Shows / Drive and Listen
Drive and Listen
Long-form stories about history, money and technology, made for listening on the drive. Two hosts, one properly researched story, three mornings a week, out before the commute: Tuesday: Case Files. A scandal, a swindle or a disaster, told from the record. Wednesday: The Week. The one story from the news worth understanding. Thursday: Technology. The machines, chips and money behind the headlines. Arthur takes the history, the people and the world. George takes the money, the markets and the…
Episodes
- Drive and Listen
Why Are Headlights So Bright Now?
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says complaints about blinding headlights have gotten louder in recent years. This episode looks at what shapes how…
- Drive and Listen
Why Is It Dark So Early? It's the Season, and Then the Clock
Where clocks fall back, sunset in New York reads about an hour earlier overnight, from 5:53 p.m. on Saturday, October 31 to 4:52 p.m. on Sunday, November 1…
- Drive and Listen
Amazon Prime Settled for $2.5 Billion, but the Ruling Was About Signing Up
An orange button at an Amazon checkout could sign shoppers up for Prime even when they never finished buying, according to a federal judge's description of one…
- Drive and Listen
How GPS Finds Your Car: Four Satellites and a Clock
How many satellites does your car need to find itself? Usually four, and the reason is a clock: the one in your car is a little off, so the receiver works out…
- Drive and Listen
Northern lights: what actually makes the sky glow
The northern lights take their energy from the Sun, but the glow itself is made here, in our own air. This episode follows that energy the long way round: why…
- Drive and Listen
Theranos: What happened between the finger and the result?
In September 2013, Theranos and Walgreens promised lab tests "from a blood sample as small as a few drops". In 2022, a jury convicted founder Elizabeth Holmes…
- Drive and Listen
iPhone Duo: How a Glass Screen Folds
Apple says its new iPhone Duo, which it calls the first foldable iPhone, has high-strength glass above and below the folding display panel. Glass is the stuff…
- Drive and Listen
Russian Plague Scare: How an Outbreak Report Gets Checked
In early October, a worker at a plague research institute in Irkutsk, Russia, died after being hospitalized with severe pneumonia, and media reports suspected…
- Drive and Listen
Jim Bakker's $1,000 Lifetime Hotel Promise, Sold 66,683 Times
In the 1980s, a TV ministry sold a deal that sounded like a dream: give $1,000 once, and stay free at its Grand Hotel for four days and three nights, every…
- Drive and Listen
Does White Noise Actually Help You Sleep?
A lot of us fall asleep to a fan, a hiss or an app. By the end of the drive you'll know what white, pink and brown noise actually are, how a steady sound can…
- Drive and Listen
Four Narrow Places: Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Way Around That Got Hit Too
When a narrow place at sea shuts, the world tries to go around it. In 2026 the main way around the Strait of Hormuz ran out through a second narrow place, at…
- Drive and Listen
The Salad Oil Swindle of 1963: The Paper Said the Oil Was There
A tank farm in New Jersey, a great deal of vegetable oil that wasn't there, and a pile of paper that said it was. After it came apart in November 1963, a later…
- Drive and Listen
The Race to Power AI
On September 24, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Oracle had sent a legal notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a giant AI campus being built in New Mexico…
- Drive and Listen
Why the Fed Just Raised Rates (the First Hike Since 2023)
On September 16, 2026, America's central bank raised its main interest-rate target by a quarter of a percentage point, to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent. It was…
- Drive and Listen
Six Warnings: How Bernie Madoff Got Past the SEC
Three examinations. Two investigations. The SEC still did not uncover Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. That is the finding of the SEC's own inspector general…