Society

July 1, 2025

From supermarkets to cafés and public transportation, everyday payments are made using WeChat or Alipay, two apps that have become essential to daily life in the country.

In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation.  Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.  Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth.  The

In 2019, President Trump tweeted: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies." Today, the Trumps are all over crypto.There are memecoins for Trump and the first lady. They own a stablecoin, a bitcoin mining operation, and a crypto financial services company. And, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, Trump's media group announced they're raising 2.5 billion dollars from investors to buy bitcoin.At that same conference, speakers included two White House advisors, two sons of the US president, the son of the U.S. Commerce Secretary, and a Trump appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a cryptocurrency built on independence from big government, this was a swerve.So, what happens when the President of the United States showers his love on the crypto community ... while also becoming a crypto entrepreneur himself? We follow along as Trump Inc.'s Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein spend three days at the Las Vegas conference center where convicts are cheered, oversight and regulation are booed, and the separation of crypto and state no longer applies.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Have you ever heard Sam Altman speak? I’m serious, have you ever heard this man say words from his mouth?  Here is but one of the trenchant insights from Sam Altman in his agonizing 37-minute-long podcast conversation with his brother Jack Altman from last week: “I think there will

The Uncontained Ego of the Titans of Tech

Today's main thing is about my recent trip to visit family in the suburbs of Atlanta. Did I manage to somehow shut the fuck up the whole time? Did I have an existential crisis in the airport? Well let's find out down below. I may have mentioned that my next

Last fall, I published a New Yorker essay titled, “What Kind of Writer is ChatGPT?”. My goal for the piece was to better understand how ... Read more

Dave Winer, OG blogger, podcaster, developed first apps in many categories. Old enough to know better. It's even worse than it appears.

On Evil, Civility, and Why Some Things Cannot Be Compromised Away

A defining and underpinning characteristic of the international financial system in the 21st century is the apparent necessity of access to, usage of and infrastructure needed for sovereign debt (or comparable instruments), credit markets and capital markets more broadly. Typically, states across the globe rely on access to and usage of such markets to borrow...

We are in an era of limited wars that are motivated by political manipulation of the public appetite for violent conflict. War has become indecisive and performative.

How the Supreme Court Just Redefined Presidential Authority

On Peter Thiel's Gnostic Christianity and the Pathology of Hierarchical Thinking

Peter Thiel's Elegant Nihilism

How Conservative Legal Theory Collapsed Into Partisan Hackery

An overview of Clausewitz's thinking winds up showing how the US has ignored it, with the bad results Clausewitz predicted.

On embodiment, industrial realities, and why the center still holds

The 21st Century’s Useful Idiots of Fascism

Clarence Thomas's anti-trans concurrence is the culmination of right-wing anti-intellectualism

Colleges and universities renew Turnitin subscriptions year after year even though its flawed detectors are expensive and require students to let the company keep their papers forever.

For people with OCD, reassurance can be harmful. ChatGPT provides an infinite supply.

Republicans are proposing huge cuts to Medicaid. The impact on Americans’ health would be devastating.

American adolescents watch much more pornography than their parents know — and it’s shaping their ideas about pleasure, power and intimacy. Can they be taught to see it more critically?

Porn has long been the canary in the coal mine for other restrictions against free speech.

Americans awoke this morning to the news that the United States military had [DROPPED BOMBS AND / OR CARRIED OUT DRONE STRIKES] on [WHATEVER COUNTR...

Designers producing ethical products are criticised for their high prices, but little can be done about that without wider change, writes Smith Mordak.