PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
Your 2025 Guide to Celestial Wow Moments (Maria)
The author writes, “The new year will bring a pair of lunar eclipses, but don’t expect any sun-disappearing acts like the one that mesmerized North America last spring. While the world will have to wait until 2026 for the next total solar eclipse, the cosmos promises plenty of other wow moments in 2025. It’s kicking off the year with a six-planet parade in January that will be visible for weeks. Little Mercury will join the crowd for a seven-planet lineup in February. Five planets already are scattered across the sky — all but Mars and Mercury — though binoculars or telescopes are needed to spot some of them just after sunset. … Here’s a sneak peek of what’s ahead.”
Bidenomics Was Wildly Successful (Dana)
From The New Republic: “The president’s domestic record wasn’t just extraordinary. It might put Democrats back in power in four years.”
World Leaders Are Getting Older — Except in Democracies (Sean)
From The Economist: “The advanced age of many world leaders came into sharp focus in 2024, when 81-year-old Joe Biden was pressed to withdraw from America’s presidential race over concerns about his mental acuity. Americans then elected Donald Trump who, at 78, is no spring chicken. Mr. Biden is far from the world’s oldest leader. Paul Biya, who has led Cameroon since 1982, is now 91 years old. The world’s two most populous countries, China and India, also have leaders in their 70s. Going into 2025, the world’s leaders are, on average, older than ever. Over the past five decades, the average age of all leaders has risen from 55 to 62.”
Maybe You Can Get Tired of All the Winning? (Al)
The author writes, “I was standing beside the step-and-repeat at James O’Keefe’s annual AmFest afterparty nursing a bourbon and coke when out of the corner-of-my-eye emerged a face that was mostly familiar, minus the signature sepia blur. The face was approaching fast. Wide TV-anchor smile. Caked-on makeup. Main-character energy. I quickly realized I was in its sights. Immediately I’m greeted with the familiar booming, Midwestern-announcer voice. Knowing that I was on enemy turf I attempted a pleasant return greeting, hoping to disarm and signal that I came in peace. ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ Kari Lake screams in my face, I assume in reference to a bit of discomfort with mid-interview physical contact that I had expressed in our last encounter.”
‘Look, They’re Getting Skin!’: Are We Right To Strive To Save the World’s Tiniest Babies? (Laura)
The author writes, “Doctors are pushing the limits of science and human biology to save more extremely premature babies than ever before. But when so few survive, are we putting them through needless suffering?”
The McKinsey Opioid Consultants Who Got Away (DonkeyHotey)
From The Lever: “The Biden Justice Department just handed a sweetheart deal to a global consulting firm with deep ties to the Biden administration, letting the firm off the hook for its role in helping ‘turbocharge’ sales of the highly addictive prescription pain pill OxyContin. The development is one of the Justice Department’s first major moves since adopting a new policy … to go even softer on corporate crime, and will allow McKinsey & Company to defer prosecution for its extensive role in fueling the opioid epidemic that has devastated millions of American lives.”
‘Living Proof That You Can Spend Money on the Poor’: Utopia Comes to Mexico City (Reader Jim)
From The Guardian: “Mexico City’s mayor has never been afraid to court controversy. Clara Brugada has taken some imaginative steps in her efforts to undo decades of economic and cultural inequality in one of the capital’s most impoverished neighborhoods. That includes a Boeing 737 converted into a library, its overhead lockers stuffed with books, and a park where 50ft animatronic dinosaurs tower. Both are part of Brugada’s Utopias project. On a sunny weekday at the Freedom Utopia … a father and son rally a ball on a tennis court, teenage girls jog around a racetrack, and 20 older retirees, men and women, swim steady laps of the pool. Such sights might be common in many modest neighborhoods with a decent leisure center in the global north. But in Iztapalapa — where people previously had no access to cultural activities or sports — this is not just unusual, it is subversive.”
