Two Americans moved to Eswatini when that country was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. With support from USAID, they built a clinic and started serving HIV+ patients.
When USAID suddenly stopped all foreign assistance without warning or a transition plan, it sent people all over the world scrambling. Especially those relying on daily medicine provided by USAID.
A scientist who is used to organizing data starts tracking scientific meetings that seem to exist only on paper—meetings that might decide the fate of years of research. The NIH website shows one reality; the empty conference rooms tell another story.
Producer Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Ranjani Srinivasan, who tells the story of how her life was transformed over five days via a series of events that started out confusing and escalated to frightening. (25 minutes)
Producer Laura Starecheski takes us inside one dramatic court hearing on the Trump administration’s executive order and new policy banning transgender people from serving in the military.
As President Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, producer Valerie Kipnis talks to Ukrainian soldiers on the front line who wonder about what his administration could mean for them. (14 minutes)
Producer Nancy Updike tells the story of the people of Venezuela trying to prove who won their recent presidential election beyond a shadow of a doubt. (22 minutes)
Host Ira Glass spent America’s presidential election in the swing state of Michigan, where he found very little dispute over the ballot count from Republican poll challengers in Detroit now that they are doing the counting themselves. (8 minutes)
Ira talks with Zoe Chace about watching Trump’s victory from an ecstatic room in Michigan. Then he checks in with a DC cop who was injured at the Capitol on January 6.
A politically divided couple searches for a news source they both can trust. (26 minutes)The original version of this story first appeared on Question Everything, a co-production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Zoe Chace and Ben Terris follow Abbas Alawieh as he fights to broker a deal at the DNC – a way to potentially satisfy the people who voted “Uncommitted” in the primaries as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the war in Israel and Gaza.
This summer, thousands of young people have taken to the streets in Nairobi to protest the Kenyan government. But behind those protestors are thousands of worried parents.