What’s the Point of Investigating Trump?

For nearly twenty years, Arwa Damon worked as a journalist covering conflict zones across the Middle East—much of it as a prominent correspondent for CNN. But in 2015, amid the unending horrors of the Syrian civil war, Damon had enough. She left the network and founded Inara, a charity that helps provide treatment to children facing some of the most difficult medical conditions. Her new role has allowed her access to people and places she wouldn’t have seen as a journalist, including fo...

24 Kesä 24min

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an award-winning Iraqi journalist for The Guardian and the author of A Stranger in Your Own City (2023), a reported memoir of his life as an architect turned journalist during the American war in Iraq. In this wide-ranging conversation, Abdul-Ahad shares his journey to becoming a reporter, what he was surprised to learn about his own country, and how he approaches depicting the intimate lives of the people caught up in war—from innocent bystanders to murderous warlords. T...

23 Kesä 43min

For more than thirty years, Phil Williams has been the steadying voice of investigative reporting at NewsChannel 5, in Nashville. His deep dives into toxic wastewater and lobbyist access to state politicians have earned him a slew of major journalism awards, including five Peabodys and five duPont-Columbia Awards. But in recent years, his most viral moments have been his unflappable encounters with extremists and neo-Nazis, who have popped up brazenly in communities around Nashville—that is, ...

29 Touko 30min

Last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the end of funding for NPR and PBS. It’s the latest attempt by conservatives to cut back on support for public media, and in particular target NPR, which they view as having a liberal bias. Katherine Maher, NPR’s CEO, says that perception is deeply unfair—and notes that the vast majority of the funding for public media goes to local stations, which are widely trusted across the political spectrum. But the battle to insulate NPR fro...

9 Touko 32min

A few years ago, El Salvador was one of the most violent nations in the world, with gang killings taking the lives of dozens of people every week. Nayib Bukele, elected president in 2019, changed all that—today, violence is way down. But his brute-force approach to the problem has involved mass arrests, secret deals, and forced disappearances into a harsh prison system—which is apparently the envy of many in the Trump administration. Filmmaker Neil Brandvold has covered much of El Salva...

24 Huhti 29min

Kai Ryssdal has been the host of Marketplace, a leading daily radio show and podcast about the economy, produced by American Public Media, since 2005. He delivers the news—from the bitter latest on our 401(k)s to unexpected interviews about the modern-day resurgence of train robberies—with an affable, direct tone. And when he has something he wants listeners to know—as he did all this week, while the policies of the Trump administration sent the stock market, and the global economy, int...

11 Huhti 24min

Prosecutors weren’t notified in advance, witnesses are in shock—and Watson’s family celebrates his freedom. On the day that Carlos Watson, the founder of the digital media company Ozy Media, was due to turn himself in to prison last week, to begin serving a nearly ten-year sentence for fraud and identity theft, he and his family received some unexpected good news: President Donald Trump was commuting his sentence. Susie Banikarim, who attended nearly every day of the trial last year, and coho...

4 Huhti 19min