Category: International

In many parts of the U.S., China remains a huge business opportunity despite recent friction. That’s the country where Apple makes its phones and Nike stitches its shoes. Yet inside the Washington Beltway, China is a security threat. Full stop. It’s one of the few things Democrats, Republicans and most everyone else in the capital agree on.

NPR correspondents Greg Myre and John Ruwitch report on this gap between how China is viewed in Washington policy circles and how many outside the proverbial beltway think about the country.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Thirty-five years ago, Janet Jackson released an album that changed the course of her career, and of pop music. Control took over radio, reinvented the playbook for Black artists crossing over into pop and ushered in a whole new sound for R&B.

But after the wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Janet’s reputation took a hit, and she’s yet to receive the flowers she deserves.

In this episode of NPR’s It’s Been A Minute, host Sam Sanders wants to set the record straight.

Listen to It’s Been A Minute on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.

After decades of Indigenous stories told by non-Natives, two shows from this past year signal a change.

Reservation Dogs from FX on Hulu was created by and stars Native people. It follows four Indigenous teenagers growing up on a reservation in rural Oklahoma, with dreams of adventuring to California. Vincent Schilling, a Native journalist and critic for Rotten Tomatoes, calls Reservation Dogs ‘a show about Native American resilience.’

Rutherford Falls is a sitcom on NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock, which follows a conflict over a historical statue in a small town. When the show was co-created by Sierra Teller Ornelas, she became the first Native American showrunner of television comedy. Teller Ornelas told Audie Cornish this year: “There are five Native writers on staff. We had a Native director for four of the episodes, and this is really a reflection of our shared experience as Native people from nations all over the country.”

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Last month, R&B singer R. Kelly was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. Days later, a judge suspended Jamie Spears as the conservator of his daughter Britney Spears’ estate. While these cases are completely unrelated, they do have one crucial thing in common: a massive online following, and an ecosystem of think pieces and documentaries that fuel conversation online.

NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans discusses the role documentary series have played in cases like R. Kelly’s and Britney Spears. He says it’s part of a larger movement that some are calling “consequence culture.”

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

One day after a worldwide outage on multiple of its platforms, Facebook was accused by a whistleblower of hiding concerns about its products from the public and its shareholders. Both crises reveal the same thing: just how powerful Facebook is on a global scale.

Ayman El Tarabishy of George Washington University explains what Monday’s outage meant to small businesses around the world.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Children being born now will experience extreme climate events at a rate that is two to seven times higher than people born in 1960, according to a new study in the journal Science.

The researchers compared a person born in 1960 with a child who was six years old in 2020. That six-year-old will experience twice as many cyclones and wildfires, three times as many river floods, four times as many crop failures and five times as many droughts. Read more about the study here.

These extreme changes not only endanger the environment, they take a toll on our mental health. KNAU reporter Melissa Sevigny spoke with residents in Flagstaff, Arizona who are reeling from a summer rife with fires and floods.

And NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with two climate activists of different generations — Jasmine Butler and Denis Hayes — about their outlook on the planet’s future amid new climate change reports.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Meth-related overdoses have tripled in recent years. In the west, 70 percent of police departments identify meth as their biggest problem. Now one state — California — is on the brink of implementing a major new treatment program that would pay drug users to stay clean. KQED‘s April Dembosky reports.

The meth surge has hit some Black and Native American communities the hardest. NPR’s addiction correspondent Brian Mann has this look at what kind of help people in those communities say they need.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all on the decline in the U.S. — with September marking a turning point in the delta surge.

People are likely to be confused by climate change terms like “mitigation” and “carbon neutral,” according to a recent study. Yet, these terms are ubiquitous in climate research and reports that are meant to be accessible to a general audience.

Michelle Zauner is best known as the frontwoman of indie rock band Japanese Breakfast and like most musicians, she’s trying to tell a personal story through her music. But she’s spent the last couple of years composing music that has nothing to do with her — for a video game soundtrack.