'The Run-Up': The Guardrails

$What Are Tactical Nuclear Weapons, and What if Russia Uses Them?: If President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia follows through on his threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, he is likely to turn to a specific type. Tactical nuclear weapons have a fraction of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and of the super bombs and city busters that people worried about during the Cold War. What exactly are these weapons, how did they develop and what would it mean if Mr. Putin resorted to them in the war in Ukraine? Guest: William J. Broad, a science reporter and senior writer for The New York Times.$

Amazon’s Most Beloved Features May Turn Out to Be Illegal: The U.S. government has filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, pointing to a set of familiar features that have made the internet retail giant so beloved by consumers. Karen Weise, a technology correspondent for The Times, explains why those features may actually be illegal. by The Daily

23 min listen

The Sunday Read: ‘The Kidnapped Child Who Became a Poet’: “The weird thing about growing up kidnapped,” Shane McCrae, the 47-year-old American poet, told me in his melodious, reedy voice one rainy afternoon in May, “is if it happens early enough, there’s a way in which you kind of don’t know.” There was no reason for McCrae to have known. What unfolded in McCrae’s childhood — between a day in June 1979 when his white grandmother took him from his Black father and disappeared, and another day, 13 years later, when McCrae opened a phone book in Salem, Ore., found a name he hoped was his father’s and placed a call — is both an unambiguous story of abduction and a convoluted story of complicity. It loops through the American landscape, from Oregon to Texas to California to Oregon again, and, even now, wends through the vaster emotional country of a child and his parents. And because so much of what happened to McCrae happened in homes where he was beaten and lied to and threatened, where by The Daily

38 min listen

Day X, Part 3: Blind Spot 2.0: Franco A. is not the only far-right extremist in Germany discovered by chance. For over a decade, 10 murders in the country, including nine victims who were immigrants, went unsolved. The neo-Nazi group responsible was discovered only when a bank robbery went wrong. In this episode, we ask: Why has a country that spent decades atoning for its Nazi past so often failed to confront far-right extremism? by The Daily

41 min listen

Sean Hannity by The New Washington

33 min listen

The Outsourcing of America’s Border Problem: This episode contains descriptions of severe injuries. Tough new border policies introduced by the Biden administration have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States. But the measures have also created a combustible bottleneck along the southern border. That situation exploded last week when a deadly fire broke out at a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Simon Romero, a national correspondent for The Times, explains how the United States has leaned more heavily on Mexico to help handle its immigration dilemma, bringing cities like Juárez to a breaking point. Guest: Simon Romero, a national correspondent for The New York Times covering the Southwest. by The Daily

24 min listen

Is the U.S. Changing Its Stance on Taiwan?: For decades, the U.S. has walked a careful line when it comes to Taiwan — vowing to protect the island from China, without saying exactly how far it would go to do that. On Monday, that appeared to change. Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times. by The Daily

23 min listen