Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Plenty of kids feel that their gender identity and their assigned sex don't match. What

to do about that has become fully subsumed into America's culture wars. We look at the

attempts to curtail some of the options and the woeful lack of research on the topic.

And you've probably heard that Blue Monday, the third Monday in January, is supposedly

the deepest trough of the winter blues. We've got data that suggests otherwise. It's

what people listen to that may indicate when the mood is bluest.

But first, after a tumultuous week, German politics is in disarray.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's succession plans lie in ruins. After her heir apparent

anagrette Kramkarenbauer announced yesterday that she would step down as leader of the ruling

Christian Democratic Union, or CDU.

Meanwhile, the party continues to grapple with a resurgent far right in the form of the

alternative for Germany or AFD party. The recent troubles began last October with an election

in the eastern state of Thuringia. Back in October, they hold a state election in the

small eastern state of Thuringia and it produced a badly hung state parliament. Christopher

Lockwood is our Europe editor. Nobody was able to form a majority and in the end, what

happened rather unexpectedly was that a tiny party, the three Democrats who had barely

5% of the vote, cobbled together a government and the way that they did that was by relying

on the support in the confirmation vote, not only of the CDU and here's the controversial

part, but also by the right wing alternative for Germany, a party that has been accused

by many people of harboring neo-Nazis within it. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration,

...