Power outages in Addis -- at least in my neighborhood -- are short but still more or less a daily occurrence. At the office we have a generator that kicks in, but at home I like to think of these outages as "podcast breaks." Here are two I listened to recently that are particularly worthwhile, even if your power is on:
- Planet Money has a nice, non-technical summary of Oregon's randomized Medicaid program. (Previous post on the same subject with more technical details here. Recent NYT coverage here.)
- Ira Glass spoke in Princeton earlier this year, and he discussed how This American Life has been moving towards more investigative reporting -- they brought down a lousy judge in Georgia, for example. Their latest investigative installation is incredible: What Happened at Dos Erres tells the true story of the long-lost survivor of a massacre in Guatemala that wiped out an entire village. It's a great use of a human narrative to make you care about an important but disturbing story, from the role of the US in that era of Guatemalan history to the role of the investigations in modern Guatemalan politics. The reporting was done in tandem with ProPublica, so there's an excellent prose version you can read here.
(They've also shared some updates on the story here.)