The Daily

Nonprofit hospitals — which make up around half of hospitals in the United States — were founded to help the poor. But a Times investigation has revealed that many have deviated from those charitable roots, behaving like for-profit companies, sometimes to the detriment of the health of patients. Guest: Jessica Silver-Greenberg , an investigative business reporter for The New York Times. Background...

Over the weekend, F.B.I. agents found classified documents at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., after conducting a 13-hour search. The search — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — resulted in the latest in a series of discoveries that has already led to a special counsel investigation. What miscalculations have Mr. Biden and his team make throughout this ordeal? Guest: Michae...

In the past decade or more, votes over increasing the U.S. debt ceiling have increasingly been used as a political tool. That has led to intense showdowns in 2011, 2013 and, now, 2023.  This year, both sides of the argument are dug in and Republicans appear more willing to go over the cliff than in the past.  What does this year’s showdown look like and how, exactly, did the United States’ debt ba...

In a room in a modest concrete building in a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception. Technically an “anechoic chamber,” the room is the quietest place on the planet — according to some. What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible speculation. Public fascination with it exploded 10 years ago, with an article...

With mountains, intense mud, fast-running rivers and thick rainforest, the Darién Gap, a strip of terrain connecting South and Central America, is one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Over the past few years, there has been an enormous increase in the number of migrants passing through the perilous zone in the hopes of getting to the United States. Today, we hear the story of one family...

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United States and allies have held back from sending Kyiv their most potent arms. Over the past few weeks, that has started to change. Guest: Eric Schmitt , a national security correspondent for The New York Times. Background reading:  Ukraine has a narrow window of time to retake more territory ahead of an expected Russian spring offensive. The Biden...

With little warning or regulation, companies are increasingly using facial recognition technology on their customers — as a security measure, they say. But what happens when the systems are actually being used to punish the companies’ enemies? Guest: Kashmir Hill , a technology reporter for The New York Times.  Background reading:  Madison Square Garden Entertainment, the owner of the arena, has p...

For nearly three years, China had one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world, thanks to its strict yet effective “zero Covid” approach. But last month, the government suddenly abandoned the policy. Since then, there have been millions of coronavirus cases across the country. Guest: Alexandra Stevenson , the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times. Background reading:  After microm...

In states where abortion is severely limited or illegal, clinicians face imminent prosecution if they continue to provide abortions. What is much less clear is what happens if providers in blue states offer telemedicine abortions to women in states where that’s against the law. These clinicians, too, could be arrested or sued or lose their medical licenses. To protect themselves, they may have to...

The Justice Department is scrutinizing how both former President Donald J. Trump and President Biden came to have classified records after they left office. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel after the discovery of two batches of classified documents from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president. How are the two cases similar, how are they different and what might that mean...

For weeks, a string of major storms have hit California, causing extreme flooding. While it might seem as if rain should have a silver lining for a state stuck in a historic drought, the reality is far more complicated. Today, how California’s water management in the past has made today’s flooding worse and why it represents a missed opportunity for the future of the state’s water crisis. Guest: C...

After Jair Bolsonaro lost October’s Brazilian presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, many believed that the threat of violence from the defeated leader’s supporters would recede. They were wrong.  Mr. Bolsonaro had spent years sewing doubt and undermining Brazil’s election system, and last week, thousands of rioters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices.  W...

Air travel was a mess over the holidays — in the last 10 days of December, 30,000 flights were canceled.  While every airline was affected, one stood out: Southwest, which over the past few decades has transformed how Americans fly, melted down. In the last 10 days of the year, it canceled as many flights as it had done in the previous 10 months.  So what went wrong? Guest: Niraj Chokshi , a busin...

Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House turned into a rolling disaster last week, played out over five long days and 15 rounds of voting.  Today, the inside story of how it went so wrong — and what he was forced to give up in order to finally win. Guest: Catie Edmondson , a congressional correspondent for The New York Times. Background reading:  Mr. McCarthy’s slog to th...

On Christmas Eve in 1971, Juliane Diller, then 17, and her mother boarded a flight in Lima, Peru. She was headed for Panguana, a biological research station in the belly of the Amazon, where for three years she had lived, on and off, with her mother, Maria, and her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, both zoologists. About 25 minutes after takeoff, the plane flew into a thunderstorm, was struck by light...

The current level of biodiversity loss is extraordinary in human history: The global rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.  At the end of 2022, countries around the world came together in Montreal for an agreement akin to the Paris climate accord to tackle the biodiversity crisis. Here’s more on the effort and how i...

George Santos, the Republican representative-elect from New York, ran for office and won his seat in part on an inspiring personal story. But when Times reporters started looking into his background, they made some astonishing revelations: Almost all of Mr. Santos’s story was fake. Guests: Michael Gold , a reporter covering New York for The New York Times. Grace Ashford , a reporter covering New Y...

This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence. When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, many believed the country’s army would quickly crush the Ukrainian forces. Instead, Russian military failures have defined the war. Today, we hear from Russian soldiers, and explore why a military superpower keeps making the same mistakes and why, despite it all, its soldiers kee...

This episode contains strong language.  Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four years. The transition is shaping up to be chaotic.  Today, the 118th Congress will gather for the first time in the Capitol, yet there is still a question mark over who is going to be the Republican speaker of the House.  Why is there still a fight over leadership?...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. Kirill, 24, worked at a nonprofit for homeless people in the Moscow region. He does not support the policies of President Vladimir V. Putin and is vehemently against the invasion of Ukraine. After suffering setbacks in the war, Mr. Putin announced a mi...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since. In May, the United States was stunned by the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that previewed the end of Roe v. Wade. After, we spoke to people on both sides of the abortion issue. Today, we revisit conversations with two women, an anti-abortion activist and an a...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. In July, NASA released new images captured from a point in space one million miles from Earth. Ancient galaxies carpeting the sky like jewels on black velvet. Fledgling stars shining out from deep within cumulus clouds of interstellar dust. Today, we r...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. This year, we explored the story of Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, two Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City, who had embarked on an improbable attempt to create the company’s first union and succeeded. Today, we return to their story an...

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran. This episode contains strong language. This year, in response to Russia’s increasingly brutal campaign against Ukrainian towns and cities, millions of people — most of them women and children — fled Ukraine. It was the fastest displacement of people in...

During his time as a restaurant critic for The Times, Pete Wells has become both feared and revered in the world of dining — crowning those at the top and dethroning those whose time has passed. But when the pandemic arrived, handing out stars to fancy restaurants made no sense anymore. A fundamental change was needed. Guest: Pete Wells , a restaurant critic for The New York Times.  Background rea...