The rise of AI could mean a whole new landscape for 2024’s US presidential election: watch out for deep fakes and hyper-persuasive chatbots. We unpack North Korea’s secret pandemic [...]
A deal in principle and now comes the really hard part. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy need to cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to get their [...]
Russian anti-Kremlin fighters take the war back home with an incursion into Russia’s Belgorod region. We hear from one of their commanders who says it’s just the start. What’s next in [...]
What's next for interest rates? Our U.S. Fed interpreter analyses the latest minutes - and if there's a difference between a hold, skip or pause. In Turkey, more rates decisions as President [...]
Black Real Madrid player Vinicius Jr has spoken out against racist incidents in Spain. We take a deep dive into how the Brazilian’s stand is shaking up Spanish soccer – and making [...]
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is widely expected to throw his hat in the ring for the presidency this week. Which part of the conservative spectrum should he woo? Plus, a Reuters [...]
Gridlock over the U.S. debt ceiling as Biden and McCarthy are set to meet - can a deal get done? Russia says Bakhmut captured after the bloodiest battle of the 15-month war - now what? Plus, [...]
This episode is a special companion to the five-part investigation into how humanity's hunger for resources is driving worldwide destruction of areas rich with bats, carriers of tens of [...]
President Joe Biden wants to send a tough message to Beijing from this year’s G7 summit. But China’s trade ties with other G7 countries are complicating Biden’s goal. Japan’s hopes [...]
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Saudi Arabia to attend the Arab League summit. His appearance seals his return to the regional fold after years of civil war. But Arab leaders are [...]
The unlikely battle between the creator of the New York Public Library children's reading room and the beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon.Goodnight [...]
Happy National Train Day, everyone – for those of you who missed it: that was May 13th this year. A year ago, we started down this path with Train Set: Track One, which gave way to Track Two …and [...]
LA might be the most extreme parking city on the planet. Parking regulations have made it nearly impossible to build new affordable housing, or to renovate old buildings. And parking has a massive [...]
In her new book Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), structural engineer Roma Agrawal identifies and examines the seven of most basic building blocks of [...]
Bad closed captions can be entertaining, but they can be serious, too, because captions are a critical tool for lots of lots of people. There are the people learning a new language and of course [...]
There's a new movie out called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game. It’s a fun and extremely meta biopic telling the story of Roger Sharpe, who, with one perfect shot, helped legalize pinball in [...]
Last year, Roman Mars teamed up with Hank Green to guest host Dear Hank & John -- this year he's back on the Greens' show once again, but this time with Hank's brother John Green (Turtles All the [...]
From scratchers to the Powerball, the lottery is the most popular form of gambling in the United States, even though the odds of winning a big jackpot is infinitesimally small. Jonathan D. Cohen is a [...]
Today the Netherlands has a reputation as a kind of bicycling paradise. Dutch people own more bicycles per capita than any other place in the world. The country has more than 20,000 miles of [...]
The “panopticon” might be the best known prison concept in the world. In the original design, all the cells are built around a central guard tower, designed to maintain order just by making [...]
At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, as far as we know, no one else had ever attempted.
In this episode, first aired in the Spring of 2016, we tell you about Surya [...]
In 2021, editor Alex Neason's grandfather passed away. On his funeral program, she learned the name of his father for the first time: Wilson Howard. Not Neason. Howard. And when she asked her family [...]
Foreign enemies have seldom brought war to U.S. soil… right? In this episode from 2017, we tell you strange stories of foreign enemies landing on our shore.
From bombs floating across the country [...]
At first glance, Golden Balls was just like all the other game shows — quick-witted host, flashy set, suspenseful music. But underneath all that, each episode asked a very serious question: can you [...]
Heaven and hell, Judgement Day, monotheism — these ideas all came from one ancient Persian religion: Zoroastrianism. Also: Sky Burials. Zoroastrians put their dead on top of a structure called The [...]
Abortion pills — a combo of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol — are on notice: on April 7, 2023, a federal judge said the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was invalid. And then, not more [...]
How much does knowledge cost? While that sounds like an abstract question, the answer is surprisingly specific: $3,096,988,440.00. That’s how much the business of publishing scientific and academic [...]
Tuesday afternoon, summer of 2017: Scotty Hatton and Scottie Wightman made a decision to help someone in need and both paid a price for their actions that day — actions that have led to a legal, [...]
Cat Jaffee didn’t necessarily think of herself as someone who loved being alone. But then, the pandemic hit. And she got diagnosed with cancer. Actually, those two things happened on the exact same [...]