On this Wednesday, Feb 3rd episode of Sundial:
FBI Shooting in Sunrise
Two FBI agents were killed and three more were injured in Sunrise Tuesday while serving a warrant on an alleged child abuser's home.
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“These things can be pretty routine, they happen without a hitch usually. But the agents were pretty much ambushed as they were walking up to the apartment door. The suspected gunman fired through the door, blowing out the front door and basically cutting down the agents,” said Miami Herald reporter David Ovalle on Sundial.
Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger are the FBI agents who were killed. They had dedicated their careers to fighting child pornography.
“Alfin particularly had been involved in investigating one of the larger child porn rings from the last few years. It was an operation called 'Playpen.' It was hundreds and hundreds of people that were suspected of being part of this ring,” Ovalle said.
“Laura, as well, had really been one of these people who was pretty outspoken in terms of warning people and particularly children about 'sextortion' and being victims of crimes. They were both really well known in that world of law enforcement,” he said.
The identity of the alleged child abuser, David Lee Huber who killed himself during the raid, was revealed Wednesday afternoon.
Stock Market Insanity
Whether or not you understand what’s going on these days with the stock market, you’ve probably heard about it.
A subgroup — also known as a subreddit — on the online forum, Reddit spent months an recent weeks pushing thousands of everyday traders to buy stock in companies like video game retailer GameStop and movie theater operator AMC Entertainment. This push coincides with large hedge funds shorting these stocks — betting that the stocks are not worth their current market value.
“The stock market is the only business on the planet where you can sell something you don't own-which is short selling...it's kind of like buying your neighbor's car and selling it. And they're on vacation. And, you know, they're going to come back in two weeks. They're going to return the car because you can buy it cheaper at a dealer somewhere,” said Dr. Rainford Knight, a finance professor at Florida Atlantic University, on Sundial.
Billions of dollars are at stake, and now Congress is exploring whether more regulation is needed.
Getting Real About Getting Older
Death, sex and money are things we think about often, but don’t speak about nearly as much. Those ideas also the title of a podcast by WNYC Studios in New York.
They’re talking about aging in a special live, national call-in show called “Getting Real About Getting Older" — that will Wednesday, in place of Sundial, at 8 p.m. on WLRN.
“Our show has long been about places where people might be feeling a little bit isolated or noticing some things in their life that they don't have words for. That's what led us to aging this year. The pandemic has been a time when people who are older have felt a lot of changes in their lives and perhaps felt their physical vulnerability even more than those of us who are younger. So we wanted to kind of focus especially on people who are sixty or older,” said Anna Sale, host of the podcast, on Sundial.
The special tonight will be co-hosted with Jo Ann Allen, 67, of Colorado Public Radio.
“What was fun about having [Allen] participate is she's a single woman. She lives by herself and talks to people who are in much different positions at this point in their lives. Maybe they've been in a 40- to 50-year marriage and they’ll talk about what their social structures and support systems have looked like. It's been nice to hear her talking to her peers when it comes to the same age group,” Sale said.
