This week marks four years since the outbreak of Covid-19 was officially declared a pandemic. One of the most vexing legacies — one that science still hasn't solved — is long Covid. That's the debilitating condition that can develop in the aftermath of an infection. Millions of Americans are living with the often debilitating symptoms that can include brain fog, shortness of breath, and low energy. Some struggle with simple daily living tasks like laundry and cooking. Four years since the pandem...
Mar 14, 2024•10 min
Here's one sign that shrinkflation is no longer just a topic for economics nerds. Cookie Monster recently complained on social media that his favorite food was getting smaller. "Me hate shrinkflation!" the fuzzy blue monster declared. "Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies!" President Biden promised to sign a bill banning it during his State of the Union address. Shrinkflation isn't new. It's been happening for years. But people seem to be paying more attention right now amidst high fo...
Mar 13, 2024•10 min
Haiti's Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, has announced his resignation. But the country remains in freefall. Will Haitians finally have a chance to determine their own political future? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
Mar 12, 2024•11 min
The holy month of Ramadan begins this week. It is a holy month of worship for Muslims during which they worship, study the Quran, pray and fast from sunrise until sunset. It is a time of light, but Ramadan feels different this year, especially for Palestinian-Americans, says Eman Abdelhadi. She is a professor at the University of Chicago, whose research focuses on Muslim-Americans. Abdelhadi says "every moment of joy feels stolen and elicits a sense of guilt." The guilt she describes is connecte...
Mar 11, 2024•11 min
We're moving closer to the dream of landing humans on Mars. But will sustaining human life on Mars even be possible? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
Mar 10, 2024•9 min
As John Kerry leaves his role as the first Presidential Envoy for Climate, has he helped shift us away from climate disaster? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
Mar 09, 2024•11 min
When Shogun, James Clavell's best selling novel was adapted into a powerhouse NBC miniseries in 1980. The hero of the story was Englishman John Blackthorne. The people he met when he landed in Japan in search of riches, are viewed and portrayed as primitive. In the 2024 Shogun adaptation the Japanese characters are fully formed. The series elevates the stories of the Japanese characters as much as it does Blackthorne's. That was a deliberate decision on the part of Shogun co-creators Rachel Kond...
Mar 08, 2024•12 min
On August 6, 1945, a stone-faced President Harry Truman appeared on television and told Americans about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. The attack on Hiroshima marked the first time nuclear power was used in war, but the atomic bomb was actually tested a month earlier in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico. At least hundreds of New Mexicans were harmed by the test's fallout. Radiation creeped into the grass their cows grazed, on the food they ate, and the water they drank. A ...
Mar 07, 2024•11 min
Nikki Haley's announcement that she was suspending her campaign for president didn't come as a surprise. She's trailed front-runner Donald Trump in all but two Republican primary contests so far. Haley did manage to sway some Republican voters away from Trump. She also managed to recruit independents and Democrats, too. As she ended her campaign on a stage in South Carolina, Haley did not endorse Trump. She said he would have to earn their votes. Nikki Haley appealed to Republicans who did not w...
Mar 06, 2024•10 min
This week marks a milestone in the presidential primary process. Fifteen states and one US Territory vote on Super Tuesday. This one day is the biggest delegate haul for candidates during the presidential primary season. The states voting on Super Tuesday include places with lots of Arab American voters, like Minnesota. Just last week, more than 13 percent of voters in Michigan's Democratic primary voted uncommitted. Many of those voters are Arab Americans who wanted to send Joe Biden a message ...
Mar 05, 2024•11 min
Former President Donald Trump scored a legal victory today. The Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that the likely Republican nominee for President should be restored to the ballot in Colorado. The decision also says individual states cannot bar candidates for federal office under the insurrection clause. So: a legal victory, and also a political victory. As the clock ticks toward November 5th – Election day – it's increasingly looking like the many legal cases focused on former President Trump may tip ...
Mar 04, 2024•11 min
Chances are, this November 5th 2024 is going to feel a lot like November 3rd 2020 — a bit like Groundhog Day. After a decisive set of Republican primaries, it's increasingly clear President Joe Biden is likely to face off against a familiar foe: former President Donald Trump. A race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden isn't only a rematch, but a contest between two men who have already occupied the Oval office and been in the public eye for decades. This, despite the fact that several polls show ...
Mar 03, 2024•13 min
Are we alone in the universe? It's a question that's been posed again and again. Carl Sagan posed it in the 1970s as a NASA mission scientist as the agency prepared to send its twin Viking landers to Mars. And nearly 50 years after the first of two landers touched down on Mars, we're no closer to an answer as to whether there's life — out there. Scientists haven't stopped looking. In fact, they've expanded their gaze to places like Saturn's largest moon, Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa. The sear...
Mar 01, 2024•11 min
Here in the US, the average age of retirement is 61. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky passed that birthday more than 20 years ago. And on Wednesday afternoon, he announced that while he still isn't ready to retire just yet, he will no longer lead Republicans in the Senate. McConnell says he still has "enough gas" in the tank to thoroughly disappoint his critics. The soon-to-be former leader intends to serve out the rest of his term which continues through January 2027. McConnell's Congression...
Feb 29, 2024•10 min
Despite a last minute agreement to push a deadline for a shutdown, Congress and the White House have to agree on how to fund the government. So far, all they've been able to do is kick the can down the road. And conditions for making a political deal are only getting worse. Republicans can only lose two votes. And there's skepticism all around. Finding a way out largely depends on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana. But Johnson has a fractious caucus, is relatively inexpe...
Feb 29, 2024•10 min
The backlash to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling designating frozen embryos has been intense. Republicans at the state and national level have openly disagreed with the decision. And Democrats have used the ruling to hammer Republicans over reproductive rights. Last month, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth introduced a bill to protect IVF. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention - until now. Duckworth used IVF to build her own family, and has been warning since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wad...
Feb 27, 2024•13 min
Popular culture is filled with stories of the underground railroad - the legendary secret network that helped enslaved people escape from southern slave states to free states in the north. Harriet Tubman is the underground railroad's best known conductor. Tubman, who was a Union spy during the Civil War, escaped slavery in Maryland, but returned again and again, risking her own freedom to help free others, including members of her family. Inevitably there's much we don't know ...including how th...
Feb 26, 2024•10 min
In the last few years, a new trend has emerged on social media: de-influencing. Instead of selling, de-influencers encourage their followers to stop buying things they don't need. De-influencers are also using this trend as an opportunity to raise awareness about the negative impact of overconsumption on the environment. From plastic packaging to useless gadgets that end up in landfills, overconsumption doesn't just have a negative effect on our wallets, but also on our planet and climate change...
Feb 25, 2024•15 min
In Kansas City neighborhood organizations do the work of violence prevention one block, and one person at at time. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
Feb 23, 2024•11 min
Quote – "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." That statement, from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the U-S Embassy, came two days after Russian missiles began raining down on his country two years ago. After weeks of speculation and warnings Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared war. Fueled by grit, patriotism and billions of dollars from the US, Ukraine has waged a fight no one expected they could. But nearly two years in that could be changing. US aid is stuck i...
Feb 22, 2024•11 min
Keyser, West Virginia, was once known for coal. But the jobs have been disappearing. First because of automation, then cheap natural gas. And now, the urgency to address climate change is one more pressure on this energy source that contributes to global warming. Now the town, like so much of the country is attempting to transition to renewable energy. The country's first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, gave that transition a boost. It passed with the key vote of West...
Feb 21, 2024•14 min
Brian Mann covers the U-S opioid and fentanyl crisis for NPR. That means he talks to a lot of people struggling with addiction. Again and again, he's heard stories of people who have succumbed to their addiction — last year 112, 000 — more than ever in history. But when Mann traveled to Portugal to report on that country's model for dealing with the opioid crisis, he heard a very different story. Overdose deaths in Portugal are extremely rare. The country has taken a radically different approach...
Feb 20, 2024•11 min
Much of the world has spent the weekend mourning Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And asking why he chose to return to Russia, after he'd been poisoned, and when it was clear he was in danger. Filmmaker Daniel Roher, who interviewed Navalny for the Oscar-winning documentary "Navalny," says the Russian opposition leader was an incredibly optimistic and certain about himself and his mission. And that Navalny believed he could usher in a brighter future for Russia. So what happens to that ...
Feb 19, 2024•10 min
About two years ago, New Jersey's Democratic Governor Phil Murphy said that the state would be partnering with the Danish company Orsted, the largest developer of offshore wind projects in the world. The company had agreed to build Ocean Wind 1, the state's first offshore wind farm, powering half a million homes and creating thousands of jobs in the process. The following year, Orsted inked another deal with the state for Ocean Wind 2, a second offshore wind farm with similar capacity. After yea...
Feb 19, 2024•11 min
Rent has skyrocketed in the United States. That means Americans are handing over a bigger portion of their paycheck to their housing costs. They have less money for things like food, electricity, and commuting. The pandemic and inflation have both played a role in pushing rents higher. Whitney Airgood-Obrycki a Senior Research Associate at Harvard's Joint Center on Housing Studies says rents are actually going down, but that increases have been so large it's going to take time for the market to ...
Feb 16, 2024•12 min
For half a century, during the Cold War, every U-S president painted Russia as the dominant threat. America's ideological opposite, a hostile and nuclear-armed power. Ronald Reagan went so far as to call the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. So the events of recent days have been noteworthy. On top of a holdup of U-S aid for Ukraine, former President Trump said he might NOT come to the defense of a NATO ally who hadn't spent enough on defense. And Tucker Carlson, the erstwhile Fox news host, flew to ...
Feb 15, 2024•13 min
One single election does not a trend make. But does Democrat Tom Suozzi's victory in the special election for New York's 3rd Congressional District mean something bigger for democrats? The Congressman won his seat – which until recently had been held by disgraced Republican George Santos – by diving head on into an issue that democrats would usually rather avoid – immigration. Was that the opening chapter in a playbook Suozzi is writing, for fellow Democrats trying to find a way to deal with the...
Feb 14, 2024•8 min
On June 14, Donald Trump will turn 78 years old. Joe Biden turned 81 in November. Whether the candidates like it or not, age, mental acuity and physical fitness are issues dominating the 2024 election cycle. Though the two men were born fewer than four years apart, voters have consistently expressed more concern about Biden's age than Trump's. Is a double standard being applied when it comes to the presidential candidates and age? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This , sign up for Consider...
Feb 13, 2024•11 min
The question looming over the war between Israel and Hamas is what will happen what will happen to Rafah, the city in southern Gaza. More than half of Gaza's population has sought refuge there–an estimated one and a half million people. Israel says that in order to defeat Hamas, it needs to bring the war to Rafah. The Biden administration says a military operation in Rafah cannot proceed. Is this a hairline crack or the beginning of a rift between the U.S. and Israel that could reverberate acros...
Feb 12, 2024•9 min
Immigration is one of the main things Americans will be voting on in November. And many are currently unhappy with the situation at the US Southern Border, which is widely described as a crisis. As Donald Trump runs for another term, he's hoping to leverage that discontent just as he did in 2016. An across-the-board crackdown on immigration was one of the signature policies of the Trump presidency. In a second term, he's promising to go even further. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This , ...
Feb 11, 2024•12 min
