Twenty years ago today came word of the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. Journalist John Hockenberry recalls the events surrounding the death and funeral of the Ayatollah. Hockenberry was one of many American reporters covering the story from Tehran. Listen
Twenty years ago today, Chinese troops cleared Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people were killed in and around the square. Chinese students had been calling for democracy and free speech. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing on an ongoing legal dispute over a documentary about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown called “The Gate [...]
The BBC’s Chinese Service asked people to share some of their thoughts and recollections about China’s Tiananmen crackdown 20 years ago today. Anchor Lisa Mullins introduces us to two of them. Listen
This week: a four-part series on how the economic downturn is affecting immigrants in California. So, take a quick economic tour of life in the Golden State these days. We talk to Mexican farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley, Asian health care workers in Los Angeles, and nannies in Hollywood. Listen to the Global Economy Podcast
Jason Margolis assumes command of the podcast this week. We take you north to Canada to hear about an effort to “green” a million wartime-era homes. Then, we offer a global assessment of the new fuel efficiency standards announced by the Obama Administration. Listen
The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Many Chinese remember the event vividly, but it’s a day the Chinese government would rather forget. Listen
This week, the language of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Also, more from an American in Paris and her attempts to teach English there. And Spaniards are divided over which song captures the nation’s spirit. Listen
Revisit the events of 20 years ago with James Miles. He was the BBC’s China correspondent back then. He’s put together a documentary that weaves archival tape with present-day interviews. The audio brings back the intensity of the protests and the shock of the subsequent crackdown, and the contemporary reporting puts it in historical perspective. Listen
This week, putting wind power to work in the Antarctic. Also, an online movement is created after an Iranian blogger dies in prison. Then, take a break from tech with Sherlock Holmes, and a new graphic novel about a French photographer’s journey into war-torn Afghanistan. Listen
The World’s Clark Boyd introduces us to a graphic novel about a Doctors Without Borders mission into the war-torn Afghanistan of the 1980′s. Listen
This week, MIT’s SixthSense human-computer interface aims to the web, well, wherever you want it. Also, the European Union puts some financial hurt on chip-maker Intel. Persian bloggers weigh in on the release of journalist Roxana Saberi. And Google Oceans goes deep. Listen
On this week’s Global Economy Podcast, we go digging for precious gems in Afghanistan. Could emeralds and rubies spell sustainability and success for Afghanistan’s economy? Also, we hear how one Mexican restaurateur dealt with the swine flu outbreak, and how many Mexicans are dealing with a credit card crunch. Finally, we compare US health care costs with those in other countries. Listen
This week, the impact of swine flu on the Mexican and Egyptian economies. Also, one Chinese county toys with the idea of paying workers to smoke, and then quickly abandons it when there is international outrage. Fiat’s CEO Sergio Marchionne, and Ireland’s struggling horse-breeding industry. Listen
This week, we get positively bookish. We’ll hear the latest on with Google’s Book Search project, which wants to, well, scan and make available just about every book on the planet. But Google’s not the only dog in that hunt. UNESCO has launched what it calls the World Digital Library, and it’s got a lot more than just books. Then, we take an in-depth look at all manner of e-books and e-readers. Is paper doomed? Also, we hear about a piece of internet filtering circumvention technology called Psiphon. And Yahoo puts webcams on some purple bikes and lets them loose in the world. Listen
In this week’s Global Economy Podcast, it’s all about swine flu. We look at how a swine flu pandemic might affect the global economy, and how the global recession might affect our flu preparedness. Listen
