Podcast: The Daily

The race to dominate artificial intelligence has become a scramble for talent, with tech companies offering pay packages of $250 million and poaching their competitors’ best employees.

Mike Isaac, who covers the tech sector for The Times, explains why all the hype is raising fears that A.I. could become the next big bubble.

Stories of romantic love are everywhere, but the actor, singer and comedian Bridget Everett says that friendships deserve our attention, too. Onscreen and in everyday life.
Last Fall, Everett appeared on Modern Love to talk about her HBO Original series “Somebody Somewhere,” which centers on a close friendship. Now she’s nominated for an Emmy Award for writing the show, along with Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen.
In “Somebody Somewhere,” Everett stars as Sam, a woman struggling with grief and self-doubt after losing her sister. As Sam grows closer to her friend Joel — played by Jeff Hiller, an Outstanding Supporting Actor nominee — the future starts to look more bearable.
In this episode of Modern Love, Everett tells Anna Martin why she’s looking for a friendship like the one Sam and Joel have on the show. She also reads a Modern Love essay called “When Your Greatest Romance Is a Friendship,” by Victor Lodato. Lodato was in his 40s when he fell into a platonic life partnership with an artist in her 80s, who lived across the street.

In April 2024, Lodato published “Honey,” a novel inspired by Austin Brayfield, the friend he wrote about in his essay.

The former evangelical star on waking up halfway through her life.

Texas is about to gerrymander five new house seats, and California is ready to retaliate. Gov. Gavin Newsom says that his state will also redraw its congressional maps to create five new districts, effectively fighting fire with fire.

Laurel Rosenhall, who covers California’s government and politics, discusses whether the state’s voters will actually go for this plan, whether it’ll work if they do, and what is at stake either way.

Warning: This episode contains strong language.

In President Trump’s second term, Laura Loomer has emerged as the most influential outside adviser, telling the president whom to fire and shaping major policy decisions.

Ken Bensinger, who covers media and politics, explains how a social media provocateur became Mr. Trump’s favorite blunt instrument.

Across the country, public schools are facing steep declines in enrollment, while the movement to use public funds for private education grows.

Dana Goldstein, who covers education and families for The New York Times, explains why so many parents are using taxpayer money to privately educate their children — and what this means for American education.

European leaders raced to Washington to show their support for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as he met with President Trump on Monday.

It was their first face-to-face meeting at the White House since their disastrous blowup in the Oval Office in February.

Michael Schwirtz, who covers global intelligence, explains how and why Mr. Zelensky’s approach has changed.

From Iowa to New York, Republican members of Congress have struggled to answer constituents’ tough questions about their party’s agenda, with several town hall meetings turning angry and going viral.

Republican leaders have told lawmakers to stop holding them all together.

Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska has ignored that advice. The congressman speaks about the disappearance of an American political tradition and why he thinks it is worth preserving.

Sam Graham-Felsen never imagined being lonely. Throughout his childhood and as a young man his life revolved around his friends. But when Sam got married and then had kids, going out with his friends almost felt like a luxury. After years of focusing on everything in his life except friendship, Sam began to realize he was missing something essential, and he decided to get his friends back.

On this episode of “Modern Love,” Mr. Graham-Felsen describes how he went from being a boy with a wealth of deep friendships to finding himself feeling lonely as an adult, and what he did to bring friendship back into his life.

The world-renowned negotiator on our “dealmaker in chief” and the benefit of approaching life as a deal waiting to be made.

Today, President Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, are meeting on U.S. soil for the first time, to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine.

David E. Sanger, the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, discusses the wide range of possible outcomes and why, no matter what happens, the meeting is a win for Mr. Putin.

Warning: This episode contains strong language.

This summer, The New York Times put out a list of the top 100 movies of the past 25 years. It prompted furious debate about what movies stand the test of time, why they matter and what those movies tell us about ourselves.

Kyle Buchanan, a pop culture reporter for The Times, discusses how the list came to be, and actors and directors including Celine Song, Molly Ringwald and Ebon Moss-Bachrach speak about their votes.

Over the past few weeks, the most senior intelligence officials in the federal government have released a series of new documents which they claim shows that, starting in 2016, President Barack Obama and his deputies carried out a criminal conspiracy against President Trump.

Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains what’s behind the sudden re-emergence on the Trump-Russia saga, and what happens when heads of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Justice Department all turn their attention to the president’s domestic enemies.

President Trump said on Monday that he would take control of the Washington, D.C., police department and send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.

Devlin Barrett, who covers the F.B.I. for The New York Times, explains why the president says this is necessary and how it fits into his broader strategy for dealing with cities run by Democrats.

Last week, President Trump hit many countries with yet another round of punishing tariffs. So far, the economy has been resilient in the face of his trade war, but it’s unclear how long that will last.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of DealBook, discusses what C.E.O.s are telling him about the president’s tariffs, and where they think all of this is headed.

For her entire life, Grace Hussar has been an overthinker. No matter how much she wanted to be in the moment, she always felt as if she was just outside it. But when she took up endurance running, she realized something: Extreme pain turned her thoughts off. She wanted more of that feeling — more pain and less overthinking. As a mother of two with a happy partnership and a career in finance, what she explored next surprised her.
On this week’s episode of “Modern Love,” Hussar talks about her essay, “The Kind of Pain I Wanted.” Hussar shares the story of how she discovered that rope play and kink were the keys to newfound presence and pleasure in her life.

How the head of the A.D.L. thinks about the line between legitimate protest and anti-Jewish hate.

For years, Uber has said it is one of the safest ways to travel. But a New York Times investigation found that the company has been contending with a major problem: Hundreds of thousands of people reported that they were sexually assaulted or harassed during Uber rides.

Emily Steel, who broke the story, discusses what executives knew about the problem and how they failed to take certain steps that were supposed to make riders safer.

During President Trump’s first term, the intentional separation of migrant child from their parents shocked the country and persuaded Mr. Trump to say he would end the practice for good.

Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration policy for The Times, has found that in Mr. Trump’s second term, the practice has returned.

For many, the logic seemed unassailable: Giving poor families money would measurably improve the lives of their children. And so, a few years ago, social scientists set out to test whether that assumption was right.

The results of the experiment have shocked them.