

Great story on the MGM Lion.

More information:

Excellent Jackie the Lion article on Mashable

Leo the Lion on Wikipedia