Since 1980 the average temperature of the Earth’s surface has been on an unprecedented climb, with the last decade seeing temperatures reading nearly a full degree Celsius higher than average year over year. Scientific research warns that a global rise of 2 degrees Celsius is a point of no return...

National proficiency exams in the United States indicate that only 26 percent of 8th graders were proficient in math in the 2022 academic year. In the same calendar year, 36 percent of 4th graders showed proficiency in mathematics. Evidence such as this suggest that as we age, we lose some of our...

Connected to China tells the stories of the people who have built cultural, educational and economic ties with China that have helped foster mutual exchange and diplomacy. People with connections to China can be found throughout the world. Among them is Madelyn Ross, one of the first American stu...

Every year, millions of garments are tossed into colorful recycling bins in developed nations, giving donors a warm sense of doing good. But that simple act sets off a chain reaction with far-reaching consequences—destroying local industries, fueling inequality, and wreaking havoc on the environm...

Across the spine of the Andes, life depends on ancient Polylepis forests that gather glacial melt and sustain the rivers below. “Yacumama: The Mother of All Rivers” follows Constantino Aucca as he leads a massive effort to restore these endangered forests, planting trees to safeguard the region’s...

Since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, Haiti has descended into chaos, as rival gangs armed and financed by powerful elites seize control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and extend their reach across the country. Block by block, these gangs have become a law unto themselves...

The U.S. leads the world in medical innovation, but millions struggle to access or afford care. About 8% of Americans are uninsured, and nearly half are underinsured—unable to pay high deductibles or out-of-pocket costs. The country spends almost 20% of its economy on healthcare, yet 97 million a...

n October 2022, a disgruntled former police officer walked into a nursery school in the remote northeast of Thailand and killed 23 children and two teachers, most of them shot point-blank with a pistol. The massacre left a total of 36 dead, ranking as the deadliest in Thai history and one of the ...

'Nurture' explores powerful stories of environmental and agricultural resilience in Latin America. In Mexico, women are pioneering sustainable mezcal production, preserving agave species while challenging industry norms. Peru’s Andean farmers, meanwhile, face severe droughts tied to climate chang...

Portland, Oregon, is an epicenter of the deepening opioid crisis in the United States, where a life is lost to drug use every eleven minutes. Fentanyl, a cheap and highly potent synthetic opioid up to fifty times stronger than heroin, has been responsible for the majority of overdose deaths. In 2...

Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed 20 million gallons of an herbicide known as Agent Orange over Vietnam. The purpose was to decimate the canopy of the native jungle and gain a military advantage over the Vietcong in the Vietnam War. After half a century, the consequences of this chemical wa...

Tiny Laos has the sad distinction of being the most bombed country in history because of an overt military intervention by the U.S. During the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos, more than twelve times the amount dropped on Japan in World ...

In Louisiana, a police chase ends with the death of an unarmed black man, Ronald Greene. In Mississippi, Rasheem Carter’s body is found in the woods one month after his disappearance under mysterious circumstances. Not far away from there, two men, also African American, are subjected to differen...

Microplastics, a global concern, are saturating our oceans. Over the past two decades, these tiny particles floating over the planet’s bodies of water have multiplied by several orders of magnitude. More than 14 million tons of plastics are estimated to be poured into our oceans yearly. Big Story...

Since declaring the War on Drugs fifty years ago, the US has spent billions in Colombia to fight cocaine. The result: more cocaine than ever before, and a black market that fuels corruption, and weakening states across most of Latin America. It also pushed Colombia into a decades-long armed confl...

Dozens of children in western Venezuela begin their daily journey to school before 5 a.m. But this is no ordinary school – it is located across the border in Colombia.
They live in the Guajira peninsula, facing the Caribbean Sea, a region shared by Colombia and Venezuela. The area is also home to...

Haiti is a broken state. Since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, street gangs armed with military grade weapons from the US have filled the power vacuum, taking control of 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and swathes of the countryside. Killing and kidnapping-for-r...

U.S. President Richard Nixon called his 1972 visit to China "the week that changed the world." But it was the secret trip taken by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger the year before that laid the foundation of the historic meeting that would see China and the United States begin to normalize bila...

In San Francisco, rampant crime, soaring costs and a broken government are driving residents into the streets -- or out of state. Big Story reports on the unraveling of America’s largest economy.

San Francisco: From the Gold Rush boom to the Silicon Valley era, California’s “city by the bay” h...

Coping With Long COVID tells the story of five patients suffering from ongoing conditions after initially being infected with the COVID-19 virus. Each has a particular set of symptoms and wide-range of continuing health problems. For the United States, the national emergency declared because of ...

Following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban, Afghanistan had less than 50 miles of paved roads in the entire country. A 2,000-mile national highway network connecting major cities had been pulverized by decades of war and neglect. Confident that it would become the backbone of a ...

Native Americans are the most vulnerable minority in the United States. This episode of the series The Race Gap in the U.S. takes us to South Dakota, homeland of the Lakota people, to examine why this came to be. It was in the Dakota Territories where the «progressive» experiment with the boardin...

At the turn of this century, Hispanics became the largest minority group in the United States. This milestone, however, hasn’t changed the way members of the community are being treated by authorities. Whether it’s migrants trying to cross the border in search of a better future, or just people g...

New York City has one of the most segregated school systems in the country. This episode of The Race Gap in the U.S. takes a deep dive into the intricacies of a system that has experienced many changes and still managed to stay the same, perpetuating in the process the stark racial inequities tha...