For The World

Musician Rhiannon Giddens is a modern-day Renaissance woman who trained as an opera singer before veering into folk music. She's an award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist. But she is first and foremost a dedicated banjo player who has been researching and teaching the instrument's African heritage. The World’s Carolyn Beeler speaks with Giddens about the origins of the banjo.

Scent is a powerful thing. In people, it’s connected to taste, memory, even cognitive health. For wildlife, smell can even dictate survival. But researchers are increasingly concerned about odor pollution, when the chemicals we add to the environment either overwhelm the existing smellscape with their own scent, or they change the existing scents at the molecular level. The World’s Host Marco Werman speaks with Stony Brook professor Jordanna Sprayberry about what this could mean for plants, pollinators and ecosystems.

The US Supreme Court birthright citizenship decision is not an isolated legal event. Increasingly, around the globe, countries are struggling to redefine who belongs within their borders, from anti-immigrant protests in South Africa to Spain’s decision to regularize large numbers of undocumented migrants. François Crépeau, a professor emeritus of public international law at McGill University in Montreal, speaks with The World’s Host Marco Werman about the political dynamics behind the different approaches.

Dozens of people have died, and hundreds have been displaced in flooding across West Africa. The World’s Marco Werman speaks with Vincent Ojeh, professor at Taraba State University in Nigeria, about how communities are adapting to what has become a cyclical event.

The strategic central Sudanese city of el-Obeid is now the focal point in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The three-year civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, has taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Nathaniel Raymond, of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, tells The World’s Marco Werman that the fight for the city is an “existential battle” for both sides.

Women in the village of Bayl say their families have been making rugs for at least centuries. But with growing access to cheap factory-made rugs in the post-Soviet era, not as many people in Kyrgyzstan are practicing the artform. Now that some artisans' patterns are finding their way onto clothing by big-name designers, though, some see a commercial future for traditional rug-making skills. Reporter Levi Bridges has the story.

From the Iran war to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, events this year have highlighted the way nations use the global energy trade as another weapon of war. To learn more, The World’s Marco Werman speaks with Edward Fishman, an expert on economic statecraft at The Council on Foreign Relations.

Paul Salopek is a National Geographic Explorer walking from Ethiopia to South America on foot. But it’s also a journalism job. That means conducting interviews, taking photos and videos, and nonstop note-taking and writing. He joins Carolyn Beeler to peel back the curtain on the technology that has kept him connected for the past 13 years, even when he is days of travel away from the nearest outlet or wi-fi signal.

One of the strongest storms recorded this year, Typhoon Bavi, is bearing down on China after sweeping through the Pacific. It’s brought on flooding

The death of a newlywed woman in Delhi last weekend is among a string of cases this year rekindling public discussion in India about dowry deaths. Thousands of women are reportedly killed in India every year in dowry-related disputes despite laws on the books intended to penalize this violence. The World’s Carolyn Beeler learns more from Kriti Kapila, an anthropologist at King’s College London, who has studied this phenomenon.