Heat Wave Triggers Big Storms and Power Outages in U.S. Southeast

Triple-digit temperatures prompted more heat advisories across much of the southern U.S. on Sunday, triggered severe thunderstorms that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people from Oklahoma to Mississippi and produced gusty winds that raised wildfire threats in Arizona and New Mexico.

A suspected tornado struck near Scranton, Arkansas early Sunday, destroying chicken houses and toppling trees onto houses, the National Weather Service said. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency for north and central Louisiana after strong winds and severe weather caused widespread power outages on Saturday. On Sunday, indicated more than 740,000 people were without power in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, according to PowerOutage.us.
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The National Weather Service warned that potentially record-breaking temperatures would continue over southern Texas and the western and central Gulf Coast and that storms producing damaging winds, hail and possibly tornadoes could strike the lower Mississippi Valley.

In Florida, the weather service issued another heat advisory Sunday, this time mainly for the Florida Keys. Forecasters said heat index readings – the combination of high temperatures and oppressive humidity – could reach between 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 Celsius) and 112 degrees (45 C) in places such as Key Largo, Marathon and Key West.

“These conditions will cause increased risk of heat illness for people outdoors or in non-air conditioned spaces,” the weather service said in a bulletin.

In the Southwest, where fire crews are battling multiple wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico, forecasters said triple-digit temperatures and gusty winds would lead to critical fire weather over the next couple of days. Sunday promised to be the hottest day of the year so far in Arizona, with highs up to 110 degrees (43.5 C) in Phoenix.

Winds were forecast to gust from 30 mph to 40 mph (48-64 kph) on Sunday east of Flagstaff, Arizona along the Interstate 40 corridor and up to 50 mph (80 kph) on Monday, creating potentially critical fire weather across much of northeast New Mexico.

A large brush fire that broke out Friday afternoon south of Tucson, Arizona shut down a state highway on Saturday. Arizona 83 reopened on Sunday and no homes were in immediate danger, authorities said.

Much of Nevada was under a high-wind advisory with gusts up to 55 mph (88 kph) with blowing dust that could hamper visibility on highways, the weather service said.

source https://time.com/6288140/heat-wave-triggers-storms-outages-southeast/

One Dead and 20 Shot at Parking Lot Party in Chicago

WILLOWBROOK, Ill. — At least 20 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday during a gathering in a parking lot in suburban Chicago, authorities said.

TV news video showed the strip mall lot filled with debris and police tape in Willowbrook, about 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

“There were at least 20 individuals shot. One victim is deceased,” said Eric Swanson, deputy chief at the DuPage County sheriff’s office. “The motive behind this incident is unclear. … We transported numerous victims from the scene. Others just walked into area hospitals.”

The conditions of the wounded were not immediately available, Swanson told reporters.

“It was supposed to be like a Juneteenth celebration. We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped,” witness Markeshia Avery told WLS-TV.

Another witness, Craig Lotcie, said: “Everybody ran, and it was chaos.”

source https://time.com/6288124/chicago-parking-lot-shooting/

Nearly 100 Die as India Struggles With a Sweltering Heat Wave in 2 Most Populous States

LUCKNOW, India — At least 96 people died in two of India’s most populous states over the last several days, officials said Sunday, with swaths of the country reeling from a sweltering heat wave.

The deaths happened in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar where authorities warned residents over 60 and others suffering various maladies to stay indoors during the daytime.

All the fatalities in Uttar Pradesh, totaling 54, were reported in Ballia district, some 300 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Lucknow, the state capital. Authorities found out most of those who passed away were over 60 years old and had preexisting health conditions, which may have been exacerbated by the intense heat.
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S. K. Yadav, a medical officer in Ballia, said in the past three days, some 300 patients were admitted to the district hospital for various ailments aggravated by heat.

Due to the gravity of the situation, authorities canceled leave applications of medical personnel in Ballia and provided additional hospital beds in the emergency ward to accommodate the influx of patients.

Officials said most of the admitted patients are aged 60 and above, exhibiting symptoms of high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, breathing difficulties and heart-related issues.

R.S. Pathak, a resident of Ballia who lost his father on Saturday, said that he witnessed an increased flow of patients at the hospital’s emergency ward while attending to his father.

“This has never happened in Ballia. I have never seen people dying because of the heat in such large numbers,” he said. “People fear venturing out. The roads and markets are largely deserted.”

Ballia, along with central and eastern Uttar Pradesh, is currently grappling with oppressive heat.

On Sunday, the district experienced a maximum temperature of 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit), surpassing the normal range by five degrees. The relative humidity was recorded at 25%, intensifying the effect of the heat.

Atul Kumar Singh, a scientist from the India Meteorological Department, or IMD, said temperatures across the state were presently above normal. He added, “no relief is expected in the next 24 hours.”

The IMD issued an alert saying heat wave conditions would last until June 19 in parts of Uttar Pradesh.

The state’s health minister, Brijesh Pathak, said that they have opened an investigation into the cause of death of “so many people” in Ballia.

In eastern Bihar, scorching heat has engulfed most of the state, leading to 42 deaths in the past two days. Among the fatalities, 35 occurred at two hospitals in the state capital of Patna where over 200 patients suffering from diarrhea and vomiting were being treated.

Patna recorded a maximum temperature of 44.7 C Celsius (113 F) on Saturday.

The main summer months — April, May and June — are generally the hottest in most of India, before monsoon rains bring in cooler temperatures.

But temperatures have become more intense in the past decade. During heat waves, the country usually suffers severe water shortages, with tens of millions of its 1.4 billion people lacking running water.

A study by World Weather Attribution, an academic group that examines the source of extreme heat, found that a searing heat wave in April that struck parts of South Asia was made at least 30 times more likely by climate change.

In April, the heat caused the death of 13 people at a government event in India’s financial capital of Mumbai and prompted some states to close all schools for a week.

source https://time.com/6288119/india-heat-wave-2/

Volvo CEO Jim Rowan on the Toughest Challenge Facing Automakers

Auto industry leaders didn’t used to be the sort of folks who talked about transformational change. Car companies tended to hire longtime industry veterans as chief executives, and their talking points would tread the same staid ground: better gas mileage, new design concepts, and other slight changes to the same gas-powered products they had been selling for generations.

Not so anymore. The effects of climate change are becoming impossible to ignore, and time for decarbonization is running out. Perhaps more importantly for automakers, the rise in the popularity of Tesla and other electric vehicle (EV) makers has threatened age-old market share and created a new paradigm: embrace the future, or die. Suddenly, the talk among auto executives is all about who is adapting fastest, and making the boldest moves. And sometimes embracing that mentality means bringing in new blood.
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Jim Rowan, who took over as CEO of Swedish carmaker Volvo early last year, is exactly that kind of figure. His last high profile gig was as CEO of Dyson, known for its fancy vacuum cleaners. Before that, he was at Blackberry, the cell-phone giant-turned-software firm. Rowan’s predecessor at Volvo, Hakan Samuelsson, had already placed the company on an ambitious electrification path—Volvo announced in 2021 that it would sell only EVs by 2030, a faster timetable than many of its competitors—and Rowan has helped shepherd the company along. Earlier this month, he oversaw the launch of the company’s new, remarkably inexpensive EV, the EX30.

Rowan comes to the industry from an outsider’s perspective, and he says the transition away from gasoline power isn’t even the biggest challenge facing automakers. What’s harder will be integrating more and better technology into cars: the kind of computing power that will bring about more advanced assisted driving features, digital connectivity, and allow auto companies to take advantage of the vast amounts of data they can start collecting.

“Of course, battery chemistry and the e-motors and inverters are hugely important, but data, software, silicon and conductivity are really going to be the biggest changes,” Rowan says. “The auto companies that get this right, and come out as leaders, I think will become some of the biggest tech companies of the next decade or two decades, even.”

TIME spoke with Rowan about Volvo’s moves in the changing world of automobiles.

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The big news is the EX30, which launched on June 7. Can you tell us a bit about why that car is important? Is it something that is changing the landscape of EVs, or is it a sign of changes that are already underway?

I think the world is changing, and there’s a few things that come out of that car. I think it’s perfectly tuned for city driving. Range is part of the design aspect. We’re going to offer two different battery sizes, and so that takes out some cost. It gives the choice to the owner and to the customer whether they want a larger range or a smaller range, whether they want one motor or two motors. A lot of this is around democratizing electrification, getting it to the point where it’s affordable to most people. We’re trying to talk to that younger first-time car buyer. I’m just hugely confident about the car—the size, the cost, the fact that it’s electric, the range, the fact that it will play to a different demographic, and that it’ll be a really nice city car, but with a decent range. I think it’s an important car for us.

I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about you coming on board at Volvo. I’m interested in why you took the job.

Three things really. One, Volvo is a brand I grew up with. We’re almost 100 years old as a company, so it’s got a heritage. I think it’s a massively undervalued brand, but it’s got this great heritage, and it’s got this authenticity and this kind of honesty to the brand. For me, that was really interesting.

We’re also in the middle of this double headed transition that’s going on in the industry. It’s probably the most interesting time to join the automotive industry in the last 30 years or so, because on one side you’ve got this massive transition from petrol to electrical propulsion, and then from people driving vehicles, to [driver assistance features] and ultimately autonomous vehicles, and of course core compute architecture, cameras and radars and LIDAR sensors and software and all that stuff. So there’s a massive technical transformation—as an engineer that’s really interesting. But then at the same time, you’ve got this other commercial transformation, direct to customer, coming from the consumer electronics industry. When I joined the auto industry, I found it quite strange that you could sell a $70,000 product to a customer that you never spoke to. Everything was done through the dealership. The dealership still plays a major part in the relationship with the customer, but we need to have direct contact with that customer as well. That’s part of the transition here—how do you bring the dealership and the customer and ourselves into one collective conversation that’s beneficial to everyone?

The third thing is that all of this is underpinned by sustainability and the move towards carbon neutrality. I’m late in my career at this point. This will probably be my last gig before I hang up my boots. So you get a chance to leave it all out there at a company that’s got great heritage and an industry that’s transforming massively, and which can be really beneficial from a carbon neutrality point of view, if we take it seriously.

Do you feel a lot of pressure in this being the last big act in your career? Do you feel like you have a big weight on your shoulders to make a difference?

I don’t feel it in terms of pressure. I feel it in terms of opportunity. The auto industry is so big globally, and we have a great opportunity to continue to be relevant in the industry, and become more relevant in the industry, and really invest in new technologies. If you look at the auto industry and the amount of technology that is invented in the auto industry, you’re moving toward cameras, and radars, and LIDARs, and basically vision technology. We’re at the very cutting edge of the most advanced core compute chips from Nvidia and Qualcomm. And [there’s] the amount of software that’s now in a car, and at the same time you’ve got cloud, and 5G, and the data analytics around that. I was asked by an auto journalist recently, “what [are] the most important things within the automotive industry in the next 10 years,” and without hesitation, I could say it’s software, it’s silicon, it’s connectivity and it’s data. Electrical propulsion will be the easier part of this transaction, and we’re much farther along through that. Of course, battery chemistry, and e-motors, and inverters, and stuff are hugely important. But data, software, silicon, and conductivity are really going to be the biggest changes. The auto companies that get this right, and come out as leaders, I think will become some of the biggest tech companies of the next decade or two decades, even.

One of the interesting components of that technological shift is in autonomous driving. Volvo is partnering with LIDAR-maker Luminar. I had the chance to speak to its CEO Austin Russell last year. He has kind of a unique perspective, calling himself an autonomous vehicle skeptic, and his view has been borne out to some extent in recent years, as it’s turned out that that problem of autonomous driving was much harder than people realized. Would you say you share the same view?

I agree insomuch as that the technology for autonomous driving will be available—technically, we will be able to drive autonomously—[but] the issues are going to be legislation and compliance around the world. So autonomous driving, in my opinion, will come much later than most people think. In the cities and the countries where autonomous driving is allowed, I think we will be capable as much as anyone else to do that. However, where that’s allowed, and the stretches of roads that allow that, I think it’s going to be limited for the foreseeable future. It’s going to be very difficult to do that in urban environments, where you constantly have roadwork that changes on a daily basis, you have schools, you have bikes, you have scooters, you have children running around. I don’t subscribe to the [idea of] five levels of autonomy. I subscribe to two levels: hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road, and hands off the steering wheel, eyes on the screen. Anything else is confusing for the customer. You’re either in charge of the vehicle with some help and assistance from the car, or you’re not in charge of the vehicle at all. I think the first part, hands on the wheel, that’s going to be around for a long, long time before we go full hands off, full eyes off. I would think it would start somewhere on a highway between downtown San Francisco and the airport where you’ll probably have a full autonomous lane. Even that I think is a few years away.

Within the U.S., there have been some big regulatory moves on the EV transition. There’s the Inflation Reduction Act tax credit guidance. And then there’s the new stronger proposed emissions mandates that potentially are catching some automakers off guard, because they’re going much more stringent than they’ve been in the past. I’m wondering how you’re thinking about those new moves.

The Inflation Reduction Act in general is a good thing. It’s gonna drive investment, and more importantly high speed charging infrastructure. The subsidies, I think, are too confusing. Some of our cars will qualify for those subsidies. Some of them won’t. However, a lot of our customer base earn annual income above the threshold of them being able to qualify anyway.

Here’s how I look at that. I think it’s good when governments can lean in a little bit and help with a technology transition especially if it’s a technology transition that is meaningful to societies such as electrification. But if you’re running a business, you should never be thinking that this is going to be a long-term thing. Companies shouldn’t need to rely on subsidies in order for people to afford to buy their products. And, let’s be honest, governments have got other things to spend the money on. Where I think the government can really help is if they continue to invest in technology and infrastructure. Make sure there’s green energy available, make sure there’s good high speed infrastructure available to charge the cars, and help us make this transition to electrification, which is just a much better technology: no noise, no vibration, less moving parts, less servicing, zero tailpipe emissions, and much more efficiency.

source https://time.com/6288058/volvo-ceo-jim-rowan-interview/

There Are Amazing Fathers in the Animal Kingdom

Why treat fatherhood as a miracle?

This was my question when Murphy, a bald eagle, became a viral sensation for being a great stepdad. At first, Murphy tried to incubate a rock at the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Missouri. When the sanctuary received an eaglet that had dropped out of its nest, they allowed Murphy to move from rock-sitting to actual offspring care. He did so well that the eaglet is expected to be released around Father’s Day.

But have you ever seen a female eagle getting this kind of attention for raising young? Motherhood may be cherished but is taken for granted. Since we’re mammals, we view maternal care as part of life—no big deal. Paternal care, in contrast, is seen as optional and is often therefore excessively praised. In Murphy’s case, it deserves accolades, a vast online fan club, and special merchandise.
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Our biased admiration for good fathers is misapplied to a species, such as the bald eagle, in which biparental care is the rule. Murphy is just doing what eagle dads have always done and what the males of many birds do every spring. They are busy feeding their young as well as their mate for as long as she incubates. Some fathers, such as eagles, partake in incubation as well.

Courtesy of Stu Goz/World Bird SanctuaryMurphy the bald eagle on his rock.

Finding good fathers in the animal kingdom isn’t hard, although admittedly harder than finding good mothers. The sea horse has perhaps the most developed paternal investment, with the male keeping the developing embryos in a pouch equipped with a placenta, almost as if he’s pregnant. But we also find fish and frogs in which the male raises the young inside their mouth, on their back, or in a nest. In mammals, we find excellent paternal care in several canid species, such as wolves and African wild dogs, and in some rodents and small South American monkeys. Male marmosets and tamarins lose weight while carrying the young. Mothers take the young only for nursing, leaving them on dad’s back for the rest of the time.

However, once we get to our closest primate relatives, there is little fatherly care. Protection is the primary and often only job of ape males. The reason that Western hunters in the old days brought back the skins, heads, and hands of silverback gorillas is because they were the only individuals to stand their ground. They performed bluff-charges to drive off the hunters, thus allowing their families to escape. Nowadays, thankfully, the same defensive actions only result in lots of pictures of imposing, chest-beating males.

In 2021, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson mocked U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s paternity leave as “trying to figure out how to breastfeed.” It was Carlson’s way of saying that parenting newborns is women’s work. One common way to freeze gender roles in place is by calling some behavior “natural” and dismissing all other behavior as “unnatural.”

The idea that men are unsuitable for childcare is seemingly supported by the apes closest to us, chimpanzees and bonobos. The males of these species do very little with the young. No carrying, no feeding, no watching over them. However, they are perfectly capable of stepping up to the plate if need be. We get a glimpse of it after a mother’s death when an orphan is suddenly whimpering for attention. Adult male chimpanzees have been known to adopt a little one and lovingly care for it. The male will slow down his travel through the forest for the youngster, search for him if he’s lost, being as protective as any mother. Christophe Boesch documented at least ten adoptions by wild chimpanzee males in Taï Forest, in Ivory Coast. One adoption is featured in the 2012, Disneynature movie Chimpanzee, in which the alpha male took an orphan under his wing. Some males cared for the youngster for at least a year, and one male did so for over five years. According to DNA samples, adoptive males are not necessarily the biological fathers.

Stephan Schramm—Alamy Stock PhotoThis male lion was carrying one of its own cubs. This is quite a rare occurrence. Usually you would see a male lion only carrying another male’s offspring which he had killed to ensure his own bread stays superior,

In Kibale National Park in Uganda, scientists witnessed an outbreak of respiratory disease that killed no less than twenty-five chimpanzees. Multiple orphans were the result. Since chimpanzees remain dependent on their mother for at least ten years, the usual outcome for young orphans is death. Four of them, however, were adopted by their adolescent brothers. These males would never move on without first checking that they had their little sibling in tow. Their attentiveness was remarkable given the tough social life of an adolescent trying to enter the male hierarchy.

Male bonobos can be highly protective, too. A striking example occurred once at the San Diego Zoo when its enclosure had a wet moat. The keepers had drained the moat for scrubbing and gone to the kitchen to turn on the water valve to fill it up. However, they were rudely interrupted by Kakowet, the alpha male, who stood screaming and waving his arms in front of their kitchen window. Several young bonobos had jumped into the dry moat to play but could not get out and would have drowned. Kakowet knew who controlled the water supply. After his alarm, the keepers descended into the moat with a ladder. They got all of the bonobos out except for the smallest one, who was pulled up by Kakowet himself.

Our species’ male caring potential is even more developed since we evolved nuclear families. Our species multiplies so successfully (or disastrously, some would say) thanks to male involvement and provisioning. In hunter-gatherers, a woman’s interval between births is around three years, whereas it is about five years in female apes.

Fatherhood changes the biology of men. New fathers experience a rise in oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) while their testosterone level drops. Men shift away from risk-seeking and mate-hunting toward a deeper commitment to their families. Their brains change as well. Neuroscience shows a more active and better-connected amygdala (emotional center) in the brains of men who are the primary caretakers in the family.

These changes should shatter any myth that men can never be good caretakers because they are not biologically “primed” for it. Instead of biology dictating our behavior, the connection between biology and behavior looks more like a two-way street. Biology has a reputation of being rigid and deterministic but is far more flexible and variable than people realize.

Keep this in mind whenever someone claims to know what is “natural” for our species. Most of the time, they have an agenda, and animal dads, from Murphy to Kakowet, would likely disagree.

source https://time.com/6287477/fathers-in-the-animal-kingdom/

The Best Podcasts of 2023 So Far

Podcasting may be facing a reckoning. For years the podcasting bubble has grown ever larger. As investigative and indie shows struggled, producers turned to celebrities as their salvation. Sometimes it feels like every other actor—particularly those who starred on sitcoms in the 2000s—has their own show these days. But it turns out that Hollywood won’t save the industry. Not only are most of those shows starring A-listers rather dull (more on that later), but they don’t seem to be bringing in big enough bucks to justify their existence. And even the most successful podcasts are evaporating for reasons which may be more complicated than simple math: News broke this week that Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have “mutually agreed to part ways” with Spotify. Layoffs across the industry, pullbacks in programming, and recession concerns indicate that we may get fewer exciting podcasts than usual this year.
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And yet a few new shows have managed to capture listener attention and prove their worth in this ever-shifting landscape. Here are the best of the best so far, in alphabetical order.

Read More: The 10 Best Podcasts of 2022

The Coldest Case in Laramie

I try to resist the urge to populate “best of” lists with podcasts from Serial Productions, perhaps the best known creator in the industry. But nobody knows how to do true crime—a genre that in the wrong hands easily veers into the melodramatic or downright problematic—quite like the New York Times-owned company. Times reporter Kim Barker investigates an unsolved murder that took place in the 1980s in her hometown in Wyoming. Barker, who would occasionally Google for updates on the long-cold case, picks up the investigation after learning that the key suspect, a cop, was charged with the killing only for those charges to be suddenly and inexplicably dropped. The show is ultimately less about who committed the murder than the trickiness of memory and elusiveness of closure.

Grown

The long-running, wonderful storytelling podcast The Moth has created its first spinoff: Grown, a series that focuses on tales from those awkward teenage years. Two Moth veterans, Aleeza Kazmi and Alfonso Lacayo, introduce a new story, told in front of a live audience, each week. Predictably, the tales of first crushes, school dance drama, and mental health struggles range from hilariously awkward to deeply personal. But in that Moth way, the stories are always engaging and can even reach cinematic heights. The podcast may particularly resonate with teens who will recognize moments of self-consciousness and self-discovery from their own lives.

If Books Could Kill

Michael Hobbes—one half of the original duo behind You’re Wrong About and, later, Maintenance Phase—launched a new show last year. This time he has partnered with Peter Shamshiri of the Supreme Court podcast 5-4. Each episode, one of the hosts reads one of those ubiquitous airport books that climbs the charts because it seems to explain everything, like Freakonomics or Outliers or The Secret. One host then explains to the other why the book caught fire and, in retrospect, how much it gets wrong about human existence. The episodes are often full of surprises: I was fascinated to learn that the notion of the “five love languages,” which has taken on a life of its own as an Instagram meme, actually originated in a book written by a pastor in the 1990s that brims with sexism and homophobia. The hosts balance fact-checking and withering jokes to informative and entertaining effect.

Read More: You’re Wrong About Host Sarah Marshall Was Always Fascinated by History’s Misunderstood Women. Now the Rest of Us Are Too

In the Scenes Behind Plain Sight

Celebrity podcasts have become largely insufferable (with one notable exception later on this list). It’s become particularly tiresome to listen to comedy stars of yore talk about their old hit television series on rewatch podcasts. Their recording sessions tend to be filled with unfunny inside jokes and pandering stories about production. The new comedy podcast In the Scenes: Behind Plain Sight takes aim at these shows. Each episode, creators Ian Chillag and Mike Danforth (How to Do Everything) start a meandering conversation about working on a fake aughts show that skewers celebrity self-indulgence, bad television scripts, and the awkward commercial breaks inherent to podcasting.

Louder Than a Riot

Louder Than a Riot debuted in 2020 with an objective to explore how American mainstream culture marginalized hip-hop and those who created it. In the second season, hosts Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael switch up the perspective of the show and examine how hip-hop marginalizes people within it, specifically women and queer folks. The season begins with the Tory Lanez trial and teases out the sexist arguments levied not only by Lanez’s fans but by his own legal team against Megan Thee Stallion when she took the stand to testify that the rapper had shot her. (A jury found Lanez guilty of three charges in December; he has yet to be sentenced.) Disappointingly, NPR recently canceled Louder Than a Riot, but I’m eager to see what Madden and Carmichael do next.

Petty Crimes

I ran across Petty Crimes while on the hunt for shows like Normal Gossip during that hit podcast’s hiatus. This podcast is light and easy: Listeners call in with their trivial disputes—neighbors having their cars towed; a patient who questions the ethics of her therapist letting her kids walk in the background of their Zoom therapy sessions; a girlfriend who abandons her slow-walking boyfriend in an airport to make a flight. Hosts Ceara O’Sullivan and Griff Stark-Ennis snarkily investigate each case and reach a verdict. The hosts’ easy banter buoys the conversation from debate to high comedy.

Read More: How 2022 Became the Year of Gossip

Reign of Error

Knicks fans have been miserable for decades and largely place the blame on one man: James Dolan. Dolan inherited the team from his father and refuses to cede control, even though it seems he would really prefer to be a Blues musician. Reign of Error traces Dolan’s life and the Knicks’ misfortunes. It’s well-worn ground in sports journalism, but when threaded together into one story, the drama Dolan stirs up can be staggering. After all, this is a man who once had basketball legend Charles Oakley forcibly removed from Madison Square Garden. When the producers of this podcast reached out to various celebrities to host the show, every single one begged off for fear that they, too, might be banned from Madison Square Garden. Perhaps it was all for the best: David Greene—a former foreign correspondent based in Moscow with some serious journalistic chops—does an admirable job finding a way to make the podcast pop.

The Town

Matt Belloni’s Puck newsletter and his accompanying podcast have become essential for anyone even vaguely interested in the business of Hollywood. In a world increasingly dominated by PR babble from the trades, Belloni cuts through the BS. He gets scoops and doesn’t pull punches. During the writers’ strike, Belloni has invited voices from both sides of the picket line onto the show to explain what’s at stake and how the way we watch television and movies may fundamentally shift in the coming years depending on the outcome of these fights.

Wiser Than Me

Broadly speaking, celebrities don’t make good interviewers. They’re rarely willing to ask the incisive questions a journalist might. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the exception to the rule. The comedy icon recently launched an interview-style podcast in which she sits down with older women to talk about their life experiences. The particular angle of the podcast—gleaning wisdom from her subjects—offers structure to the conversation, and guests like Fran Lebowitz, Jane Fonda, and Ruth Reichl do, indeed, drop sage insights about infidelity, female friendship, and food. Louis-Dreyfus keeps the chats intimate and even sprinkles in little details that will delight her fans like how she quoted Jane Fonda in her high school yearbook.

Read More: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Knew She Was Good. She Fought to Make Sure the World Did Too

source https://time.com/6287208/best-podcasts-2023-so-far/

Ukraines Counteroffensive Is Underway. How Its Going Isnt Clear

This week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine’s long awaited counteroffensive has begun. Ukrainians are trying to regain territory by attacking the Russian front lines and looking for weak points.

So far, Ukrainian forces have reported retaking several villages in the Donbas region. That includes Blahodatne, Makarivka, Neskuchne, and Storozhov in Donetsk province, as well as Lobkove, Levadne, and Novodrivka in Luhansk province. Fighting is also taking place in the southeast portion of the front in Zaporizhzhia, in the province of the same name.

“The Ukrainian forces are just probing Russian defenses right now. They are making gains but not decisive ones,” says Nicolò Fasola, a research fellow at the University of Bologna whose research focuses on Russia’s military strategies. “The breakthroughs that the Ukrainian forces have achieved are localized.”
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To succeed, Ukraine will have to penetrate heavily fortified Russian defense lines and quickly redistribute their forces.

“Once they identify a possible breakthrough point, one of the key factors for success will be the ability to redeploy and concentrate their forces which are now spread across the entire line of attack,” Fasola says. “It’s going to come down to efficiency and numbers.”

In most battles, the defending army has a strategic advantage so going on the offensive is going to be costly for the Ukrainians. Since Ukraine’s last counteroffensive operation last fall, which saw the successful recapture of 7,500 square miles in Kharkiv region, Russia has had time to prepare and also introduced another round of conscription, though Moscow has said it will not be sending any new conscripts to Ukraine.

Experts tell TIME that one potential strategy Ukraine may be thinking about is trying to break the land bridge that connects mainland Russia to Crimea. This would be particularly advantageous to Ukraine because it would make it more difficult for Moscow to coordinate attacks with troops in Crimea. But the plan has been complicated because the destruction of the Kakhovka dam last week has limited Ukrainian forces’ ability to push forward in the south.

Russia has also erected heavy fortifications along the 600-mile front line, which the military analysts Seth G. Jones, Alexander Palmer, and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. told the New York Times were “the most extensive defensive works in Europe since World War II.”

“We are stepping into unknown territory”

For Ukrainians, the task ahead will be arduous. Beyond the inherent difficulties of offensive warfare, as Russia discovered when it marched toward Kyiv last year, is Ukraine’s lack of airpower. “What is a major concern is that this the first major international military operation of this scale that has been done without much air support,” says Vald Mykhnenko, a professor of geography and political economy at Oxford University, who is also from Ukraine. “We are stepping into unknown territory as far as military strategy is concerned.”

Not having air support makes it difficult to know what weapons the Russians plan on using from their defenses. Additionally, mines planted by Russians may make it dangerous to push forward from the ground. “Even if you demine your field, they can remine it overnight again,” Mykhnenko says.

U.S. officials told the New York Times that the main thrust of the counteroffensive has yet to begin, citing the lack of large armored formations involved in attacks. That means that it remains too early to tell if the counteroffensive is succeeding.

But Mykhnenko says that so far the results have been encouraging. “I think if we compare the 100 square kilometers that the Ukrainian general staff said was liberated this week to the 600 square kilometers that Russia took over the course of six months, the results are pretty good,” he says, referring to his own estimates based on how far Russian troops advanced in the six months prior to the counteroffensive.

Whatever happens next, though, experts agree that Western weapons will be critical to Ukraine’s future. “Western resources are going to be key to the success of this counter offensive, but be aware that a lot of those resources are going to be destroyed,” Fasola says.

Ukraine has already lost armored vehicles, including the U.S.-supplied Bradleys, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a press conference on Thursday. But he cautioned that Russia is overestimating Ukrainian losses and that Ukraine continues to have “a lot of combat capability.”

Still, analysts tell TIME that even in the best case scenario for Ukraine, the country would be unlikely to recapture all of its territories in this counteroffensive attack.

“The pressure and the expectation levels on the Ukrainian troops is so high,” Mykhnenko says. “I just hope we slightly ease up on those expectations and not demand that they retake Mariupol one week and then Crimea the next. People should understand that this is going to take months and months, not a week or two.”

source https://time.com/6287830/ukraine-counteroffensive-slow-progress/