PRI: Latest Stories

Composer Missy Mazzoli and author Karen Russell on the ghostly new opera “Proving Up.”

Some countries have instituted quotas to ensure some semblance of gender parity in government. But do quotas really work?

Hurricane Maria decimated many of Puerto Rico's small farms. But soon afterward, a group of mostly women farmers came together to start helping each other learn how to farm more sustainably.

More than 200 years ago, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire took a large part of the decorative marble sculptures and architecture off the outside of the Parthenon and brought them to London, where they now sit in the British Museum. For nearly 200 years, Greece has been asking for them back, to no avail.

Gibson Bagpipes in Nashua, New Hampshire, makes handcrafted bagpipes out of African blackwood. Two years ago, an international consortium that monitors endangered fauna and flora placed African blackwood on a “high risk” list. In order to continue to export their pipes, the company had to apply for a special permit.

For decades, RWE has been slowly razing the forest and surrounding towns to expand its adjacent coal mine, among Europe’s largest producers of lignite coal and greatest sources of carbon dioxide pollution. And earlier this fall, the company moved to start cutting a new section that protesters have been occupying.

In "La Morsure," or “The Bite,” Dewilde leans on the idea that the attack on the 2015 Bataclan in Paris was like a snake bite, “to poison me in my mind and in my heart in my body."

Humanitarian organizations fear the water crisis in Gaza is so acute, it may become uninhabitable by the year 2020.

Sea ice grows in the winter, when the Arctic is very cold and dark, and then dies back every summer, when the region gets pounded by nonstop sunlight. For all of human history, there's always been some Arctic sea ice that doesn’t melt in the summer. But there's much less of it now.

Nate Terani has committed to raising awareness about Muslims in the military: “It’s fundamentally important that either Muslims or immigrants from any other group don't feel that they are alienated or isolated right now because of the rhetoric that is coming from certain politicians."

There’s an assessment tool that promises to reveal more about your personality than you already know. Lots of us have used it. But is it accurate?

Tropical forests like El Yunque have evolved to recover from hurricanes. But if those storms grow more intense or frequent, forests may be less able to bounce back. And that could hurt communities that depend on the forest for water.

A New Hampshire man stumbled on an overlooked moment of history: The forgotten Evian conference where only one of 32 countries — the Dominican Republic — agreed to help settle German Jewish refugees. The doomed Evian Conference is viewed as a beginning act of the Holocaust.

The first wave of US troops arrived along the US-Mexico border recently, stringing razor wire atop existing border walls and fences. But people in Mexico and the US are worried about the message being sent.

The Oscar-winning writer and director on the genius of Elaine May and finding inspiration from real life.

How radio preachers and John Dean’s Watergate testimony found their way into a Talking Heads album.

The price we pay for the price we pay for art.

Women who have told their stories publically in Japan have been shamed. The face of #MeToo in Japan is a journalist named Shiori Ito, who says she was raped by an older journalist, the biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. She came forward publicly in May 2017.

For those who want to change how immigration works in the US, the midterm elections were a call to action.

Sessions is out after unrelenting criticism from President Donald Trump over his recusal from the investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential race.

The 116th Congress is set to look a lot different than any previous one.

Georgia's governor's race has been marked with intense rhetoric and accusations of voter suppression. We followed international election inspectors on the ground in Atlanta.

For years, the coal industry has lobbied to shut down the EPA's Office of Children's Health Protection and weaken emissions regulations for coal-fired power plants. They might have just scored a twofer.

In addition to sparking public violence, political divisions have cut deeply into the private lives of Brazilian families. One week after Brazil voted in the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as their next president, reporter Catherine Osborn met up with a 35-year-old banker from Rio de Janeiro named Raquel to speak about how the election had affected her relationships.

Jollibee trades in Pinoy pride and nostalgia. Can it also capture the curiosity — and taste buds — of non-Filipino Americans?

With midterm elections underway, there’s an international spotlight on a few key races that seem to exemplify divisions between Americans, and across the world. One of those races is for governor of Georgia. There’s a lot the world can learn from the city where Martin Luther King Jr. was born.

After centuries on the margins, the Indigenous Sámi of the Arctic regions of Scandinavia are starting to reassert their cultural identity. And they say the world can't solve the climate crisis without perspectives like theirs.

Hurricane Michael intensified from Category 1 to Category 4 in just 24 hours. Furious winds and an 8- to 12-foot storm surge were fueled by warming sea surface temperatures.

The midterm elections are just four days away. We hear from a variety of listeners who are new US citizens and who will be voting for the first time during these midterm elections.

US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has set a countdown to peace talks in Yemen. But Yemen watchers say negotiations, if they happen, will only begin to address the problems brought on by war.

In Florida, a surge of toxic red and green algae blooms has fueled frustration with Republican Governor Rick Scott.

Sometimes fate gets in the way when you’re trying to finish a creative project.

What exactly is going on inside our brains when we’re being creative? We ask a neuroscientist.

The jazz composer and songwriter lets us inside her writing process.

Morgan Neville’s new documentary “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” examines why Orson Welles’ final film remained unfinished ... until now.

Congressional candidate Ilhan Omar is poised to become the first Somali American woman to hold national office.

A photo exhibit with the portraits of some 70 Holocaust survivors have been on display at the Boston Common for two weeks, but have become especially relevant in the wake of the deadly synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh.

In his new book, "Every Day Is Extra," former secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry writes about his formative childhood years, his legislative and diplomatic work on climate change, and more.

Klaus Voormann first met The Beatles when they were a bunch of unknowns playing in Hamburg, Germany. Post-Beatles Voormann played bass with John Lennon and George Harrison. Now, Klaus has an art exhibit in Los Angeles that will include art designs through the years, including the cover art he did for The Beatles 1966 album, "Revolver."

In a new book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer talks about how his story of being undocumented was 'too complicated' for activists.

The world of fado, with its rules and deep traditions, was considered off-limits, until now.

"I always protect the basic rights of freedom of speech and human rights. I don't see that only as a Chinese problem, it’s a universal problem," says the Chinese artist.

Just how quickly will billions of tons of carbon locked up in the Arctic's melting permafrost be released into the atmosphere? Scientists in the Arctic say finding out could be a matter of survival.

Climate change is spurring the hemlock wooly adelgid, an invasive insect, to move further north, and it’s bringing down many hemlock trees.

Jair Bolsonaro's rise from fringe candidate to Brazil’s next president has, of course, been likened to Trump’s rise from reality TV star to the White House. But Bolsonaro makes Trump look like Mr. Rogers.

There are municipal elections in Jerusalem at the end of the month. One man hopes to be the first Palestinian voted onto the city council. To win, he’ll need Palestinians to break a five-decade boycott against voting in Israeli city elections.

Eleven years after arriving in New Hampshire, Safiya Wazir — a former refugee from Afghanistan — is showing other new Americans they can run for office, too.

A Japanese "cop reality show" chasing foreigners who have overstayed their visas is not a welcome sign for the 500,000 new foreign workers who will arrive to help ease a chronic labor shortage.

Only 40 percent of nurses trained abroad pass the US licensing exam the first time. But educators say it’s not because they aren’t qualified.

What would a fragrance based on Toni Morrison’s book “Beloved” smell like?