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National

- 'Bomb cyclone' forecasted to bring heavy snow, blizzard conditions and dangerous travel: 2025 Dec 28

- Jeffrey R. Holland, next in line to lead Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dies at 85: 2025 Dec 28

- Winter storm brings heavy snow and ice to busy holiday travel weekend: 2025 Dec 27

- Disability rights advocate Bob Kafka dead at 79: 2025 Dec 27

- Is being in Congress still a good gig?: 2025 Dec 27

- Judge to hold hearing on whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being vindictively prosecuted: 2025 Dec 27

NATIONAL | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 3:28 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Bomb cyclone' forecasted to bring heavy snow, blizzard conditions and dangerous travel

By Kristin Wright

An intense cyclone system is fueling a mix of severe weather, including a winter storm that will impact upper parts of the United States.

Heavy snow, blizzards, extreme cold and damaging winds are likely to create hazardous conditions stretching from Montana east to Maine, and Texas north to Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

More than eight million people were under winter storm warnings from the NWS on Sunday afternoon. Nearly two million people were under blizzard warnings. Meteorologists warn that after winter weather Friday and Saturday, an arctic front clashing with warm air could rapidly intensify into a 'bomb cyclone' over the Midwest and Great Lakes through Monday. A 'bomb cyclone' or bombogenesis is a rapidly deepening area of low pressure that creates harsh weather conditions.

"We are anticipating some pretty big snows over the next 24 hours, especially across east central Minnesota to northern Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A lot of those places will have 6-12 inches," NWS Lead Forecaster Bob Oravec told NPR on Sunday.

Blizzard conditions will cause near zero visibility and possible power outages Sunday night though Monday evening in some locations in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, according to the NWS Marquette. A foot of snow or more is possible in areas along Lake Superior with 40 to 65 mile per hour winds, according to forecasts.

Marquette Mayor Paul Schloegel told NPR on Sunday the Marquette Board of Light & Power is prepared to handle any loss of electricity. He said in an email the main priority is keeping people safe.

"We tend to heed the advice of our weather forecasters and prepare to hunker down as needed," Schloegel wrote. "As far as taking care of the snow, our extremely dedicated public works and MDOT crews do a great job taking care of our residents, they are true professionals. Roads are usually back to normal within 24 [hours]."

Schloegel said Marquette residents appreciate a good blizzard while taking precautions.

"We choose to live here for our love of [four] full seasons and appreciate the effect the greatest lake, Lake Superior, has on our climate," he said.

Minnesota is also bracing for major impacts. Blizzard and winter storm warnings and advisories are in place for most of the state. As much as 10 inches of snow could fall in the Twin Cities and potentially life-threatening travel conditions are likely through early Monday morning, according to the NWS.

The 'bomb cyclone' is also sending cold temperatures below freezing.

Residents of Havre, Mont., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, could feel wind chill values as low as 15 degrees below zero late Sunday. The actual temperature is forecast to fall to 2 degrees below zero.

Farther south in Dallas, Texas, temperatures are expected to drop dramatically from the 80s on Sunday to highs in the 40s on Monday, according to the NWS.

In the Northeast, freezing rain could cause travel problems, including icing in northern New England and northern New York state, late Sunday into Monday, according to Oravec.

When colder air moves into New York City early this week, remaining snow on the ground from the weekend storm will freeze and create further hazardous travel conditions, Oravec said.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659746

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NATIONAL | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 7:22 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Jeffrey R. Holland, next in line to lead Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dies at 85

By The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — Jeffrey R. Holland, a high-ranking official in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was next in line to become the faith's president, has died. He was 85.

Holland died early Saturday morning from complications associated with kidney disease, the church announced on its website.

Holland, who died in Salt Lake City, led a governing body called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which helps set church policy while overseeing the many business interests of what is known widely as the Mormon church.

He was the longest-tenured member of the Quorum of the Twelve after President Dallin H. Oaks, making him next in line to lead the church under a long-established succession plan. Oaks, 93, became president of the church and its more than 17 million-strong global membership in October.

Henry B. Eyring, who is 92 and one of Oaks' two top counselors, is now next in line for the presidency.

Holland had been hospitalized during the Christmas holiday for ongoing health complications, the church said. Experts on the faith pointed to his declining health in October when Oaks did not select Holland as a counselor.

His death leaves a vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve that Oaks will fill in coming months, likely by calling a new apostle from a lower-tier leadership council. Apostles are all men in accordance with the church's all-male priesthood.

Holland grew up in St. George, Utah, and worked for many years in education administration before his call to join the ranks of church leadership. He served as the ninth president of Brigham Young University, the Utah-based faith's flagship school, from 1980 to 1989 and was a commissioner of the church's global education system.

Under his leadership, the Provo university worked to improve interfaith relations and established a satellite campus in Jerusalem. The Anti-Defamation League later honored Holland with its "Torch of Liberty" award for helping foster greater understanding between Christian and Jewish communities.

Oaks, also a former BYU president, reflected Saturday on his more than 50 years of friendship and service with Holland, calling their relationship "long and loving."

"Over the last three decades as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he lifted the weary, encouraged the faithful and bore a powerful witness of the Savior — even through seasons of significant personal trials," Oaks said.

Holland was known as a dynamic orator whose sermons combined scholarship with tenderness. In 2013 he spoke to church members about supporting loved ones with depression and other mental illnesses, sharing openly about times when he felt "like a broken vessel."

Holland is widely remembered for a 2021 speech in which he called on church members to take up metaphorical muskets in defense of the faith's teachings against same-sex marriage. The talk, known colloquially as "the musket fire speech," became required reading for BYU freshmen in 2024, raising concern among LGBTQ+ students and advocates.

Holland was preceded in death by his wife, Patricia Terry Holland. He is survived by their three children, 13 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659302

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WEATHER | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 6:13 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Winter storm brings heavy snow and ice to busy holiday travel weekend

By Kristin Wright

A powerful winter storm is bringing extreme weather to the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast this weekend.

The National Weather Service (NWS) says the system will intensify over the next few days and conditions are expected through Tuesday.

"Arctic air will descend into the Plains beginning Sunday followed by a potent winter storm across the upper Midwest to the Great Lakes Sunday night to Monday," according to a bulletin from the NWS posted on Saturday.

Heavy snow and whiteout conditions are forecasted across parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, causing "treacherous travel," the NWS said. More than a foot of snow could fall along Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Western New York and Northwest Pennsylvania are expected to receive lake-effect snow.

The storm has slammed the Northeast, dumping up to nearly 8 inches of snow on New York City and surrounding areas between Friday and Saturday. The weather snarled traffic along the I-95 corridor and disrupted air travel. Flight tracker, Flightaware.com, showed more than 1,000 delays across U.S. airports on Saturday evening. Nearly 1,000 flights were cancelled into, out of and within the U.S. as of Saturday evening.

The NWS is also warning of dangerous ice across parts of the Northeast, including ice accumulation of up to a quarter of an inch in eastern New York, parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Bitter wind chills as low as -35 degrees are expected in parts of North Dakota and up to -25 degrees in northern Minnesota.

Meanwhile, it will feel more like spring across parts of the South and into the Tennessee Valley, where temperatures could reach highs in the 70s for this time of year, according to forecasters.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103821

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OBITUARIES | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 5:23 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Disability rights advocate Bob Kafka dead at 79

By Alana Wise

Bob Kafka, a renowned disability rights advocate, died at his Austin, Texas, home on Friday. He was 79 years old.

Kafka was an organizer with ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), a group which advocates for policy change to support people with disabilities.

Mark Johnson, co-founder of ADAPT and a longtime friend of Kafka who confirmed his death, told NPR Kafka's advocacy was as much about changing laws as it was changing lives.

"Maybe it was helping somebody tie their shoes and the next moment, maybe it was helping feed them, or maybe it was raising money through the fun run, or maybe it was negotiating with federal officials," said Johnson.

Kafka was born in New York City, but spent most of his life in Texas. He was an Army veteran and fought in the Vietnam War.

Since being paralyzed from a 1973 car accident, Kafka, alongside his wife, Stephanie Thomas, prioritized seeking dignity for those with disabilities and helping others adjust to their new lives. Kafka could be seen at disability rights protests sporting a halo of white curls and an unruly beard.

"Very, very rarely do you find people that can, can do what needs to be done and not go around boasting about it," said Johnson.

He also recalled the selfless nature of the community Kafka fostered, including how Thomas' first instinct was to ask how he was feeling about losing a friend.

"I'm going, 'Wait a minute, I'm calling you to ask you how you are,'" Johnson said.

Johnson remembered Kafka as a policy wonk who was as interested in the mechanics of federal bureaucracy as grassroots organizing. He said he hopes his friend will be honored for his work to influence change at all levels.

"If you mention disability to an average crowd, it's gonna, think of something negative. Bob and others may help people make that shift," Johnson said.

"They say claiming your identity – your full identity – can be very powerful, very liberating. And I think Bob was one of those people that's been doing that for 50 years."

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103819

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NATIONAL | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 5:01 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Is being in Congress still a good gig?

By Barbara Sprunt, Tamara Keith

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

TAMARA KEITH, HOST:

Congress has left the building. Lawmakers are home for the holidays with the memory of the longest ever government shutdown still fresh. This Congress is earning a reputation as the least productive in modern history, and a record number of lawmakers are announcing they plan to retire rather than run for reelection in the upcoming midterms. NPR's Barbara Sprunt has been talking to former members of the House who say, all of this is a long time coming, and she joins me now. Hey, Barbara.

BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: Hi, Tam.

KEITH: So you talked to a dozen former members from both sides of the aisle. They're now on the outside looking in. So what do they make of the way Congress has changed?

SPRUNT: Well, many said that they see Congress these days as abdicating its constitutional authorities to the White House. Here's how Charlie Dent put it. He's a Republican who represented Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2018.

CHARLIE DENT: I'm really most concerned about the erosion of its power of the purse authorities, as we've witnessed through tariffs and through unilateral executive decisions to cancel funding and departments and agencies. And I think that's the greatest threat to Congress as an institution that I've seen.

SPRUNT: But Dent and others say that even though there's concerns specific to this year under this administration, a lot of the challenges in Congress have been brewing for quite some time - you know, things like rising political violence, a toxic partisan environment and just feeling like they can't get anything done.

KEITH: Yeah, and like you said, political violence is sadly not new. I'm thinking about when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011. And then in 2017, Congressman Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball practice. How much was that a factor for people who you talked to?

SPRUNT: Threats of violence were top of mind for nearly every person that I talked to...

KEITH: Really?

SPRUNT: ...Including some of the people who served in the House during the times that you mentioned. And they said, that's when they started to make some adjustments to their own security - you know, adding safe rooms and planning out escape routes from their...

KEITH: Yeah.

SPRUNT: ...District offices.

KEITH: Wow.

SPRUNT: Yeah. What stood out to me is that a lot of people said that the threat level, even since then, has just skyrocketed. The Capitol Police is working through about 14,000 threats against members this year alone. And Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois, described how much things changed for her when she was first elected in 2012 to then when she left in 2023.

CHERI BUSTOS: So the first office I opened was in a secure building where you had to have a code to get in. And I viewed it at the time as obstacles to reach our staff or to reach me. And so I made a decision to get out of that building because I wanted to be very accessible with no security. Well, fast forward toward the end of my career in Congress, the staff didn't feel safe. We had to install these little buttons that would go to the local police department in case somebody was there and was threatening.

KEITH: Wow, that is a big change.

SPRUNT: It is. And, you know, the impact is not on members alone. You know, they say that the threats take a toll on their families, on their staff, you know, the people who are at these district offices. And they worry whether this could prevent people from running for Congress in the future.

KEITH: You talked about polarization, too, but that also seems to be standard these days.

SPRUNT: You know, members said that they thought it was toxic when they first got to Capitol Hill, and then now they're questioning, wait, were those actually the good old days? You know, they said, over time, it's just gotten so much worse. I talked to California Democrat Anna Eshoo about this. She was elected in 1992 and retired this year.

ANNA ESHOO: I got to the point in Congress where I wanted to have a conversation with a Republican colleague that I didn't know at all. When I approached them, I want you to know that I don't view you as my enemy. I mean, isn't that something, that I felt like I needed to say that?

KEITH: But Congress is, in many ways, a reflection of the country, and the country is really polarized. I remember I used to hear from lawmakers that they got a lot done because they got to know each other on a personal level, playing softball or baseball or over dinners. Is that still true?

SPRUNT: Not as much. It has been decades since the norm was to live in D.C. with your family, and the workweek is short. You know, it's usually 3 1/2 days for the House, and then people are hopping back on planes to fly back home. Here's how Fred Upton put it. He's a Republican from Michigan, and he served from '87 to 2023.

FRED UPTON: You don't have as much time where you can socialize and build some of those friendships that are important. Particularly when your word is your bond, trust is important. So what are you doing? I mean, how's your family? I mean, you miss that, and proof's in the pudding in terms of what we see today.

KEITH: So what else is getting in the way of Congress being a good workplace?

SPRUNT: Well, you know, a common theme that former members told me was not feeling involved in the legislative process itself. There has been this centralization of power in party leadership over time, which weakens committees, which traditionally have served as the places where legislation on very specific issues is written and debated. And because of Senate rules and budget processes, there's a lot of trying to cram through an agenda in one big piece of legislation, which members say just is not satisfying.

KEITH: So a record number of lawmakers, over 40 in the House, have said they won't run for reelection, and that number is growing. Is Congress just not a good gig anymore?

SPRUNT: You know, I think it is a combination of all of these things - that this is a job that requires you to be away from home, that comes with a lot of public scrutiny and threats. And if you feel like you can't get anything done, then that all is a recipe for frustration, right? But I think the sentiment that I heard from Patrick Mchenry who was once in Republican leadership in the House was interesting.

PATRICK MCHENRY: You're there to improve the institution, to make it work in the environment that you're in. Politics is the art of the possible. And in each generation, it's different - new challenges, new set of circumstances - and you have to evolve with those changing politics.

SPRUNT: And I asked everyone, you know, if someone that you like came to you and said, I want to run for Congress, what would you say? And, you know, there was a lot of, be forewarned about these challenges, but no one flat out said, absolutely don't run. So, you know, that's got to count for something.

KEITH: That's NPR's Barbara Sprunt. Thanks for being with us.

SPRUNT: Thank you, Tam.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5648346

NATIONAL | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 2:57 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Judge to hold hearing on whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being vindictively prosecuted

By The Associated Press

A federal judge this week canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against him.

Abrego Garcia has become a centerpiece of the debate over immigration after the Trump administration deported him in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia has denied the allegations, and argued that prosecutors are vindictively and selectively targeting him. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. wrote in Tuesday's order that Abrego Garcia had enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.

At that hearing, prosecutors will have to explain their reasoning for charging Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw wrote, and if they fail in that, the charges could be dismissed.

When Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, there were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

A Department of Homeland Security agent previously testified that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration had to work to bring Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was deported.

Years earlier, Abrego Garcia had been granted protection from deportation to his home country after a judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. That order allowed Abrego Garcia, who has an American wife and child, to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.

Members of President Donald Trump's administration have accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but he has vehemently denied the accusations and has no criminal record.

Abrego Garcia's defense attorney and the U.S. attorney's office in Nashville did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103790

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ASIA | MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025 • 1:56 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Chinese military stages drills around Taiwan to warn 'external forces'

By The Associated Press

HONG KONG — China's military on Monday dispatched air, navy and rocket troops to conduct joint military drills around the island of Taiwan, a move Beijing called a "stern warning" against separatist and "external interference" forces. Taiwan said it was placing its forces on alert and called the Chinese government "the biggest destroyer of peace."

The drills came after Beijing expressed anger at U.S. arms sales to the territory and a statement by Japan's prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, saying its military could get involved if China were to take action against Taiwan, the self-governing island that the world's second-biggest economy says must come under its rule. But the Chinese military did not mention the United States and Japan in its statement on Monday morning.

Taiwan's Defense Ministry said in a post on X that rapid response exercises were underway, with forces on high alert to defend the island. In a separate statement, it said it had deployed appropriate forces in response, conducting combat readiness drills.

"The Chinese Communist Party's targeted military exercises further confirm its nature as an aggressor and the biggest destroyer of peace," the ministry said.

Senior Col. Shi Yi, spokesperson of China's People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command, said the drills would be conducted in the Taiwan Strait and areas to the north, southwest, southeast and east of the island.

Shi said the activities will focus on sea-air combat readiness patrol, "joint seizure of comprehensive superiority" and blockades on key ports. It was also the first large-scale military drill where the command publicly mentioned one of the goals was "all-dimensional deterrence outside the island chain."

"It is a stern warning against 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces and external interference forces, and it is a legitimate and necessary action to safeguard China's sovereignty and national unity," Shi said.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since 1949, when a civil war brought the Communist Party to power in Beijing. Defeated Nationalist Party forces fled to Taiwan. The island has operated since then with its own government, though the mainland's government claims it as sovereign territory.

Live firing exercises scheduled for Tuesday

The command said it was using fighters, bombers and unmanned aerial vehicles in coordination with long-range rocket launches to conduct drills in the sea and airspace in the middle areas of the Taiwan Strait on Monday, focusing on striking mobile ground targets. They are intended to test the troops' capabilities of precision strikes on key targets, it said.

It also said major military drills were scheduled to happen between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Tuesday, saying it would organize live firing activities then, and its exercises would cover five areas around the island.

The command released themed posters about the drills online accompanied by provocative wording. One poster depicted two shields with the Great Wall alongside three military aircraft and two ships. Its social media post said the drills were about the "Shield of Justice, Smashing Illusion," adding that any foreign interlopers or separatists touching the shields would be eliminated.

Last week, Beijing imposed sanctions against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion. If approved by the U.S. Congress, it would be the largest-ever American weapons package to the self-ruled territory.

Under U.S. federal law in place for many years, Washington is obligated to assist Taipei with its defense, a point that has become increasingly contentious with China. The U.S. and Taiwan had formal diplomatic relations until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter's administration recognized and established relations with Beijing.

Taiwanese army on high alert

Monday's drills heightened tensions on both sides. Karen Kuo, spokesperson for the Taiwanese president's office, said the operation was undermining the stability and security of the Taiwan Strait and Indo-Pacific region and openly challenging international law and order.

"Our country strongly condemns the Chinese authorities for disregarding international norms and using military intimidation to threaten neighboring countries." she said.

Beijing sends warplanes and navy vessels toward the island on a near-daily basis, and in recent years it has stepped up the scope and scale of these exercises. In October, the Taiwanese government said it would accelerate the building of a "Taiwan Shield" or "T-Dome" air defense system in the face of the military threat from China.

The military tensions came a day after Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an said he hoped the Taiwan Strait would be associated with peace and prosperity, instead of "crashing waves and howling winds," during a trip to Shanghai.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103877

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WORLD | MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025 • 1:37 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Trump and Netanyahu to meet in Florida at a crucial moment for the Gaza ceasefire

By The Associated Press

PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, as Washington looks to create fresh momentum for a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza that could be in danger of stalling out before a complicated second phase.

Trump could use the face-to-face at his Mar-a-Lago estate to try to leverage his strong relationship with Netanyahu and look for ways to speed up the peace process, especially as Israel's leader has been accused of not pushing his side to move fast enough.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that Trump has championed has mostly held, but progress has slowed recently. Both sides accuse one another of violations, and divisions have emerged among the U.S., Israel and Arab countries about the path forward.

The truce's first phase began in October, days after the two-year anniversary of the initial Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people. All but one of the 251 hostages taken then have been released, alive or dead.

Now comes the next, far more complicated part. Trump's 20-point plan — which was approved by the U.N. Security Council — lays out an ambitious vision for ending Hamas' rule of Gaza.

The two leaders also could discuss non-Gaza topics, including Iran, whose nuclear capabilities Trump continues to insist were "completely and fully obliterated" following U.S. strikes on its nuclear sites in June.

There are many key facets of the ceasefire's second phase that Israel's leader doesn't support or has even openly opposed, said Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This is going to be a really tall order, I think, for President Trump to get Netanyahu to agree," she said.

"How he does that, what kind of pressure he puts on Netanyahu, I think, is going to be important to watch for," said Yacoubian, who also said the two could exhibit "a broader clash of approaches to the region."

Next phase is complex

If successful, the second phase would see the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision by a group chaired by Trump and known as the Board of Peace. The Palestinians would form a "technocratic, apolitical" committee to run daily affairs in Gaza, under Board of Peace supervision.

It further calls for normalized relations between Israel and the Arab world, and a possible pathway to Palestinian independence. Then there are thorny logistical and humanitarian questions, including rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza, disarming Hamas and creating a security apparatus called the International Stabilization Force.

The Board of Peace would oversee Gaza's reconstruction under a two-year, renewable U.N. mandate. Its members had been expected to be named by the end of the year and might even be revealed following Monday's meeting, but the announcement could be pushed into next month.

Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House in his second term, but this will be their first in-person meeting since Trump went to Israel in October to mark the start of the ceasefire's initial phase. Netanyahu has been to Mar-a-Lago before, including in July 2024 when Trump was still seeking reelection.

Much remains unsettled

Their latest meeting comes after U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son in law, Jared Kushner, recently huddled in Florida with officials from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, which have been mediating the ceasefire.

Two main challenges have complicated moving to the second phase, according to an official who was briefed on those meetings. Israeli officials have been taking a lot of time to vet and approve members of the Palestinian technocratic committee from a list given to them by the mediators, and Israel continues its military strikes.

Trump's plan also calls for the International Stabilization Force, proposed as a multinational body, to maintain security. But it, too, has yet to be formed. Whether details will be forthcoming after Monday's meeting is unclear.

A Western diplomat said there is a "huge gulf" between the U.S.-Israeli understanding of the International Stabilization Force's mandate and that of other major countries in the region, as well as European governments.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that haven't been made public.

The U.S. and Israel want the force to have a "commanding role" in security duties, including disarming Hamas and other militant groups. But countries being courted to contribute troops fear that mandate will make it an "occupation force," the diplomat said.

Hamas has said it is ready to discuss "freezing or storing" its arsenal of weapons, but insists it has a right to armed resistance as long as Israel occupies Palestinian territory. One U.S. official said a potential plan might be to offer cash incentives in exchange for weapons, echoing a "buy-back" program Witkoff has previously floated.

Questions about Gaza reconstruction

Israeli bombardment and ground operations have transformed neighborhoods in several Gaza cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching in all directions.

Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are pressing for a negotiated deal on disarming Hamas, and on an additional Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before moving to next elements of the plan. Those include deployment of the international security force and reconstruction, three Arab officials told The Associated Press.

That appears to run against ideas floated by U.S. officials to quickly start building temporary housing for Palestinians in parts of southern Gaza still controlled by Israeli troops. Three officials said the United Arab Emirates has agreed to fund reconstruction in Gaza, including new communities, although they said discussions are ongoing and plans remain unsettled.

A proposed map created by the U.S. and obtained by the AP shows an area labelled "UAE Temporary Emirates housing complex" inside an Israeli-controlled area of Gaza. The map shows a "U.S. planned community area" surrounding the UAE area.

An Arab official said he was aware of the map, but said it was a suggestion from the U.S. and Israel that was put to the Emiratis and other countries.

The UAE did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether it has agreed to the plans or to fund the communities. It is not known if the money would be contingent on gestures from Israel and Hamas, such as a commitment to Palestinian statehood or disarmament.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103875

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WORLD | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 5:26 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Do Trump's claims about Christian persecution in Nigeria match reality?

By Tamara Keith, Ahmad Damen, Daniel Ofman

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

TAMARA KEITH, HOST:

On Christmas Day, the U.S. launched what President Trump called a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS. The attack targeted region in northern Nigeria where President Trump said that ISIS has been, quote, "viciously killing primarily innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years." Joining us now is Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also directs the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map Project. Welcome to the program.

AARON ZELIN: Thanks for having me.

KEITH: Let's zero in on this region in northwest Nigeria where the U.S. strikes took place. Does ISIS, in fact, control that area, or is it primarily other groups?

ZELIN: As far as we know, the Islamic State does not control any territory in northwest Nigeria. It's more of a transient area between that area of the country and other conflicts in neighboring countries like Niger and Mali. On the other hand, in northeast Nigeria, the Islamic State does control territory there.

KEITH: I want to go to another aspect of this story. President Trump first directed attention to Nigeria back in November with a video posted on social media.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands and thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.

KEITH: So I do want to ask you about that narrative that Christians are the main targets. Is that an accurate description of what's happening on the ground in Nigeria?

ZELIN: There's definitely some attacks by the Islamic State against Christians, but they also are attacking Muslims, as well, that don't believe in their extremist world view. Plus, much of the Christian population in Nigeria is more in the central and southern parts of the country than instead of the north, whereas the north is majority Muslim. And so, while it is true that the Islamic State has targeted Christians, people talking about a genocide from a legal definition standpoint, it doesn't hold up.

KEITH: So is the focus then on Christianity more about domestic politics here in the U.S.? It certainly has elevated what's happening in Nigeria to the point where Nicki Minaj was talking about it recently.

ZELIN: Yeah, there's definitely a component of this related to domestic politics than it being specific to Nigeria. Of course, we shouldn't underestimate the fact that the Islamic State has targeted Christians, but they've also targeted Muslims, too. But we've seen this, broadly speaking, related to other issues, not just in Nigeria, as well, where people have worried about the fate of Christians in other countries, too, such as Syria - has become a huge, you know, domestic political debate, as well.

KEITH: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that these strikes were done with support and cooperation from Nigeria, and he said that there would be more to come. What does the Nigerian government gain from cooperating with the U.S. on this?

ZELIN: For the Nigerian government, this could be access to more weapons from the U.S., as well as aid from the U.S. related to the military fight against the Islamic State, as well as, you know, from a domestic perspective, other enemies that they might have that they might want to go after. We've seen this in many other contexts in other countries. And it's important to remember that the issue of the Islamic State is not just in Nigeria, but it's this cross-border issue in West Africa and the Sahel in general. And many of the surrounding countries of Nigeria are actually allied with Russia now, fighting against the Islamic State as well as al-Qaida. And so there isn't cross-border coordination so much at this point.

KEITH: How does this fit in with the Trump administration's foreign policy doctrine or approach? And how does this compare with how past presidents have approached this region?

ZELIN: In the past, much of what the U.S. did was supporting the local governments in the fight instead of directly doing it themselves. In many ways, it highlights how for the Trump administration, not only with this but all of the so-called peace agreements that he's done since the beginning of the year, that they're very flashy but the question is always about follow-up and whether there's long-term sustainability to these policies.

KEITH: What are you watching for next year?

ZELIN: I mean, going into 2026, one of the trends we've seen with the Islamic State in particular is that it's continued to get stronger and stronger in parts of Africa, where its original base in Iraq and Syria have gotten weaker since it lost territory in 2019. And so zeroing in on places like Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the region of the Sahel and West Africa, in general, related to the jihadi movement, will likely take precedence over other counterterrorism issues in the context of the jihadi movement.

KEITH: Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, speaking with us about recent U.S. military strikes in northwest Nigeria. Thank you for joining us.

ZELIN: Thanks for having me.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659769

WORLD | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 5:18 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

U.S. ramps up Ukraine diplomacy as Zelensky meets Trump

By Luke Garrett, Tamara Keith

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

TAMARA KEITH, HOST:

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met face-to-face at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida today and later spoke at a joint press conference where Trump said they made a lot of progress.

(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We had a terrific meeting. We discussed a lot of things. As you know, I had an excellent phone call with President Putin that lasted for over two hours. We discussed a lot of points, and I do think we're getting a lot closer, maybe very close.

KEITH: NPR's Luke Garrett joins us now with the latest on President Trump's call with Russian President Zelenskyy - or Russian President Putin and also this meeting with President Zelenskyy. So talk about this meeting. What did they say at their joint press conference?

LUKE GARRETT, BYLINE: So Trump said the two leaders made real progress today, but they need more time still. Most importantly, Zelenskyy said the U.S.-Ukraine security guarantees are, quote, "100% agreed." Now, the exact details still remain unclear, and Zelenskyy said he plans to meet with Trump again along with European leaders later in January.

KEITH: OK, so not at the finish line but closer. You know, in the last few months, we've seen U.S. envoys and Ukrainian leaders meet in Geneva, Switzerland, Miami, Florida, then in Berlin, Germany, and we haven't seen a peace deal. Do you have any sense of how meaningful today's meeting at Mar-a-Lago was?

GARRETT: So it's notable because Trump is talking to both leaders of these warring nations. Earlier today, you know, Trump was on the phone with Putin, and in front of the press and Zelenskyy, Trump relayed his message to the Russian leader.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: Got to make a deal. Got to get it done. Too many people die. And I think both presidents want to make a deal.

GARRETT: Now, to be clear, we saw similar meetings and statements back in October, the last time Zelenskyy visited the U.S. But what's new now is this peace proposal, the text. Back in November, Russia and the U.S. drafted a 28-point peace plan, which many criticized as, you know, favoring Moscow. Since then, the U.S. and Ukrainian diplomats have gone back and forth, whittling this deal down to 20 points. Now Zelenskyy says, you know, this 20-point plan is 90% complete.

KEITH: There are a lot of percentages, a lot of math. We won't do the math. But what's in this proposed plan?

GARRETT: So security guarantees are at the top of the list, as we just heard from Zelenskyy. An earlier version of the peace plan, you know, would allow Ukraine to maintain a peacetime army of 800,000 troops. In this plan, the West would also help Ukraine with air defenses. On the steps of Mar-a-Lago, Zelenskyy said, you know, he wanted to talk to Trump about the logistics, the step-by-step, you know, actions that would ensure security for Ukraine. And he was hoping for some sort of protections that resemble NATO member states. So, you know, we'll see if that pans out.

KEITH: And of course Putin has said that Ukraine entering NATO is an absolute nonstarter redline. Let's focus on the 10% that remains. How does this peace plan address the land that Russia and Ukraine have been fighting over?

GARRETT: Right. Troops have fought and died over the eastern region of Ukraine, and deciding who controls this area remains a contested point. But earlier this week, Zelenskyy told reporters that Ukraine was ready to pull troops back from areas in eastern Donetsk, a region still under Ukrainian control. Zelenskyy said he would do this if and only if Russia did the same and pulled its forces back in Donetsk as well. You know, today, Trump and Zelenskyy said they're going to discuss these very touchy and delicate territory discussions.

KEITH: So I feel like we've seen this movie before many times. What are you watching for as the U.S. and Ukraine continue to hammer out this plan?

GARRETT: Right. So first, you know, Trump said he's going to call Putin back. So we will see if anything comes out of that call, that second call today. And the Europeans will have to weigh in. But, you know, as far as timing goes, Trump said negotiations were in their final stages but gave no deadline. This meeting, you know, later in January that Zelenskyy talked about, that's another thing to, you know, keep an eye on. But one other factor here, Tam, is, you know, Trump's time and attention. Tomorrow, he's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the ceasefire in Gaza, an equally complex and, you know, violent war. So there's a lot to keep track of.

KEITH: That's NPR's Luke Garrett. Thanks for the latest.

GARRETT: You bet.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659766

WORLD | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 12:55 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Russia sends 3 Iranian satellites into orbit, report says

By The Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — Russia on Sunday sent three Iranian communications satellites into orbit, the second such launch since July, Iranian state television reported.

The report said that a Russian rocket sent the satellites to circle the Earth on a 500-kilometer (310-mile) orbit from the Vostochny launchpad in eastern Russia. The three satellites are dubbed Paya, Kowsar and Zafar-2.

The report said that Paya, weighing 150 kilograms (330 pounds), is the heaviest satellite that Iran has ever deployed into orbit. Kowsar weighs 35 kilograms (77 pounds), but the report didn't specify how heavy Zafar-2 is.

The satellites feature up to 3-meter resolution images, applicable in the management of water resources, agriculture and the environment. Their life span is up to five years.

Russia occasionally sends Iran's satellites into orbit, highlighting the strong ties between the two countries. In July, a Russian rocket sent Iranian communications satellite Nahid-2 into orbit.

Russia, which signed a "strategic partnership" treaty with Iran in January, strongly condemned the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran that came during a 12-day air war in June and killed nearly 1,100 Iranians, including military commanders and nuclear scientists. Retaliatory missile barrages by Iran killed 28 people in Israel.

As a long-standing project, Iran from time-to-time launches satellite carriers to send its satellites into space.

The United States has said that Iran's satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions related to Iran's ballistic missile program expired in 2023.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659773

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WORLD | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:07 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Crime fears drive South America's sharp turn to the right

By Carrie Kahn, Daniel Estrin

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Daniel Estrin. 2025 brought seismic political change to Latin America. Conservative and even far-right leaders won elections in several South American countries. And this ideological swing comes as the Trump administration has stepped up military might and political pressure throughout the region. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio right before Christmas, defending the new U.S. actions in the region.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARCO RUBIO: The goal here is to bring security and stability to the hemisphere, to the region - the region we live in, OK? - which has not received enough attention.

ESTRIN: To understand what this means for South America, we go now to NPR's correspondent Carrie Kahn in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Hello, Carrie.

CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Hello, Daniel.

ESTRIN: So let's start just talking about this big turn to the right in the region.

KAHN: Yes. It's been in the last few years. In some ways, it's part of the natural swings, the, you know, power alternations here. The left had big gains before but started losing major elections recently, especially in Argentina and in Ecuador last year. And this year, we saw decades of socialist rule in Bolivia fall, and an ultraconservative candidate just flipped Chile last month.

ESTRIN: So what is the big issue here for voters? Is it anti-incumbency? Is it something else?

KAHN: Partly it is. But overwhelmingly, voters are concerned about crime, violence and security and, in the case of Chile, also illegal immigration. That, to me, is the significant shift in the landscape here. When the left took power, the major emphasis back then was economic inequality, social issues, the environment. Now it's safety, and the left just has not come through with either effective policies to combat the organized crime violence or credible promises that they're going to do something better. And the right has really straightforward, tough-on-crime plans and slogans. And I'm not commenting on the quality of the right's proposals. All I'm saying is that they are resonating better with voters.

ESTRIN: OK. So what are some of those measures?

KAHN: Get tough on crime, like those made Infamous in El Salvador - the Mano Dura, Iron Fist policies that are just being emulated everywhere. Bring in the military to patrol the streets. Build maximum security prisons. Toughen sentences. And in many places, the population is more than willing to curb civil rights to combat that crime. Also, many just want to crack down on illegal immigration. Remember, nearly 8 million people have fled the authoritarian rule of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, and most have stayed here in this region. And the right has deftly conflated and merged the high crime fears and illegal immigration, like with the recent win in Chile by the ultraconservative there. He pledged to build fences, even dig huge ditches along the border, as well as start mass deportations of migrants.

ESTRIN: Wow, which sounds a lot like Trump's pledges here in the U.S.

KAHN: Yes. No surprise that Trump's policies get a very warm reception, and they're being mirrored here, too. Among conservative voters and antileft voters, his military intervention against Venezuela and drug traffickers is very popular. Trump's also stepped in for many of his favorite candidates and his allies. There was that $20 billion bailout for Argentina's far-right libertarian president, Javier Milei, that came right before he was facing a tough midterm election. And Trump pledges support for the new right leaders in Bolivia and in Chile. And the populist anticrime rhetoric is really working. Some have even coined it with the new term security populism. Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations was talking to me about that. And he says it's not surprising that this is gaining so much popularity, given how powerful and rich organized crime groups have become here.

WILL FREEMAN: The sheer kind of corrupting force of that money is more than any country's institutions can really deal with.

KAHN: And we're seeing countries like Uruguay and Chile that had relatively strong institutions just falter in the face of these crime gangs.

ESTRIN: Why are these crime groups becoming so powerful right now? I mean, hasn't organized crime been a problem for a long time in Latin America?

KAHN: Sure, but they're richer than ever. They're making billions, and not just from drugs but migrant trafficking and, increasingly, illegal gold trafficking. Gold prices are soaring right now. And so is demand for drugs in the U.S. and Europe, and especially cocaine. It's on the rise, the use in the U.S., but cocaine use is at an all-time high in Europe. And so is coca production, and that happens mainly in Colombia.

So most cocaine smuggling and transportation goes through Ecuador, and I just spent a lot of time there this year. And I spent time with this one banana farmer, and I just want to tell you a little bit about him. He battles extortion and kidnapping attempts by the cartels. He told me this one story that has stuck with me so much. He was visiting friends in Europe, and they were all partying. And someone pulled out cocaine, and he said he was just floored. He told them, don't you know what that has done - your consumption has done to my country? And he said just - the people at the party just could not connect the dots with him.

ESTRIN: Oh, wow. Are we going to see more of this shift to the right in the coming year?

KAHN: We have some big elections next year - here in Brazil, where leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is struggling with his own messaging problems and his age. He's 80. In Colombia, leftist President Gustavo Petro has taken on a very public fight with President Trump. Not sure how his party's going to fare there. And security is still going to dominate politics. That's a given. It doesn't look like gold prices are plunging or the drug supply or demand is dropping, so these gangs and their corruption, their power and their violence will still be top issues for voters here.

ESTRIN: OK. NPR's Carrie Kahn in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil talking about the shift to the right and far right in South America. Thank you, Carrie.

KAHN: You're welcome.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5649865

WORLD | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 5:02 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

For Ukrainians, a nuclear missile museum is a bitter reminder of what the country gave up

By Eleanor Beardsley, Polina Lytvynova

POBUZKE, Ukraine — In the middle of vast farm fields in southern Ukraine, you'll find what was once a secret Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile launch site. Today it's the Museum of Strategic Missile Forces.

Aside from chronicling the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and United States, the museum tells the story of how Ukraine dismantled its nuclear weapons arsenal — with assurances from the U.S., Britain and Russia that its sovereignty would be respected — shortly after becoming an independent country in 1991.

Today most Ukrainians believe that decision to give up nukes was a fateful mistake. For them, this museum is a bitter reminder of what they say was their "naivety" and "betrayal."

On this cold, blustery December day, there aren't many visitors, but Ihor Volodin and Inna Kravchuk have come from the neighboring Cherkasy region.

"I think it's a part of our history and it's important to know about it," says Kravchuk. But she says it also makes her angry: "If we had kept these weapons, probably Russia would not have attacked. The nuclear weapons were our insurance."

Hennadiy Vladimirovitch Fil, a 65-year-old guide, once served as a lieutenant colonel in the elite rocket forces here. He attributes his youthful complexion to all the time he spent in an underground silo at the site.

Fil says hardly anyone of a certain age leaves the museum without cursing.

But before that betrayal, there were four decades of the Cold War arms race, and this museum plunges visitors deep into that era on the Soviet side. Black-and-white portraits of Soviet commanders sporting stern looks and chests full of medals stare down from the walls, while old rotary phones and antiquated 1960s control panels help re-create the gloomy atmosphere of the epoch. The place is at once creepy, fascinating and at times overwhelming with detail.

Fil uses a long pointer to highlight wall maps and charts that chronicle the arms race and planned mutual destruction between the U.S. and USSR. He says the 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles once based here could have reached the U.S. East Coast within 25 minutes of launch. Each could carry 10 nuclear warheads with a destruction capacity of 200,000 square kilometers or 77,000 square miles — roughly the area of Nebraska.

When the USSR broke apart in 1991, Ukraine was left with the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal, after the U.S. and Russia. In January 1994, then-President Bill Clinton stopped over in Kyiv on his way to Moscow, for talks with Ukraine's first democratically elected president, Leonid Kravchuk. Later that year, a deal was reached for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons.

That agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum, was signed in Hungary by Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and Britain. Ukraine's three co-signers promised its territorial integrity would be respected.

A newsreel playing in the museum shows how Ukraine's nuclear missiles were destroyed in the mid-1990s. Jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads were also dismantled. The 10 silos that once held missiles were filled with concrete — except one that has been kept as an exhibit on the museum grounds, where visitors can see the massive, decommissioned missile nesting inside a silo.

There is also a vast display of hardware from different Soviet and Russian wars: World War II, Afghanistan in the 1980s, and destroyed Russian tanks from the current Ukraine war. There is also one of the missiles the Soviets pointed at the U.S. from Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — known here as the "Caribbean Crisis."

Fil notes bitterly that Ukraine also ended up giving several jets to Russia in payment for natural gas debts a few years later.

"Now," he says, "Russia is bombing us with our own planes."

Denmark's Ambassador to Kyiv Thomas Lund-Sorensen is also visiting the museum on this day. He says while reducing the number of countries holding nuclear weapons is always a positive thing, he agrees that what happened to Ukraine was "a disgrace."

"They gave them up with the promises of the three powers, and clearly the guarantees given from Russia at the time were not worth the paper they were written on," says Lund-Sorensen.

Even Clinton has expressed his regret about the Budapest Memorandum. In an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE in the year following Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Clinton said, "I feel terrible about it… and I feel a personal stake because I got them to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons."

This museum is a painful reminder of what happened, and underlines why Ukraine insists that ironclad security guarantees be part of any peace deal with Russia today.

Fil takes visitors along an underground corridor the length of two football fields before opening a door weighing 2,000 pounds, which leads to a tiny elevator.

The NPR team crams in to descend 150 feet in an underground silo. The doors open to a tiny living space with three slab bunks, a toilet, a hotplate and stale, strange-smelling air. Fil says this is where a launch crew could live for up to 45 days in case of a nuclear war. A wall ladder through an opening in the ceiling leads to a launch room above.

We climb through. After seating us in the two top commander seats – which are bolted to the floor and have harnesses to strap you in (Fil says a direct nuclear hit from America would have caused an explosion equal to an earthquake measuring 12 points on the Richter scale) – Fil flips a switch. The ancient-looking control board lights up. He places our hands on a button and a key for a simulation of a nuclear missile launch.

It takes two people making two gestures to launch the missiles. As he gives the launch order, we press the button and turn the key. A loud alarm begins to sound. On a screen above, we watch a simulation of the ballistic missiles rising from their silos and launching one by one in a ball of fire.

Despite Russia's recent threats, Fil says he doesn't believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would dare use a nuclear weapon.

"They're too unpredictable," he says. He adds that Russia also knows it would face harsh consequences for such an act.

We watch the missiles in the simulation travel through space. Soon they begin hitting their targets.

The view from space on our screen shows mushroom clouds blossoming across the planet and a narrator describes a chain reaction depleting all oxygen from the atmosphere and thus ending life on our planet.

Fil says he's thankful it never came to that. But he still regrets that Ukraine gave up its nuclear deterrence.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103485

WORLD | UPDATED SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 6:34 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Trump says Ukraine and Russia 'closer than ever' to peace after talks with Zelenskyy

By The Associated Press

PALM BEACH, Florida — President Donald Trump on Sunday insisted Ukraine and Russia are "closer than ever before" to a peace deal as he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Florida resort, but he acknowledged that negotiations could still break down and leave the war dragging on for years.

The president's statements came after the two leaders met for a discussion that took place after what Trump described as an "excellent," two-and-a-half-hour phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine launched the war four years ago. Trump insisted he believed Putin still wants peace, even as Russia launched another round of attacks on Ukraine while Zelenskyy flew to the United States for the latest round of negotiations.

"Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed," Trump said during a late afternoon news conference following a meeting with Zelenskyy, whom he repeatedly praised as "brave."

Trump and Zelenskyy both acknowledged thorny issues remain, including whether Russia can keep Ukrainian territory it controls. After their discussion they called a wide group of European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland.

Zelenskyy thanked Trump for his work. "Ukraine is ready for peace," he said.

Trump and Putin will speak again

Trump said he'd follow the meeting with another call to Putin. Earlier Sunday, Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said the Trump-Putin call was initiated by the U.S. side, lasted over an hour, and was "friendly, benevolent and businesslike." Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again "promptly" after Trump's meeting with Zelenskyy.

But Ushakov added that a "bold, responsible, political decision is needed from Kyiv" on the fiercely contested Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and other matters in dispute for there to be a "complete cessation" of hostilities.

In overnight developments, three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to the head of the local military administration, Vadym Lakh. Three people were injured and one man died, Lakh said in a post on the Telegram messenger app.

The strike came the day after Russia attacked Ukraine's capital with ballistic missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, Ukrainian authorities said. Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began in the early morning and continued for hours.

Trump said, however, that he still believes Putin is "very serious" about ending the war.

"I believe Ukraine has made some very strong attacks also," Trump told reporters as Zelenskyy stood by his side. "And I don't say that negatively. I think, you probably have to. I don't say that negatively. But I think, he hasn't told me that, but there have been some explosions in various parts of Russia. It looks to me, like, I don't know. I don't think it came from the Congo."

Trump noted that it was possible that the negotiations will fall apart. "In a few weeks, we will know one way or the other, I think. ... But it could also go poorly."

The face-to-face sit-down between Trump and Zelenskyy underscored the apparent progress made by Trump's top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is "about 90% ready" — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when Trump's chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.

During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country's bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.

'Intensive' weeks ahead

Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed "certain substantive details" and cautioned "there is still work to be done on sensitive issues" and "the weeks ahead may also be intensive."

The U.S. president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.

After hosting Zelenskyy at the White House in October, Trump demanded that both Russia and Ukraine halt fighting and "stop at the battle line," implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Putin wants Russian gains kept, and more

Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow's forces haven't captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.

The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it wouldn't accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a "legitimate target."

Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.

Ushakov told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of Donetsk -– one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarized zone under a prospective peace plan.

Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took into account Russian demands had been "worsened" by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin's demands, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5659700

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WORLD | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 5:01 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Gangs use sexual violence to control communities in Haiti

By Jeffrey Pierre, Ahmad Damen, Tamara Keith

Heard on All Things Considered

Transcript

TAMARA KEITH, HOST:

The island nation of Haiti is in crisis. There are food shortages, a crumbling government, and gangs are expanding their reach. The Miami Herald's Jacqueline Charles joins us now with exclusive reporting. She details how these groups are using sexual violence to inflict fear. Humanitarian organizations report more than 7,400 cases of gender-based violence in Haiti between January and September, and that number is likely an undercount. And a heads up, this story will contain descriptions of sexual violence. Jacqueline Charles, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

JACQUELINE CHARLES: Thanks for having me.

KEITH: I want to start with how you learned about this. Credible information can be hard to get in Haiti right now, and you write, stigma around rape leads to many victims staying quiet. So where did you start for this story?

CHARLES: So, you know, I've been covering Haiti for more than two decades, and while I've been watching this gang crisis, we were seeing these reports of sexual violence. But I actually was speaking with Dr. William Pape, Bill Pape, who is quoted through this series. And he was talking about, you know, 11-year-old girls who were survivors of gang rape, and then they were impregnated, and then they were forced to carry their babies to term because abortion, even in the case of rape, was not allowed. And then he mentioned that when they would give birth, they basically were disconnected from these children - there was no connection - and how we are raising a generation loss.

And so I started off in search of an 11-year-old girl who had been victimized by gangs, who had become pregnant. But what I found was a story that was much more complicated and worse in so many ways, if you can imagine.

KEITH: Is there a particular story that you just can't shake?

CHARLES: You know, the main story opens up with a young girl that, when she was 14 years old, she came from school one day. She's still in her uniform. She and her father were forced to watch her stepmother be gang raped in front of them, and then her father was gunned down. And then she herself was sequestered for five days with five other girls - teenage girls, you know, similar age bracket as she was. And they were tied to chairs. They were not giving any food or any water for five days, and they were repeatedly raped.

And on the morning that she managed to escape, there was a rumor that there was going to be a police raid, and the one gunman that was left to watch them - for whatever reason, he decided to untie them. She fled. She basically passed out in a field. A good Samaritan happened to have found her - thank God - took her to the police, Brigade for Minors, and they got her into one of the few rape shelters that exist and happened to have a bed that day.

And this young lady - she stands out because as horrible as her story, and as gut wrenching it is, she's actually fortunate. You know, she didn't end up pregnant. She didn't end up with an STD, and she managed to get into a shelter where she continues to live today, and she was able to get counseling. A lot of places don't have counselors, and those that do have counselors - their counselors last about two years because the trauma that they themselves are enduring in this situation.

KEITH: This is probably an impossible question. But why? Why is there this problem? Why is this getting worse?

CHARLES: The gangs are using rape as a weapon. It's become weaponized. You will hear gang members say that we don't rape our own, meaning that they don't rape women, girls and sometimes boys and even men in territories that they control. But when they move into another territory, when there's a gang war to take control or they're expanding, this is - we hear these horrible stories.

And then the other why, of course, is why the lack of outrage inside the country? I mean, we hear, you know, on the international front, in terms of the U.N., they've been, you know, raising their voice on this issue and saying that it needs to be focused on, especially as we see the cuts that are coming, whether it's the U.S. or European nations. But inside, you know, Haitians are not talking about this, not recognizing it.

And often, the survivors are not seen as victims, but also complicit because they live in these neighborhoods that are controlled by gangs. How do you escape that in a capital where 1 in 4 individuals now live in a gang-controlled neighborhood, and gangs control up to 90% of your capital? That's 4 million people supposedly in a capital, and gangs control up to 90% of that territory.

KEITH: Do you have any sense of what needs to happen for this situation to improve?

CHARLES: I think the first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a recognition. We need to start to talk about it, right? It needs to talk about - to be spoken about. And then you have to say, how do we save this generation loss?

The young lady that I spoke to you about in the beginning, you know, who was 14 years old when this happened to her - what amazed me when I spoke to her - I'm crying, I'm in tears - but I said to her, how are you not on the ground? I mean, how are you not broken? And she said to me, you know, I had suicidal thoughts. I had lost the most important person in my life, my father. I thought that my life was over. But with the counseling that I received, they kept telling me that, you know, it's not over, that there is hope, that I can rebuild, and I can go on.

And that was just so inspiring for me. And it also said to me the value of the counseling, of getting that kind of help to her. But so many of the women and girls - and we spoke to more than a dozen. You know, we actually spoke to dozens of people. Some of them don't even make it into the story. They don't have that access. You know, they don't even know where to begin to get that access, and it's not available to them because of either where they are or the fact that they're living on the streets.

KEITH: Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to our show.

CHARLES: Thank you.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5651322

CULTURE | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 5:01 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'It's behind you!' How Britain goes wild for pantomimes during the holidays

By Robbie Griffiths

Heard on All Things Considered

LONDON — Foreboding music begins. A scary green witch announces her arrival with a cackle. It's the opening of Wicked Witches, a British holiday-time play known as a "pantomime," at a North London theater.

But soon after she walks on stage, it's clear the witch isn't happy with the audience.

She says the audience is being too quiet, and should boo her as loudly as they can, because she is the "villain" of the pantomime. She leaves the stage and comes back on — and this time, the audience does what it's told, heckling with loud boos.

Throughout the two-hour play, the audience is expected to join in, shouting out classic lines that most people who attend already know, even if they haven't seen this play. Pantomimes are famous for crowds calling out catch phrases e like "it's behind you!" — to alert the actors to something, or someone, they can't see on stage.

All across Britain during the festive period, families attend pantomimes — often shortened to "pantos" — which help get them into the Christmas spirit. Pantomimes are usually based on a well-known story, often a fairy tale, which is then given a bawdy twist. Traditionally, they feature female characters, or "dames," played by a man in drag, and include lots of music, particularly pop parodies.

The show at the Pleasance Theatre is inspired by The Wizard of Oz and Wicked. Its storyline imagines a blizzard that brings Dorothy (whose name has changed to Dor) back to Oz, 20 years after that first visit. But in many ways, the plot comes second to the silly jokes, innuendos, and songs.

Pantomimes are also known for featuring celebrities and public figures. This one features politician Jeremy Corbyn, who used to lead Britain's Labour Party He appears on video as the Wizard of Oz-lington, a pun on Islington, the area of London he represents, now as an independent, in Parliament. Even more exciting is actor Ian McKellen — famous for playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films — who is seen in a video clip as Toto the dog.

The Wicked Witches pantomime in North London was actually written by an American, Shane "ShayShay" Konno, who comes from California's Bay Area but has lived in the United Kingdom for 12 years. "I didn't grow up in the U.K., and when I moved here, starting to understand pantomime felt like a huge cultural hurdle," Konno says.

Pantomime has its roots in Italian commedia dell'arte, a form of theater that dates back to the 16th century. In Britain, it has gradually developed over the years. "The actual history of pantomime is it started in East London, and it used to be this huge thing where the whole community would come together," Konno explains.

Konno is nonbinary, and their pantomime is consciously inclusive of LGBTQ people, featuring a nonbinary character in the lead role of Dor, and a message that people should accept people who are different from them. "I wanted to make something that made an explicitly LGBT version of The Wizard of Oz and Wicked, because that's such a beloved franchise for the queer community," Konno says.

There are two versions: one for families with children, and one just for adults. But Konno says they aren't as different as you might think. Many of the ruder jokes remain in the family-friendly show, but they are carefully disguised. "When a quite rude joke is said, but one that goes over the kids' heads, it does tickle the adults in the room more than it would in an adult show because they're like, 'Oh my goodness, I can't believe that they said that in front of the children,'" Konno says.

Most theaters around Britain have an annual pantomime in the festive period — and it's often their most popular production of the year. Johnny McKnight, from Paisley, a town near Glasgow, Scotland, has been performing and writing pantomimes in Scotland for 20 years, and says it's a vital part of many British people's Christmas celebrations.

"I've always said to everybody, when you do a pantomime, and you're doing 12 shows a week, you're giving people the gift of their Christmas ritual, their Christmas night out," McKnight says. McKnight often plays the role of the dame, dressing up in drag.

McKnight has seen different generations of the same families grow up watching his shows, and explains that pantomime is often the first time that children in Britain ever visit the theater. "A lot of the time it's a child's first entry point," McKnight says. "It was certainly mine — my first entry point into live theater."

At the Wicked Witches show in North London, there are lots of children at the theater for the first time. Imogen Coackley is 8 years old, and attending with her father Alex and 5-year-old sister Emily. Imogen explains that she likes the pantomime because "they say very funny jokes and talk to the audience."

McKnight says that seeing children enjoy his shows is one of the best parts of the job. "There's something … magical in that, that you're creating something accessible that talks to its audience rather than at them, that asks them to participate," he says.

Transcript

TAMARA KEITH, HOST:

In most theater shows, the actors talk and the audience listens. But that's not how it works at pantomimes, the rowdy, family-friendly performances that are popular in the U.K. this time of year. There, the people watching are expected to make as much noise as possible. We sent NPR's Robbie Griffiths to find out what all the fuss is about.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ROBBIE GRIFFITHS, BYLINE: At the start of the pantomime at the Pleasance Theatre in North London, scary music for a scary green witch. But as the witch walks on stage, it's clear she isn't happy with the audience. She says they are too quiet, and they should boo her as loudly as they can.

GIGI ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Have you been to panto before? Is that how you greet your villain?

(BOOING)

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Yeah, yeah, let's try that again, shall we? And be better.

GRIFFITHS: The next time, they do what they are told.

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba, laughter).

(BOOING)

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Keep it coming. Mama's thirsty.

(BOOING)

GRIFFITHS: In fact, throughout the two-hour play that follows, the audience are expected to join in noisily, shouting out classic pantomime lines that most people who attend already know.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Has anyone seen my bush?

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: It's behind you.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) It's where?

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Behind you.

GRIFFITHS: All across Britain during the festive period, families attend pantomimes, or pantos, which help get them into the Christmas spirit. They are plays, usually based on a well-known story or fairy tale, with a bawdy twist. And often, like the witch in this show, they feature female characters or dames played by a man in drag.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Home.

GRIFFITHS: Today's show is inspired by "The Wizard Of Oz" and "Wicked." Its storyline imagines a blizzard that brings Dorothy back to Oz 20 years after the first time around. But in many ways, the plot comes second to the silly jokes...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) First, it was raining cats and dogs.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANIMAL SOUNDS)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: Wow. You'd better be careful not to step in a poodle.

(SOUNDBITE OF RIMSHOT)

GRIFFITHS: ...Innuendos...

(SOUNDBITE OF COMPUTER ACTIVATING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Wow, Dor. You are so good at turning me on.

GRIFFITHS: ...And reimagined songs.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character, singing) And after all...

(As character) It's the yellow brick wall.

(As character, singing) It's the yellow brick wall.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Singing) It's the yellow brick wall.

GRIFFITHS: Celebrities, sometimes local, often add luster to pantos. This one features politician Jeremy Corbyn, who used to lead Britain's Labour Party, and appears on video as the Wizard of Oz-lington, a pun on Islington, the area of London we are in. But even more exciting is Sir Ian McKellen, famous for playing Gandalf in "The Lord Of The Rings" films, who is seen in a video clip as Toto the Dog.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

IAN MCKELLEN: (As Toto the Dog) Hello, Dor and friends. It's me, Toto. And you may already know I'm the frontman of the distinguished rock 'n' roll band The Rolling Bones.

GRIFFITHS: This pantomime in North London was actually written by an American, ShayShay Konno from California's Bay Area.

SHAYSHAY KONNO: So I didn't grow up in the U.K., and when I moved here, starting to understand pantomime felt like a huge cultural hurdle.

GRIFFITHS: Konno has lived in Britain for 12 years and become an expert in the form.

KONNO: The actual history of pantomime is it started in East London, and it used to be this huge thing where the whole community would come together, and you'd have art forms of all performance types, from magic to circus to dance. And so it kind of, over generations and generations, has evolved into the form that it is today.

GRIFFITHS: Konno's pantomime is consciously inclusive towards LGBTQ people. It has two versions - one that's family friendly and one just for adults. Most theaters around Britain have an annual panto in the festive period, and it's often their most popular production of the year.

JOHNNY MCKNIGHT: It's sort of unique that there's a tradition built in, including the audience that come to it, that you become part of their Christmas.

GRIFFITHS: Johnny McKnight, from Paisley, near Glasgow, has been performing and writing pantomimes in Scotland for 20 years. He's seen different generations of the same families grow up watching his shows.

MCKNIGHT: Because it's so accessible, a lot of the time, it's a child's first entry point. So there's something also magical in that, that you're creating something accessible that talks to its audience rather than at them.

GRIFFITHS: Here in North London, there are lots of children at the theater for the first time.

Who's your favorite character?

IMOGEN COACKLEY: I think it's Dorothy.

GRIFFITHS: Imogen Coackley is 8 years old, and she's here with her dad, Alex, and sister, Emily.

What do you like about the pantomime?

IMOGEN: That they say very funny jokes and talk to the audience.

GRIFFITHS: All the other children seem to agree. In the second act, children and adults alike all shout as loud as they can.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Oh, yes, there is.

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Oh, no, there isn't.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Oh, yes, there is.

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Oh, no, there isn't.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Oh, yes, there is.

ZAHIR: (As Adelphaba) Oh, enough of that.

GRIFFITHS: But when it comes to pantomime, people in Britain can't get enough. Robbie Griffiths, NPR News, North London.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5645845

Law

- Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted U.S. political parties, memo says: 2025 Dec 29

LAW | MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2025 • 2:11 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted U.S. political parties, memo says

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol told investigators after his arrest that he believed someone needed to "speak up" for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen and that he wanted to target the country's political parties because they were "in charge," prosecutors said Sunday.

The allegations were laid out in a Justice Department memo arguing that Brian J. Cole Jr., who was arrested earlier this month on charges of placing pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national committees, should remain locked up while the case moves forward.

The memo provides the most detailed government account of statements Cole is alleged to have made to investigators and points to evidence, including bomb-making components found at his home after his arrest, that officials say connects him to the act. The homemade bombs did not detonate and were discovered Jan. 6, the afternoon that rioters supporting President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Cole denied to investigators that his actions were connected to Congress or the events of Jan. 6, the memo says. But after initially disputing that he had any involvement in the pipe bombs, prosecutors say, he confessed to placing them outside the RNC and DNC and acknowledged feeling disillusioned by the 2020 election, fed up with both political parties and sympathetic to claims by Trump and some of his allies that the contest had been stolen.

According to the memo, he told agents who interviewed him that if people "feel that, you know, something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with, is being, you know, being — you know, relegated null and void, then, like, someone needs to speak up, right? Someone up top. You know, just to, just to at the very least calm things down."

He said "something just snapped" after "watching everything, just everything getting worse" and that he wanted to do something "to the parties" because "they were in charge," according to the Justice Department's memo. Prosecutors say when Cole was asked why he had placed the explosives at the RNC and DNC, he responded, "I really don't like either party at this point."

Cole was arrested on the morning of Dec. 4 at his Woodbridge, Virginia, house in what law enforcement officials described as a major breakthrough in their nearly five-year-old investigation. His lawyers will also have an opportunity to state their position on detention ahead of a hearing set for Tuesday in Washington's federal court.

During a search of Cole's home and car after his arrest, prosecutors say, investigators found shopping bags of bomb-making components. He at first denied having manufactured or placed the pipe bombs, prosecutors say, and when pressed about his whereabouts on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, initially told investigators he had driven by himself to attend a protest related to the 2020 election.

"I didn't agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that they — that their — that they just need to ignore it. I didn't think that was a good idea, so I went to the protest," the memo quotes him as saying.

But over the course of hours of questioning, prosecutors say, Cole acknowledged he went to Washington not for a protest but rather to place the bombs. He stowed the explosives in a shoebox in the back seat of his Nissan Sentra and placed one apiece outside the RNC and DNC headquarters, setting the timer on each for 60 minutes, the memo says.

Neither device exploded, a fact Cole says he was "pretty relieved" about because he planted them at night because he did not want to kill anyone, the memo says.

The fact that the devices did not detonate is due to luck, "not lack of effort," prosecutors said in arguing that Cole poses a danger to the community and must remain detained pending trial.

"The defendant's choice of targets risked the lives not only of innocent pedestrians and office workers but also of law enforcement, first responders, and national political leaders who were inside of the respective party headquarters or drove by them on January 6, 2021, including the Vice President-elect and Speaker of the House," prosecutors wrote.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103881

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POLITICS | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 7:58 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Politics chat: Trump meets Zelenskyy; American heritage creates GOP rift

By Danielle Kurtzleben , Daniel Estrin

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Two world leaders involved in two major conflicts are meeting President Trump this week. In a few minutes, we'll hear about what the Israeli prime minister may have planned for the president tomorrow. Today, Trump meets Ukraine's leader, and this time, not in the Oval Office. NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben joins us now. Good morning, Danielle.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Daniel.

ESTRIN: So this afternoon, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet President Trump in Florida. That's where Trump is spending the holidays. And Russian President Vladimir Putin set the stage this weekend - didn't he? - with missile and drone attacks on Kyiv this weekend.

KURTZLEBEN: That's absolutely right. So the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump is scheduled for 1 p.m. Eastern today at Trump's club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach. And there's been some real movement here since that infamous bitter Oval Office meeting you alluded to, featuring Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President Vance earlier this year. Now, earlier this week, Zelenskyy released a 20-point plan to end the war, which, according to multiple outlets, it described security guarantees and a demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine, which would be one way to try to deal with that sticking point of territory disputes between the two countries. Zelenskyy also told Axios this week that he's willing to bring that plan up for a referendum in Ukraine, but only if Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire. Now, that's a big if, because, as you said, Russia bombarded Kyiv yesterday, and they may not be inclined to stop attacking.

ESTRIN: Yeah. And meanwhile, Trump ordered missile strikes on targets in northern Nigeria on Christmas Day, and he's also keeping up the pressure on Venezuela and President Nicolas Maduro. So what exactly is Trump's aim in these two very different parts of the globe?

KURTZLEBEN: Well, let's start with Nigeria here. Trump announced in a Christmas night social media post that the U.S. had launched strikes against ISIS in northwestern Nigeria. And we should add here that the Nigerian government says they gave the green light to this. Well, Trump implied that this was retaliation for armed militants attacking Christians, though experts have disputed claims of Christian persecution in that country, as the AP found earlier this year, militants there have killed Muslims and Christians alike. As far as the aim beyond what Trump said here, it may be to please his Christian base. For one thing, this topic is getting louder. Rapper Nicki Minaj, who has become friendly to MAGA, has been talking about this alleged Christian persecution.

But then there's Venezuela, which you mentioned, where the administration has been striking boats that they say are carrying drugs and killing people in the process. Well, the endgame there has been in question for months now. For example, does Trump want regime change in Venezuela? Now, all of this certainly fits with how the Trump administration likes to talk about itself, being tough on terrorists and tough on drugs, but you're right that it raises that question of why is Trump taking all these actions all over the world? Because that question of why has created strife within his own party. You have former Trump ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, who has asked, for example, if Trump is still America First.

ESTRIN: And speaking of strife in the Republican Party, let's talk about the cultural battles happening on the right. These past few weeks in this country, the hot topic used to be antisemitism, and now there's a new controversy over what it means to be American.

KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. This got more attention in particular after Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, in recent days, he pushed back against this idea of heritage Americans, which is a concept among some on the far right, that there are people in the U.S. whose lineage can be traced far back in the U.S.' history, and therefore, they are heritage Americans, that your lineage determines your Americanness, which, of course, means race is central to this conversation. And so therefore, we've seen this topic inflame existing tensions, for example, between people like Ramaswamy and the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes.

Now, all of this is important, not just in and of itself, because it's another intra-party faultline in the GOP. There's this question about what America First means, like I mentioned. Then here's this divide between outright racists like Fuentes, who has a large following, and other MAGA leaders. And then, like you mentioned, there's that fight over what constitutes antisemitism and how to reject that. So there's a real chance that these often really ugly divides are a major storyline in 2026 as the midterms approach and as the GOP grapples with its post-Trump future.

ESTRIN: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Happy new year, Danielle.

KURTZLEBEN: Happy new year, Daniel.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5658294

CULTURE | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 2:24 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Kennedy Center vows to sue musician who canceled performance over Trump name change

By Kristin Wright

The Kennedy Center says it plans to file a $1 million lawsuit against jazz artist Chuck Redd, after the musician canceled his annual Christmas Eve performance. The Associated Press first reported that Redd pulled out of the show days after President Trump's name was added to the exterior of the performing arts center in Washington, D.C.

In an email to NPR on Saturday, Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi said Redd's decision is a disservice to the arts.

"Any artist cancelling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn't courageous or principled—they are selfish, intolerant, and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to perform for all people," she said.

Redd, an international performer on drums and vibraphone, hosted the center's Christmas Jazz Jam for many years. NPR's messages to Redd were not returned Saturday morning.

"When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert," he told the AP.

Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell sent a scathing letter to Redd on Friday, criticizing him and calling the cancellation a political stunt. The center shared the letter with NPR.

"Regrettably, your action surrenders to the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left, who have sought to intimidate artists into boycotting performances at our national cultural center," it reads.

In a post on X on Friday, Grenell wrote: "The left is boycotting the Arts because Trump is supporting the Arts. But we will not let them cancel shows without consequences. The Arts are for everyone - and the Left is mad about it."

Several artists have pulled out of performances and cut ties with the Kennedy Center since Trump replaced the board and was elected chairman. In March, Hamilton canceled its 2026 run at the Kennedy Center. Actor and producer Issa Rae also called off her appearance. Folk musician Rhiannon Giddens moved her concert to a different venue in the city.

Trump's name was added to the Kennedy Center building last week, after the Board of Trustees voted to rename it. The exterior's iconic lettering now reads "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts."

The name change has prompted outcry from Democratic lawmakers. Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center Board, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday. Beatty argues changing the name of the memorial that is in honor of President John F. Kennedy requires an act of Congress. She's asking the court to declare the board's vote null and void.

According to a Kennedy Center online biography, Redd has been involved with The Smithsonian for more than two decades, serving as artist-in residence at The Smithsonian Jazz Café from 2004-2008. The Kennedy Center is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

"Art is a shared cultural experience meant to unite, not exclude," said the statement from Daravi. "The Trump Kennedy Center is a true bipartisan institution that welcomes artists and patrons from all backgrounds—great art transcends politics, and America's cultural center remains committed to presenting popular programming that inspires and resonates with all audiences."

The Kennedy Center says it will file the lawsuit against Redd after the holidays.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103808

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POLITICS | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 7:43 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Week in Politics: 2025 politics overview; a look ahead at midterms

By Scott Simon, Ron Elving

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Of course, 2026 is just days away - a time to look backward at the year that was and forward to the year to come. NPR senior contributor Ron Elving has been thinking about the state of U.S. politics since President Donald Trump returned to power. And, of course, Ron is completely up to the task of looking both backward and forward. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.

RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.

SIMON: I asked you last year what you were watching for in 2025, and you advised, buckle up. You some kind of psychic?

ELVING: If I were Scott, maybe I could find my cellphone more easily. But you didn't need paranormal powers to see Trump's second term would be anything but normal, even by the standards of his first term when he got impeached twice and indicted on both state and federal charges. Yet he came back, and despite all that. And there's little chance he's going to be cowed by threats of consequences this time around.

The balance between Trump's impulses and the restraints on his power was more conventional the first time around. He was finding his way for a while, relying more on people who knew the Washington way or were well established on their own in government or in the Republican Party. This time around, we have a Cabinet and White House staff dominated by dedicated enablers, willing to carry out orders the way Trump has always thought all his employees should.

SIMON: But there are cracks in what have been the president's support in his own party - over Ukraine, the economy, the Epstein files. Do you see those divisions widening?

ELVING: The conventional wisdom says the closer we get to the midterms, the more we will see vulnerable Republicans distance themselves from Trump on health care, on food prices or various other issues. That happens to any president who is down in the polls halfway through a term. Of course, there could be events, as there were in other midterm years, such as 2002 or 1998. Those reversed the usual dynamic.

But the elections coming in '26 are not the only source of stress in Trump's movement. There are tremendous divisions among some of his reporters who are not officeholders, especially among the cultural activists and people in the media - the podcasters and online influencers, the ones who have provided so much of the heat around Trump. They're at odds with each other over Israel, over Epstein, over Venezuela, and they're battling over who gets the MAGA megaphone when Trump begins to fade.

SIMON: One of the defining features of the second Trump administration is how it regards or disregards the rule of law. What are your thoughts?

ELVING: This term has featured serious policy shifts, like the Trump tariffs and the deportation drive and the military strikes, without congressional approval. We also see a lot of personal retribution against Trump's political enemies and provocative displays of will, such as the partial demolition of the White House and the Trump rebranding of the Kennedy Cultural Arts Center and the Institute of Peace.

In all of this, we see a willingness to test the boundaries, try the locks on the doors, see what's open, see what happens and ultimately to see who will step up to enforce the law. In the year to come, we can expect these confrontations to continue and quite possibly escalate.

SIMON: What will you be looking at especially closely next year?

ELVING: Once again, this year, the focus will be on Trump, not just what he does and what he says and what he spreads online. The focus will also be on how he looks and acts and behaves in highly personal ways. We've already seen a lot of this attention, especially in the visual and social media. The president turns 80 on June 14. He's planning a lot of high-profile events around his birthday, but he would not need those events to bring attention to his age. Are people going to be asking, is this the same Trump? Does he still have his famous mojo? And when the midterms have passed, the spotlight must inevitably shift to the question of succession.

SIMON: NPR senior contributor, Ron Elving. Thanks so much, my friend. Happy New Year.

ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Happy New Year to you.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5651245

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- Conversations bridge Public Health and MAHA: 2025 Dec 27

- A new study links the psychological benefits of swearing: 2025 Dec 27

- ADHD drugs may work indirectly to boost attention: 2025 Dec 27

GOATS AND SODA | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:25 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Viral global TikToks: A twist on soccer, Tanzania's Charlie Chaplin, hope in Gaza

By Michal Ruprecht

More than one billion users visit TikTok every month, and since its launch in 2016, it's grown to become one of the most popular social media platforms. And controversial, too. India, for example, banned the app in 2020, and Australia barred children under 16 from using it and other social media this month.

Every year, NPR interviews TikTok creators from around the world, exploring the trends, subcultures and stories that drive culture and social change in the Global South. This year, we interviewed creators from Brazil, Gaza, Kenya and Tanzania. The four creators each have amassed millions of views, but they also contributed to a much bigger story: one of hope, advocacy and connection.

A different way to play with a soccer ball

Becoming a professional soccer player was always Arthur Marques' (@arthurzinnv) goal.

"In Brazil, being a professional soccer player is everyone's dream as a kid," Marques says through an interpreter.

The 20-year-old TikToker sort of made that dream come true.

Yes, he plays soccer for a living. But it's soccer with a twist.

It's called altinha, Portuguese for "a little higher." Players stand in a circle and keep a ball in the air for as long as possible using their feet, knees, chins, hips, heads and even their butts — anything but their hands. Marques' record is five minutes.

Sounds … a little short. But it's not. "That's a lot of time," Marques says. "It looks easy, but there are a lot of dynamics at play. It's almost like boxing nonstop for five minutes."

Locals started playing soccer on Rio de Janeiro's iconic Copacabana Beach in 1927. But stray balls soon clashed with sunbathers, and officials tightened rules. By the 1930s, restrictions made it increasingly difficult to play the sport on the beach, and while enforcement waxed and waned over the decades, obstacles persisted.

So local soccer lovers invented altinha in the 1960s on Ipanema Beach. It hasn't always been welcome on Brazil's beaches though and was even temporarily banned in 2009.

As for Marques, his dream of becoming a professional soccer player faded when he realized he didn't have the chops for the elite level. So he turned to altinha. In 2021, he started practicing the sport and began posting videos of himself on TikTok a year later.

While the game is played across the country, its pulse throbs in Rio. To be closer to the scene, Marques made trips to the city from his hometown, São Gonçalo, about an hour away across the bay from Rio. Still in school and the son of two street vendors, he could barely afford the commute.

"My two siblings and I had some difficult times growing up, but it was never that hard because we had each other," Marques recalls.

As his videos began to take off, Marques committed fully to social media. He says he would sometimes stay up until 4 a.m. to edit videos on his mom's phone — which was newer and faster than his phone — and then head to high school two hours later.

Marques is now participating in the growing trend of playing altinha on the street courts of Rio's favelas — its lowest-income neighborhoods — instead of on the beach. Neymar — one of Brazil's most celebrated soccer players — even joined Marques for a round of altinha in an old warehouse this July.

"I tried to keep it cool and professional, but I was so excited inside," Marques says.

His next stop is Africa's biggest international soccer tournament, where he was invited to showcase the game in Morocco. His goal is to help usher the sport into the Olympics one day.

"I'm able to unite people from different places and social classes when I play altinha," Marques says. "It's a moment for us to forget about our differences."

Forgotten corners of Africa's history

While driving through the bustling streets of Nairobi, Kenya, Valerie Keter (@valerie_keter) was intrigued by a billboard.

"It was advertising a German language school and written on it was, 'Schule,'" Keter recalls. "In my mind, I'm like, 'Shule is actually Swahili for school.' So I start thinking, 'OK, who borrowed from whom?'"

That question took Keter down a rabbit hole exploring the history of Swahili — the most widely spoken language in Kenya — and presenting her findings on TikTok.

"From there, I ended up discovering that actually there are more Swahili words that were borrowed from other languages — not just German," Keter explains.

This epiphany is one of many that led the 31-year-old to make videos on overlooked corners of African history and culture. She sometimes wears the traditional beaded collars of the Maasai people in southern Kenya as she tells her tales.

Her passion for history and storytelling stems from the documentaries she watched with her family during childhood. As she grew older, she realized how few documentaries chronicled African history.

"Up to today, that lingers with me, and I think it's driven me to a point where I'm seeing there's a need to represent Africa," she says. "Making sure that everybody is aware of what our history entails and the fact that there's a lot of rich history in Africa is important."

Next year, she hopes to gather and share stories from elders — stories that have never made it into textbooks because they're passed down orally. Keter sees this work as a bridge between parts of the continent divided by culture and language.

"If you look at Francophone countries and then the Anglophone nations in Africa, it's like we're not in each other's spaces. It's like everybody is just on their own," Keter says. "Creating this type of content has enabled me to interact with other creators from across the continent."

Giving hope to Gaza

At first glance, Hamada Shaqoura's (@hamadashoo) TikToks look like any other so-called "sizzle cut" — quick, close-up cooking clips stitched together with amplified sounds of knives chopping through vegetables, liquids splashing into pans and food hitting hot oil.

But his direct gaze, furrowed brow and serious demeanor stand out, as does the rubble behind him.

"This facial expression is derived from the tiredness we have felt during the war," Shaqoura says through an interpreter.

His expression softens at the end of his videos when he serves the food to Palestinian children in northern Gaza. "The situation here is very hard, and through this difficult time, I wanted to try to make something special, especially for these children."

Since 2024, the 34-year-old has been posting his cooking videos. It's a drastic change from his work before the war, when he reviewed food from Gaza's restaurants.

"Before the war, my ambition was to become a food blogger, travel the world, taste different cuisines and experience the world through food culture," he says.

This year was particularly challenging for the creator. In August, a panel of international experts on food insecurity, backed by the United Nations, declared a famine in the region, and the suffering of malnourished children made headlines. Simultaneously, food prices skyrocketed, pushing Shaqoura into a three-month hiatus.

While the famine designation has been lifted, hunger continues to grip parts of Gaza. His videos returned in October, and they've taken on even more meaning. Weeks after his return to social media, Shaqoura and his wife welcomed their second child.

"My son and daughter were both born during the war, so this made me want to help children even more because all the children in Gaza are my children as well," Shaqoura says. "I want these children to feel that there is still hope — that they can still eat good food and enjoy delicious things."

Shaqoura contends that his fame is a cruel paradox. If it weren't for the war, he says his TikToks likely wouldn't have received international recognition. Still, despite the hardship of conflict, he remains hopeful.

"I could sense that people in Gaza were missing this feeling — the feeling of good food," Shaqoura says. "I want to remind them what food was like before the war and what the atmosphere was like before the war. We're trying to bring back the things we experienced before the war. We will restore people's hopes. We will restore Gaza and show people what life was like before this war."

A Tanzanian inspired by Charlie Chaplin

A one-off job cleaning a church in Tanzania forged Fanuel John Masamaki's (@zerobrainer0) signature look.

"I was cleaning a church, and one of the items we found was this hat," Masamaki says through an interpreter. "When I started wearing it in the first few videos, people reacted to it positively, so I kept wearing it."

The weathered hat, reminiscent of a vintage military-style peaked cap, is olive green and stylized with a thin gold piping that traces the perimeter. Below that is a darker layer wrapping around the base with a single metal button on the side. The brim itself is short, glossy and black. Masamaki wears the oversized cap tilted back with a wide grin — a playful contrast to its authoritarian design.

The 25-year-old now dons that peaked cap and a long overcoat in his videos, where he plays soccer in a Charlie Chaplin-style pantomime — exaggerated, off-kilter movements that echo the English actor, minus the mustache and cane.

"I'm actually a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin. I used to watch him a lot when I was younger," Masamaki says. "Like Charlie Chaplin, I don't speak during my skits. I draw a lot of inspiration from his work."

And it seems like Chaplin's influence rubbed off on Masamaki. As a young student, he says he regularly put on comedy skits in his hometown.

Masamaki grew up in Tanzania's Kilimanjaro region, one of seven kids born to two farmers.

"Life was not easy. It's the kind of life many African families experience," Masamaki recalls. "Life was difficult growing up with parents who didn't make a lot of money."

Despite a difficult childhood, Masamaki clung to art. Storytelling became his focus, and he dropped out of university in his final year studying mechanical engineering.

That same year, he started posting on TikTok, choosing the handle "zerobrainer0" to reflect his slapstick-style of comedy. "It literally means that you're out of your mind."

At a time when there's been recent strife in Tanzania, Masamaki sees his videos as an opportunity for Tanzanians to take their minds off the country's bitter divisions. And he now views his signature hat — which was once worn by a stranger — as a symbol of unity.

"I like that my content is not political," Masamaki says. "My work is helping my fans who lost loved ones wipe their tears away. It's bringing back smiles, happiness and warmth — all of that."

Jacob Azar, Samuel Evans and Felipe Oliveira interpreted during the interviews with Hamada Shaqoura, Fanuel John Masamaki and Arthur Marques, respectively. Michal Ruprecht is a Stanford Global Health Media Fellow.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103034

HEALTH | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:06 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Death metal's brutal growl may hold clues to healing damaged voices

By D. Parvaz

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Here's a viral moment from last month's Miss World Chile competition.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

IGNACIA FERNANDEZ: (Singing) [inaudible] .

ESTRIN: Wow. Ignacia Fernandez surprised the audience by ditching traditional musical forms and singing - yes, you're hearing it - death metal. Her singing helped her win the Miss World Chile crown, and researchers analyzing death metal say could also help people with vocal disorders. NPR's D. Parvaz has more.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO THE HELLFIRE")

LORNA SHORE: (Singing) Hold onto feeling.

D PARVAZ, BYLINE: That's Will Ramos of the band Lorna Shore, growling his way through "To The Hellfire." For his fans, those vocals are a big draw. They're primal, urgent, existential. But to researchers studying how those death metal performers sing like that, those vocals are a marvel with potentially therapeutic applications.

ELIZABETH ZHAROFF: Want to do pig squeal false cords?

WILL RAMOS: (Vocalizing).

PARVAZ: That's classically trained opera singer and voice coach Elizabeth Zharoff instructing Ramos to make one of his many catalog sounds - yep, the pig squeal - while Amanda Stark positions a camera down his throat. Stark is a postdoctoral researcher and a clinical speech language pathologist at the University of Utah. She helps people who are dealing with issues like vocal spasms improve their speech. Zharoff was enrolled in an intensive summer program at the university a few years ago when she met Stark and made her pitch.

ZHAROFF: I've been dying to get a camera down a person's throat as they were making screams or grunts, gurgles, distortions and harmonicities. I really wanted to see what this looked like.

PARVAZ: She already featured Will Ramos on her YouTube channel, The Charismatic Voice, and he didn't know how he made those sounds. So he agreed to participate. What Stark and Zharoff have been seeing in their research with the cameras and MRIs is remarkable. But basically, when we use our voices to produce sounds, they come from two main sources, our vocal folds, or cords, that's inside the larynx at the top of the trachea. We use them to produce vibrations. That's the main part. Then there's a vocal tract, which includes the throat, mouth and nose. But these metal singers do things differently.

AMANDA STARK: The true vocal fold vibration is not the sort of centerpiece of that style of singing, and rather, it's multiple different tissues and muscles that are vibrating above the source or above those true vocal folds.

PARVAZ: Stark said that at times she couldn't even see Ramos' vocal folds on camera. When he was, for instance, making one of his goblin sounds.

RAMOS: (Vocalizing).

PARVAZ: What Zharoff and Stark saw was Will Ramos relying on shaping his vocal tract, as opposed to his vocal folds, twisting his entire larynx and pulling it to one side.

ZHAROFF: If you did that with your hand and you turned your throat tube, you probably wouldn't be able to swallow, much less speak, right? The fact that Will's apparatus twists so extraordinarily, it's just, like, it totally blew my mind.

PARVAZ: And they aren't just looking at male voices.

ALISSA WHITE-GLUZ: (Vocalizing).

PARVAZ: That's Alissa White-Gluz, former vocalist for the Swedish death metal group, Arch Enemy. She's allowing her voice to be recorded, raw and unfiltered, offering a look at how someone with smaller lungs and body size than most male vocalists can create those monster sounds. One of the things White-Gluz does so beautifully, says voice coach Elizabeth Zharoff, is her dynamic shift between clean vocals and distortions. Listen for that switcheroo here in Arch Enemy's "Folie a Deux."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLIE A DEUX")

ARCH ENEMY: (Singing) Embalm me with your poison.

(Singing) Yet here I lay, locked in a frozen cage, with just one key.

PARVAZ: That growl there, that's really a challenge, as researcher Amanda Stark pointed out when I asked if she could make a goblin scream.

STARK: No, I can't do the goblin. I'm still working on my Batman false cord. I struggle. So I try to do like the (vocalizing). I just can't do it as effortlessly as these artists can.

PARVAZ: With female death metal singers, Zharoff says the goal is to learn to make those deep, brutal kinds of sounds. And White-Gluz shows it can be done.

WHITE-GLUZ: (Vocalizing).

PARVAZ: What all of this means is that we're not necessarily stuck with the voice we have. These singers are disciplined and train their voices, and despite what it might sound like, Stark and Zharoff saw that these singers were not damaging their throats. These findings could translate into treatment for those who have trouble speaking, perhaps by training them to use different parts of their throats, as these singers do.

STARK: Any of those tissues above the vocal folds. How do we incorporate some of those different vibrations into someone who maybe has had a vocal fold that's paralyzed? Or does this translate into a patient who has had a laryngectomy or had their entire voice box removed?

PARVAZ: Amanda Stark also says there's much more to be learned from how these death metal singers build the airflow, pressure and lung volume needed to make those sounds. But until then...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLIE A DEUX")

ARCH ENEMY: (Singing) Yet here I lay, locked in a frozen cage, with just one key.

PARVAZ: ...Stark and Zharoff continue to look down the throats of those primal singers.

(Imitating death metal voice) D. Parvaz. NPR News.

I sound like Cookie Monster (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLIE A DEUX")

ARCH ENEMY: (Singing) You'll always be deep inside. It's where you'll lie. Come spend eternity here with me.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5606915

GOATS AND SODA | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 10:32 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Our top global photo stories from 2025: Fearless women, solo polar bear, healing soups

By Marc Silver, Ben de la Cruz

In a world where video reigns supreme (hello TikTok and Instagram reels!), the still photograph still wields a special power. It freezes a moment in time and lets people take in that big picture but also gives them a chance to appreciate tiny details that might not be noticed at first.

For Goats and Soda, photography is an important part of our coverage of the daily life, of the joys and strife, of the Global South. Here are our top photo-driven stories of 2025.

Mother Nature must be really annoyed at our fakery

A polar bear in a zoo, a hotel balcony overlooking elephants, a tree mural shrouded by haze: They're images from the new book The Anthropocene Illusion, about the way humans are remaking Earth.

Why it took courage for these women to pose for the camera

Wearing traditional cosmetic face masks from their homeland of Madagascar, they agreed to be photographed to take a stand. They posed for photographer Miora Rajaonary for a project to raise awareness of female genital schistosomiasis (FGS), a disease transmitted by parasitic worms that, according to the World Health Organization, afflicts an estimated 56 million women and girls, mainly in Africa — and that is often mistaken for a sexually-transmitted disease.

The perilous lives of men who salvage coal from abandoned mines

It's a grueling and risky life for these miners, known as zama zamas, an isiZulu phrase translating loosely as "those who take a chance." Says one: "Bit by bit it's killing something inside me."

Thyme for some healing soup recipes from around the world

Every culture has its own special soup. The belief is that a bowl will make you feel better if you're feeling under the weather, hung over or just in need of a pick-me-up.

Portraits: A 10-year-old, a house painter and a mom who are running out of HIV pills

HIV medications were supposed to be exempt from U.S. aid cuts. In Zambia, for example, those on the ground say otherwise.

Prize-winning pictures: Images from this photo contest show tech changing the world

The website Rest of World got entries from 45 countries for a photo contest focusing on technology. Here are their top picks — from facial scans for migrants to kids in a Mongolian tent transfixed by a film.

Portraits of women who 'shine a light': from an 'analog' astronaut to a watermelon farmer

The Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, has a new photo exhibit in honor of International Women's Day: "Iconic Women: From Everyday Life to Global Heroes."

Here are 8 photography winners with disabilities who show the world their perspective

A little boy balancing precariously on a rope, a colorful bird perched on a tree, and fishermen at twilight all have one thing in common: They caught the attention of a photographer with a disability.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-102502

HEALTH | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 7:43 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Conversations bridge Public Health and MAHA

By Pien Huang

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's the Make America Healthy Again movement embodied for many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and there are leaders in public health who strongly critique that movement. It's not easy to get these camps to talk to each other, but a podcast called "Why Should I Trust You?" is trying. NPR's Pien Huang has more.

PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: To kick off these conversations, host Brinda Adhikari asks each person to introduce themselves. She told me here's where she's coming from.

BRINDA ADHIKARI: I think I've grown up mostly trusting institutions. I vaccinate my children. For all intents and purposes, if somebody wanted to put me in one camp or the other, they'd be like, oh, yeah, you're sort of leaning more towards public health.

HUANG: She's a former television producer who used to run the Apple TV show "The Problem With Jon Stewart." But holding these conversations with MAHA leaders has helped her realize things about herself.

ADHIKARI: I also harbor lots of feelings of mistrust. There are certain places where I do see eye to eye, very much so with the people in MAHA.

HUANG: Her podcast called "Why Should I Trust You?" launched a year ago. It's become known for putting traditional health leaders in the same virtual room with Kennedy's supporters to air their different views.

ADHIKARI: There's a lot of folks in public health who really believe strongly that this administration is harmful to public health.

HUANG: Kennedy has made deep cuts to the federal health workforce and budget and moved to reduce the number of vaccines children get, raising deep concerns among public health advocates.

ADHIKARI: And on the MAHA side, they deeply trust Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They love him, you know? The people I speak with. Like, there's a love there.

HUANG: A recent podcast episode on faith and science featured Elizabeth Frost, a MAHA organizer in Ohio. A few years ago, she heard Kennedy speak and felt a deep agreement.

ELIZABETH FROST: I prayed to God. I said, is this legit? You know, is he a good man?

HUANG: And then...

FROST: Profoundly, like, nothing I've ever heard before, something came over me and said, you need to do everything that you can to get that man elected. That's a divine order.

HUANG: Frost became the director of Kennedy's presidential campaign in Ohio. In the episode, she was joined by Reverend Wendy Silvers, who also worked on his campaign.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?")

WENDY SILVERS: You know, making it OK for pregnant women to receive the COVID vaccine. When I was pregnant with my child, I was told not to eat fish. I was told not to have mercury. I was told not to put anything into my body. But then all of a sudden, we've progressed to such a point where, if there's a problem, go get a vaccine.

HUANG: Silvers went on to claim that COVID vaccines led many people to have horrific reactions. Adhikari stepped in during the podcast.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?")

ADHIKARI: There always reaches a point at which somebody says a lot of data, that somebody else is just, like, that's not true. And those never really go anywhere, OK?

HUANG: She gave Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, a quick rebuttal.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?")

FRANCIS COLLINS: I do think, Reverend Wendy, that a fully objective review of all of the data without cherry picking would reveal that some of the things that you have put forward are not based upon the evidence.

HUANG: And then, as Adhikari urged, they moved on. At the end, Collins said it was a difficult conversation.

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?")

COLLINS: It does feel like it's a demonstration of how far we are apart from each other.

HUANG: Later, Adhikari told me the sessions can go on for hours. They are messy. They don't resolve.

ADHIKARI: You may leave being, like, this group thinks that vaccines are terrible. This group thinks that vaccines are the underpinning of public health, and never the twain shall meet. But I am not of the camp that we can only engage if the goal is to persuade.

HUANG: She's learned deeply held beliefs do not budge without time, trust and shared values. But many of her guests say they feel heard and have more empathy for the humans on the other side.

Pien Huang, NPR News.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5649812

HEALTH | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 7:43 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

A new study links the psychological benefits of swearing

By Scott Simon

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Scientists have determined that uttering curse words can offer pain relief, make you a little stronger. A study published in American Psychologist last week links that boost in brawn to state disinhibition, a psychological state where you're less likely to hold back. Nicholas Washmuth co-authored the study. He's a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama. He joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.

NICHOLAS WASHMUTH: Absolutely.

SIMON: Tell me about your research. Did you just tell a number of people, start swearing and try to pick up that chair?

WASHMUTH: No. It's - what we did in this most recent study was we had 300 participants complete a chair push-up task. Basically, we asked these participants to sit in a chair, using their hands and hands alone to lift their bottom off the chair for as long as possible. They did this while swearing and while also repeating a neutral word. And when they were swearing, they could hold that position longer. The reason why you can hold that position longer was because you are in a more disinhibited state. You're more willing to give yourself physically and mentally to that task after swearing.

SIMON: Any curse words work better than others?

WASHMUTH: The prompt we used was, share a swear word that you would use if you hit your head or stubbed your toe. And they also selected their neutral word using the prompt, share a word that you would use to describe this table. So when you ask a participant to choose a swear word they would use, that's a word that is likely powerful to them or they would use in certain situations where they need that boost. The most common words that were selected were the F-word and the S-word.

SIMON: Now - all right. My late aunt Izetta would not swear in front of us, but when something happened, she would say sugar - I think to replace the S-word. Would that have had the same effect?

WASHMUTH: Evidence would suggest made-up swear words or euphemisms for swear words do not have the same impact. So you can't say sugar or fudge or even say, the F-word. There's a line that needs to be crossed to enter that taboo realm. We don't know exactly where that line is yet. But right now evidence would suggest that you actually need to say the word to get that boost in performance.

SIMON: So what do we do with this information?

WASHMUTH: That is an excellent question. Our hope is that people would be engaged with this line of research and, if it is something that they are interested in, play around with this tool themselves in a safe, comfortable area where they're not going to offend somebody. But our research is transitioning more into this broader idea that if swearing helps you go for it or not hold back, can swearing as a tool be generalized to other situations where success depends on overcoming hesitancy? People tend to second-guess themselves during public speaking and when approaching a potential romantic partner. So can swearing privately just before public speaking or privately just before you ask someone out on a date - can that be a tool you can use to help you essentially be more successful in these situations where we tend to hold ourselves back?

SIMON: Nicholas Washmuth, co-author of the study "Don't Hold Back: Swearing Improves Strength Through State Disinhibition." You know, I get extra strength just from saying that BJ Leiderman does our theme music. Thanks so much for being with us.

WASHMUTH: Thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MARACUYA")

HERMANITOS: (Non-English language spoken).

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5654708

TREATMENTS | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 6:30 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

ADHD drugs may work indirectly to boost attention

By Jon Hamilton

Scientists are updating their view of how drugs like Adderall and Ritalin help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder stay on task.

The latest evidence is a study of thousands of brain scans of adolescents that confirms earlier hints that stimulant drugs have little direct impact on brain networks that control attention.

Instead, the drugs appear to activate networks involved in alertness and the anticipation of pleasure, scientists report in the journal Cell.

"We think it's a combination of both arousal and reward, that kind of one-two punch, that really helps kids with ADHD when they take this medication," says Dr. Benjamin Kay, a pediatric neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the study's lead author.

The results, along with those of smaller studies, support a "mindset shift about what stimulants are doing for people," says Peter Manza, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the research.

The new research analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a federally funded effort that includes brain scans of nearly 12,000 children. About 4% of these kids had ADHD when they entered the study, and nearly half of those were on a prescription stimulant.

About 3.5 million children in the U.S. take an ADHD medication, and the number is rising.

Medication and brain networks

The brain scan data included a type of MRI that measures brain activity when a person is at rest. That allowed Kay and a team of scientists to see which brain areas were becoming more active in response to the drugs.

Kay expected to find lots of activity in areas that let a person control what they pay attention to.

"What I actually found was that those were the parts of the brain that were least affected," he says.

Instead, the drugs were stimulating areas that help people stay awake and alert, and areas that anticipate a pleasurable reward.

This double effect seems to occur because stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall boost levels of two different brain chemicals, says Dr. Nico Dosenbach, the paper's senior author and a professor at Washington University.

The first chemical is norepinephrine, which prepares the body and brain for action.

The study found that this "fight or flight" response counteracts the usual cognitive declines associated with sleep deprivation on cognitive performance. Lack of sleep is a problem for many adolescents, but especially those with ADHD.

The second brain chemical is dopamine, which plays an important role in the brain's reward system. And a boost in dopamine levels may help children with ADHD feel more positive about mundane tasks like homework.

Usually, the brain's expectation is, "this is going to be terrible, this is going to be boring," Dosenbach says. "Dopamine can make you more tolerant because you are feeling a slight, low-level reward."

It's still too soon to know whether that's what's going on, Manza says. But he agrees that stimulants are doing something in the brain that helps kids with ADHD do things like homework.

"They don't find math problems very interesting, but after a dose of Ritalin it might seem more interesting to them," he says, "and so they're willing to persist and finish the task."

Brain scans before drugs?

The new study's findings shouldn't undermine clinicians' confidence in the effectiveness of stimulants for ADHD, Kay says. But they do suggest that it's important to rule out factors like sleep deprivation before turning to medication.

"This was a really personal paper for me because I prescribe these drugs all the time," Kay says.

The results also suggest that brain scans might eventually offer a way to know whether a child is likely to benefit from drug treatment, Manza says.

"Stimulants don't work for everyone," he says, "so we need to better target the individuals who need them."

MRI scans could even offer a better way to diagnose ADHD someday, Manza says. That's badly needed, he says, in an era where more and more children and young adults are being told they have the disorder and should be on medication.

Transcript

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Scientists are changing their view of how drugs like Adderall and Ritalin help children with ADHD stay on task. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on a new study that found the drugs act on brain networks involved in alertness and reward but not attention.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: About 3.5 million children in the U.S. take stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Dr. Benjamin Kay, of Washington University in St. Louis, says he finds it puzzling that these drugs actually work.

BENJAMIN KAY: If we're treating predominantly hyperactivity, why would a drug that wakes you up more help with that?

HAMILTON: So Kay, a pediatric neurologist, jumped at the chance to study how these stimulants affect a child's brain.

KAY: This was a really personal paper for me because I prescribe these medications all the time.

HAMILTON: Kay was part of a team that reviewed data from a government study that includes brain scans of nearly 12,000 adolescents. About 4% had ADHD, and nearly half of those children were on a prescription stimulant. Kay says that allowed the team to see which brain areas were affected by the drugs.

KAY: What I expected to find was that the stimulants would act on the parts of the brain that modulate attention. What I actually found was that those were the parts of the brain that were least affected.

HAMILTON: Instead, the drugs stimulated brain areas that help us stay awake and alert. They also activated areas that anticipate a pleasurable reward.

KAY: We really think it's a combination of both arousal and reward - that kind of one-two punch - that really, really helps kids with ADHD when they take this medication.

HAMILTON: The first punch involves norepinephrine, which prepares the body and brain for action. The study found that this response could counteract the effects of sleep deprivation, a common problem in children with ADHD. Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a coauthor of the study, says the second punch seems to help kids overcome another common problem.

NICO DOSENBACH: They're looking at some kind of homework and their brain goes, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be boring. I don't like this, and then you can't stick with it.

HAMILTON: Dosenbach says ADHD drugs seem to limit this negative response by boosting levels of dopamine, a brain chemical that influences motivation and pleasure.

DOSENBACH: It can make you more tolerant because you're feeling a slight sort of low-level, low-key reward.

HAMILTON: Dosenbach says dopamine may also explain why children with ADHD can sit still and focus on an activity that they do find rewarding. He says this behavior even led one dad to conclude that his son was faking ADHD.

DOSENBACH: He was like, well, when I take him hunting, he can sit in a high stand all day long without moving a muscle. But in school, he's bouncing off the walls and leaving the classroom and wandering off the premises.

HAMILTON: Dosenbach suspects hunting simply produced enough dopamine to offset the boy's hyperactivity. The findings appear in the journal, Cell. Neuroscientist Peter Manza, of the University of Maryland, says they show how ADHD researchers are moving away from the idea that stimulants directly improve attention. He says his own work suggests that stimulants are boosting motivation in kids with ADHD.

PETER MANZA: They don't find math problems very interesting, but after a dose of Ritalin it might seem more interesting to them, and so they're willing to persist and finish the task.

HAMILTON: Manza says the study also suggests that brain scans might eventually offer a way to confirm that a child has ADHD and will benefit from drug treatment.

MANZA: Stimulants don't work for everyone, and so we need to better target the individuals who need them and not unnecessarily prescribe them to the individuals who don't need them.

HAMILTON: That's a growing concern as stimulant prescriptions continue to rise.

Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF DELICATE STEVE'S "PEACHES")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5658291

Related

- NPR

Science

- Uncovering the mystery of how algae makes snow green, red or orange: 2025 Dec 28

- What we have learned about neuroscience in 2025: 2025 Dec 27

SCIENCE | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:13 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Uncovering the mystery of how algae makes snow green, red or orange

By Nell Greenfieldboyce

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Some of you may be looking out the window right now at a beautiful blanket of white snow. But did you know sometimes snow can look green or orange or red? Here's a story from NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce about a rainbow-colored snowfield in Montana's Glacier National Park.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: In the Western United States, snow algae most often turns snow pink. People call this watermelon snow. Trinity Hamilton is a biologist at the University of Minnesota. She says, if you were out hiking or skiing and came across this snow algae...

TRINITY HAMILTON: It would look like someone sprayed Gatorade, like a red Gatorade or Kool-Aid (laughter) out on the snow surface.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Not too long ago, though, researchers with her lab were in the Rocky Mountains and came across one spot that had not just pink snow but also patches of orange and green. Researcher Pablo Almela says this was a real surprise.

PABLO ALMELA: The thing is, after three years sampling the Rockies was the first time we found in the same snow patch the three different colors. So that's why it was really shocking. We took the opportunity to study why they were different.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says it normally can be hard to directly compare different colors of snow algae from different places since snow and environmental conditions can be so varied. But here, they were all in the same setting. So the researchers collected samples for lab analysis. They also took measurements to check the impact of each color on absorbing light and heat, which can affect snow melting. Almela says he initially thought the three colors might all be the same species of algae, just at different stages of its life cycle, but no.

ALMELA: Different colors were related to different species, different communities of the snow algae blooms.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: And he says compared to the orange and green, the red color increased snow melting the most by far. He says this could help explain why red is more commonly found than other colors.

ALMELA: This color will represent an advantage because they can melt more snow, so they have more liquid water surrounding the cells.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: And the algae cells need liquid water to survive. The findings were recently published in a science journal called New Phytologist. Roman Dial, a researcher who wasn't part of the team, says he loves these results. He's with Alaska Pacific University and has been thinking about the colors of snow algae for a long time, ever since he first saw red snow.

ROMAN DIAL: It's pretty amazing that the snow algae are basically the best color they could be to help produce liquid water in a frozen environment.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: With climate change, there's now increased interest in how colorful snow algae might speed up glacier melting. Robin Kodner is with Western Washington University. She says there's so many basic questions about snow algae that still need to be answered.

ROBIN KODNER: Like, how do the algae get there in the first place, and do they reappear in the same place from year to year? And that sort of determines, like, why you might have multiple colors on a single patch. Like, you just need to know how they get there.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: To help figure that out, she recently started something called the Living Snow Project. Volunteers help track snow algae while they're skiing or hiking in the mountains. Over a thousand samples have been sent in so far.

Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF LONE'S "JADED")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5642727-e1

SCIENCE | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 7:43 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

What we have learned about neuroscience in 2025

By Jon Hamilton, Scott Simon

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And it has been a banner year in brain science. We've learned that lifestyle changes really can keep your brain young and that electrical pulses can help with rheumatoid arthritis, and that LSD can relieve anxiety and depression. Scientists even managed to replicate a human brain network that carries pain signals. NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton joins us. Jon, thanks so much for being with us.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.

SIMON: Well, let's start with that brain network. What does it do?

HAMILTON: Well, it recreates the pathway that carries brain signals from, say, your fingertip to the part of the brain that says, you know, ouch, that hurts. And that pathway has several sort of relay stations along the way. So a team at Stanford decided to recreate those stations using brain organoids, which are these pea-sized clumps of human brain cells that can mimic different types of brain tissue. In this case, the scientists used four different organoids representing the four types of nerve cells that relay pain signals. And when they put these organoids together in a dish, they spontaneously wired up to form the entire pain pathway.

SIMON: That sounds extraordinary, but I have to ask - can you tell if the organoids in a dish felt anything?

HAMILTON: You can, and the way you can tell is with red hot chile peppers. The scientists took the organoid that was acting like a nerve ending, and they exposed it to chemicals like the ones in hot chile peppers, you know, that burn your mouth. Here is Dr. Sergiu Pasca explaining what happened.

SERGIU PASCA: We discovered that if you start adding some of these compounds that are inducing inflammatory responses of pain, then you start seeing that information traveling. The neurons that sends these signals get activated. And they transmit that information to the next station and the next station, all the way to the cortex.

HAMILTON: There's good reason for this research, too. It's part of an effort to help people with chronic pain.

SIMON: Let's move on to the whole question of trying to keep your brain young. Like, can you really do that?

HAMILTON: Why, yes, you can. At least according to a really big study funded by the Alzheimer's Association. This study involved about 2,000 people in their 60s and 70s, and they were all pretty sedentary, at least at the beginning. Half of these people spent two years getting aerobic exercise at the gym, eating a Mediterranean diet, watching their blood pressure and taking part in this really demanding cognitive training program. The other people - they were just told to eat better and exercise more. At the end of the study, the people in the hardcore program did better on tests of thinking and memory. And their scores were actually as good as those from people a year or two younger than they were.

SIMON: Now, we got help (ph) for other things that catch up to us as we get older, like rheumatoid arthritis. There's a new treatment for that, right?

HAMILTON: There is, and it's pretty surprising. So rheumatoid arthritis happens when the immune system starts damaging your joints. People who have it are usually treated with drugs that reduce pain and inflammation. Unfortunately, some of those drugs are really expensive. They can leave people more vulnerable to infections. So in July, the Food and Drug Administration approved a device that uses pulses of electricity to keep the immune system from going after a person's joints.

SIMON: It sounds like one of the commercials you see on late-night TV. Does it work? How does it work?

HAMILTON: It actually does. This device is the passion project of Dr. Kevin Tracey. He's president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research on Long Island. More than 20 years ago, Tracey became fascinated by this discovery that a signal from the brain could suppress inflammation in the body. He and a team of scientists began studying how the system worked, and here's Tracey explaining what they found.

KEVIN TRACEY: We realized that the signal was traveling down the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve was like the brake lines in your car. It was the brakes on inflammation. And this started this entire idea of, can we make devices that turn on the brakes and then treat patients with excessive inflammation?

HAMILTON: The vagus nerve, of course, connects your brain to your gut and other internal organs, but along the way, it passes through your neck. And a company founded by Tracey was able to implant a device in a person's neck that could actually deliver electrical pulses to the vagus nerve. And sure enough, it actually reduced inflammation in people's joints. Some of them say it even changed their lives, and now this device is on the market.

SIMON: I've been saving this. Tell us about LSD used to treat anxiety and depression.

HAMILTON: Happy to, Scott. This is part of a big trend in brain science in the past few years, where researchers are testing psychoactive drugs for a range of mental illnesses, including depression and PTSD. And now we have the first large, rigorous trial of LSD for anxiety. It involved nearly 200 people with a disabling condition called generalized anxiety disorder, which is often accompanied by depression. And the study found that people who got just one single large dose of LSD felt better almost immediately, and they were still better three months after they got the drug.

SIMON: With all this good news about brain research in 2025, can we expect to build on that in the year ahead?

HAMILTON: Well, a lot of the research we've been talking about was funded by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. Some of that funding has been delayed or eliminated by the Trump administration. The administration said the cuts were needed to reduce waste and better align research with the president's priorities. So maybe don't expect quite as many advances in the new year.

SIMON: NPR's Jon Hamilton. Thanks so much.

HAMILTON: My pleasure, Scott.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5647682

Religion

- Faith leaders on wrestling with pain, politics and hope in a turbulent year: 2025 Dec 28

RELIGION | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:08 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Faith leaders on wrestling with pain, politics and hope in a turbulent year

By Daniel Estrin

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Leaders of many faiths have been confronted with all kinds of needs this past year - sometimes spiritual heartaches and sometimes immediate crises. We invited representatives of three major world religions to tell us how they've been guiding their flocks through this year of faraway wars, layoffs, immigration crackdowns and social change. Rabbi Ari Saks told us that bloodshed across the world is constantly on people's minds at his synagogue, Torat Yisrael in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

ARI SAKS: The events of October 7 - that moment isn't just something that goes away. It's something that reminds us of thousands of years of antisemitism, including the latest at Bondi Beach. The story of the Middle East has carried itself over to all the different four corners of the Earth.

ESTRIN: In California, Nihal Khan is mending hearts as an imam on UCLA's campus and trying to staunch unimaginable pain.

NIHAL KHAN: We have students from Gaza who have lost, without any exaggeration, dozens if not hundreds of family members and who have been displaced. It's been a difficult year overall in that - from that perspective, and just providing space to students to collect themselves and to move forward in the precarious and unknown future.

ESTRIN: Ginger Gaines-Cirelli is senior pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Economic uncertainty is starting to break some of the people in her care.

GINGER GAINES-CIRELLI: A member of my congregation lost his job at USAID. One day, he had received the letter in his email box - I think it was a Tuesday - that the coming Thursday, he was going to have 15 minutes to go into his office that he had been in for over 20 years and clean out all of his personal effects. And he said, I got the letter, and I finally broke. And he said, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.

ESTRIN: We invited Imam Nihal, Rabbi Saks and Pastor Ginger to join us for a little interfaith dialogue about people turning toward religion during times of trouble. I asked Pastor Ginger about the sweeping changes we've seen under President Trump, some in the name of Christian values.

GAINES-CIRELLI: I have to take a deep breath before jumping into that one.

ESTRIN: (Laughter) Please do.

GAINES-CIRELLI: The 25 years that I have been serving in ministry in this country, I've had to serve as an apologist for the Christian faith because so much of what has been said, done by folks claiming the name Christian has felt so completely alien to my own experience of the God of Jesus and the faith that I have been formed. And I have folks who don't want to claim the name Christian because it has been so tarnished.

ESTRIN: Wow.

GAINES-CIRELLI: Christianity is not about controlling others or protecting privilege. It's about following Jesus, who consistently chose love over domination and who chose compassion over cruelty, every time. The conversation we're having is, what does it really mean to love God and love our neighbors? The neighbor is not necessarily just your family member or just your tribe or just your country. Jesus was crossing boundaries. Jesus was caring for the vulnerable, not kicking them out.

ESTRIN: ICE has been picking up undocumented immigrants on the streets this year. Has that been happening around your congregation? Has that been sparking dialogue?

GAINES-CIRELLI: Yeah, so the congregation I serve is part of interfaith work. To try to interrupt occasions where ICE is showing up, we sort of track where things are happening. We have people who are just simply not coming into D.C. because they're afraid of being picked up. Our faith teaches us that we're to love and care for the stranger and the sojourn or the migrant trying to find refuge and asylum.

ESTRIN: On the opposite side of the country, Imam Nihal, many of the students you work with on campus are undocumented, right? And they're also being impacted by the immigration crackdowns this year.

KHAN: Yeah, I mean, if - that's the other issue that's been on everyone's mind, that many students that are here, like, particularly within Los Angeles, that are undocumented - they're living in a constant state of fear. Just a few weeks ago, I remember there was a app that basically tracks and shows where there have been ICE sightings. So we saw that there were three or four locations that were near some of the dormitories. So that had people on edge, obviously. And as the pastor was mentioning, this cannot be farther than what Jesus would have wanted because as Muslims - for us, Jesus is a very important figure, and the narratives of his birth is something that Christians and Muslims most definitely can connect over and makes us wonder that - is that how, if Jesus was here in 2025 in the United States, whether we would welcome him in, or would we push him out from the borders of our country?

GAINES-CIRELLI: It's a great question.

ESTRIN: Do you think about that, too?

GAINES-CIRELLI: For sure. I mean, I always said Jesus would likely be much more conservative than some would like and much more liberal than others would like, and nobody would like him, and he'd probably get ignored or kicked out.

SAKS: As you're having that conversation together, I'm reminded of...

ESTRIN: This is Rabbi Saks. Go ahead.

SAKS: ...A teaching from William Penn, who formed Pennsylvania in the late 17th century. He rebelled against his father's form of Christianity and became a Quaker. And at that time in England, Quakers were very much persecuted against. When he came to America and formed Pennsylvania, he said, I want this to become a holy experiment in that every religion could be able to find its place. And it's only because of him that we have embedded in our Constitution freedom of religion, that there should be no state religion. And embedded in that is the freedom of movement of people of different backgrounds, of different faith traditions to come to America, to be able to practice their way of life in a free way. And that behooves the society to be able to say there is all the ways in which we can learn from each other and grow with each other.

ESTRIN: All of you work with young people, students or members of your congregation. What do young people want right now, in their lives?

SAKS: In the class I just taught, which was over 30 undergraduate students on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I asked a question about what gives them hope, and I can't tell you how many people said that their faith gives them hope. And so in thinking about to what extent is God real for many young people, I think that for many young people, it is and that they're looking for God, they're looking for their religions to give them a sense of hope for the future.

ESTRIN: Imam Nihal.

KHAN: I think many Muslims are looking to their faith not to merely socially ascribe to a group, but how does this faith provide me meaning? How does this faith provide me solutions to my life? How does this faith provide me the ability to traverse the world on hand? What does my faith tell me about responding to difficulties? What does my faith tell me about helping the oppressed and the downtrodden?

GAINES-CIRELLI: My experience is that young people are looking for community that feels engaged in what is going on in the world and has something to say about it and helps them make decisions and to discern how best to move around in a world that feels completely unmoored. I don't see young people and young adults moving away from spirituality and faith. I think that they're longing for so much of what our faith traditions offer.

ESTRIN: Looking ahead into the new year, 2026, can you leave us with a prayer, a verse, a quote that you think speaks to this moment that we all might benefit from? Imam Nihal, can we start with you?

KHAN: So one thing that I've been thinking about in regards to 2026 that may be helpful for all of us is, the Prophet Muhammad prayed, oh, God, allow us to see truth for truth and allow us to accept it and allow us to see falsehood as falsehood and allow us to keep ourselves away from it.

ESTRIN: Pastor Ginger.

GAINES-CIRELLI: Two-thousand and twenty-five times now, officially, we've celebrated the Christ light coming into the world again. And from the first time and every time since, that light has come into a world that was in pain and broken. In the midst of that, the light is joy. And so I'm going to leave us with some verses from Philippians, the letter to the Philippians.

(Reading) Rejoice in the Lord, always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

ESTRIN: Rabbi Saks.

SAKS: I'd like to share this final berakah, this final blessing, offering that appears throughout Jewish liturgy. Oseh shalom bimromav. May the one who makes peace, who makes wholeness possible in the highest of heavens, to be able to create the wonders of all that is creation. Hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu. May he be the one who makes peace upon all of us. V'al kol yoshvei tevel. And upon all of humanity, to be able to make humanity understand and experience that wholeness that comes when we feel at peace with one another as part of all of God's beautiful creation. And let us say, amen.

ESTRIN: Amen to that. Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli is senior pastor of the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Nihal Khan is the Muslim chaplain at UCLA. And Ari Saks is rabbi at Temple Torat Yisrael in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Thank you all so much for being here, and I hope we all have a joyful and a peaceful 2026.

GAINES-CIRELLI: Thank you, Daniel.

KHAN: Thank you.

SAKS: Thank you so much.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5653277

Books

- Mass-market books are disappearing from grocery store racks: 2025 Dec 28

BOOK NEWS & FEATURES | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 8:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Mass-market books are disappearing from grocery store racks

By Daniel Estrin

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

There was a time when you could walk into any drugstore or grocery store and pick up a paperback book from one of those spinning racks. You know, your Stephen Kings, the bestsellers like "Jaws," the gothic horror series "Flowers In The Attic" by V.C. Andrews, pretty much any romance by Danielle Steel. These were called mass-market paperbacks, and their era is coming to an end this week. Esther Margolis has worked in the publishing industry for decades. She's the publisher of Newmarket Books, and she joins me now. Welcome to the program, Miss. Margolis.

ESTHER MARGOLIS: Happy to be here, Daniel. Please call me Esther.

ESTRIN: Well, Esther, let me start with this question - the large book distributor ReaderLink has decided to give up on mass-market paperbacks. Were they just no longer profitable?

MARGOLIS: I'm sure it's purely a business decision. The so-called mass paperback, remember, is a format that's around 4 by 7 in size. It fits into those spinning racks that you mentioned or these wire racks in supermarkets, etc. But what happened in the mid-'80s because of the expansion of bookstores and new shelving that went up, the paperbacks got larger, so they were no longer this convenient size that could cheaply be made and fit into these wire racks all over the place. Those are known as trade paperbacks. They have a different business model. Royalties are different for them. Discounts are different for them. The paper is better. The physical production is different, and those started to become a kind of product that became very desirable by consumers and made a lot of sense to retailers. So from the mid-'80s on, that format kept growing and growing, moving the wire racks out of retail space and these wooden shelves going in. And ultimately, here we are at 2025, you rarely see wire racks now. You might see them in the airport now.

ESTRIN: Right. Mass-market paperbacks started in the U.S. in 1939. So what was the appeal?

MARGOLIS: The fact that it was going to be cheap. The first books were a quarter, and the editorial had value because pocketbooks was able to license really good books or good writers like Mickey Spillane from hardcover publishers. So the combination of the three things, the physical size, accessibility. And it was cheap, and it gave you entertainment or information.

ESTRIN: Were there authors whose careers really took off because of the reach of mass market paperbacks?

MARGOLIS: Absolutely. Kurt Vonnegut is a good example.

ESTRIN: Oh.

MARGOLIS: Kurt actually started original paperbacks originally. And, of course, Jackie Susann and "Valley Of The Dolls" was the marker at that point.

ESTRIN: Esther, were you a fan of mass-market paperbacks?

MARGOLIS: Loved them.

ESTRIN: Yeah. Did you buy them?

MARGOLIS: Oh, my God, yes. I mean, that's what you bought. You know, Ian Valentine used to go around. He was a legendary publisher, and he would say the classic of tomorrow was the bestseller of yesterday. What the mass paperback gave you was incredible opportunity, which today, unfortunately, you don't really have. You have the technology that enables you to get books anytime, you know, on the internet, e-books. But if you want to browse, you go to a bookstore. So it's a much more limited availability now of the physical book.

ESTRIN: Well, you spoke with Publishers Weekly, and you said, I believe that mass-market paperbacks democratized America.

MARGOLIS: Yeah. I do believe that.

ESTRIN: What do you mean exactly?

MARGOLIS: You could be anybody of any kind of background. And for basically the equivalent of a dollar or two, you know, you could be educated. You didn't have to be in a structure. You didn't have to be an elitist. People who grew up only knowing schoolbooks and realizing that they could actually get entertained and informed by these little paperbacks, you could pick them up at the schoolbook fair. You could pick them up at a local gas station. You can't really do that today. You can't.

ESTRIN: So as you watch the era of the mass-market paperback go, are you sad?

MARGOLIS: I'm very sad about it. I've been sad about it for a while. Even during the '80s, when it started to really shift, I was sad because it really - like you asked before, that you could actually establish a total unknown. Today, thank God, you have TikTok and BookTok. They could take somebody unknown and somebody can just get on a camera and say, I love this book, and next thing you know, you have Colleen Hoover or somebody. But that's what you could have done in the past paperback that you can't do really today. To me, Stephen King is a great example. I mean, his whole career, I don't know what - how that might have been built otherwise, if not for the mass-market paperback.

ESTRIN: Well, Esther Margolis...

MARGOLIS: Well, Daniel Estrin.

ESTRIN: ...Publisher of Newmarket Press. It's been a great pleasure speaking with you and thank you for paying tribute to the mass-market paperback that may soon be no more.

MARGOLIS: Thank you. Well, lovely for me, and thanks for letting me review some of my wonderful times that I had in this world.

(SOUNDBITE OF PAUL SIKIVIE'S "RILE'S WILES")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5651272

Culture

- This painting is missing. Do you have it?: 2025 Dec 28

- Sunday Puzzle: P-A-R-T-Y words and names: 2025 Dec 28

- Brigitte Bardot, sex goddess of cinema, has died: 2025 Dec 28

- 'Wait Wait' for December 27, 2025: Season's greetings from Wait Wait!: 2025 Dec 27

- Perry Bamonte, guitarist and keyboardist for The Cure, dies at 65: 2025 Dec 27

FINE ART | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

This painting is missing. Do you have it?

By Jennifer Vanasco

This is a story about a missing painting, from an artist you may never have heard of. Though she helped shape European modern art, German artist Gabriele Münter's work was quickly overshadowed in the public's mind by her 12-year relationship with noted abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.

She met Kandinsky in Munich in 1902, and with his tutoring, she "mastered color as well as the line," she told a German public broadcaster in 1957. Together with other artists, they founded an avant-garde arts collective called Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911.

At the time, most modern artists, like Kandinsky, were moving toward more and more abstract work. Not Münter. In her paintings, people look like people and flowers look like flowers. But her dazzling colors, simplified forms and dramatic scenes are startlingly fresh; her domestic scenes are so immediate that they feel like you've interrupted a crucial, private moment.

"Gabriele Münter was so pioneering, so adventurous in her adherence to life," said Megan Fontanella, curator of modern art and provenance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. "She is revitalizing the still life, the landscape, the portrait genres, and presenting them in these really fresh and dynamic ways."

Yet, perhaps due to her relationship with Kandinsky, her work was rarely collected by important museums after her death in 1962 (she herself said she was seen as "an unnecessary side dish" to him), and so her paintings largely disappeared from the public eye.

Now Münter is having a moment, with exhibitions this year in Madrid and Paris, as well as one currently at the Guggenheim in New York. The New York show is an expansive one and includes American street photography in the late 1890s, alongside over 50 paintings, from her dazzlingly colored European landscapes to portraits capturing the expressive faces of people she knew.

Yet, when Fontanella was putting "Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World" together, there was one painting she couldn't find: Music, from 1916.

In it, a violinist is playing in the center of a yellow room, with two people quietly listening. It's set in a living room — but because it uses her wild colors and flattened figures, it feels vibrant and dramatic, not cozy or saccharine.

Fontanella said this painting is important because it provides a window into Münter's life after she separated from Kandinsky, who had gone on to marry someone else. She was struggling financially, and she was no longer the promising young person she once was. But Fontanella said the painting shows she had found a new creative circle.

"There's something really uplifting about that. You know, it speaks to her resilience, her sense of adaptation," Fontanella said. Instead of showing those years as dark and challenging, it is serene and warm, joyful. "I think that's really important because especially with a woman artist, it's so easy to get tripped up in her biography and really see it colored by her romantic relationships when, in fact, the paintings tell a different story."

Fontanella said she used every tool available to her to find Music. She worked with Münter's foundation and contacted owners of collections in Europe and the United States, from institutions to private collectors. She read correspondence and catalogs from past exhibitions.

It's not unusual for art to vanish from public view if it's not held at an institution. Private collectors often want to keep their holdings quiet. If they don't sell a particular work at an auction or lend it to a museum, only a very small number of people might know that it still exists and where it is.

Fontanella was able to trace Music to its last known owner — a German collector named Eugen Eisenmann, who had the painting in 1977.

"There was a moment where the collection was starting to be broken apart and dispersed and no longer being held by subsequent relatives or family members," she said.

Then the trail ended.

Not the end of the story

But just because the painting hasn't surfaced yet doesn't mean it never will. Take the story of a piece called There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to. —Washington, 26 December 1786, depicting Shays' Rebellion, one of 30 works in the Struggle series by artist Jacob Lawrence. A 2020 traveling exhibition organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., had brought the works together for the first time in 60 years.

Five of the paintings couldn't be located, and the curators put placeholders where those paintings should have been: black-and-white photographs of the canvases if they existed, blank spaces if they didn't.

"We didn't have any image of it. There really was no trace," said Sylvia Yount, the curator in charge of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She co-curated the Met's presentation of the exhibition with curator Randall Griffey. "We had decided to leave the missing panels as kind of an absence, to really underline the absence. There was a blank on the wall."

And, then, the miracle.

A visitor to the exhibition went home, contacted a friend "and said, 'I think you might have one of these missing panels,'" Yount explained.

The friend did. When Yount, Griffey and art conservator Isabelle Duvernois went to see the painting — which was just across Central Park from the Met in an apartment on the Upper West Side — "we walked in and immediately knew it was right," Yount said.

Within about two weeks, it was hanging in the exhibition. Incredibly, not long later, a second panel was found. Because that one needed some conservation work and a new frame, it didn't join the series at the Met, but it did become part of the show later as it traveled across the United States.

That kind of thing "doesn't happen every day," Yount said, laughing.

Could it happen again?

But Fontanella hopes that it could happen for Münter's painting. She included a photograph of it in the catalog so that people would know what to look for.

"What I always hope with stories like this is that the painting will resurface in its own time, you know, when it wants to be discovered," Fontanella said. "But there's been so much genuine interest in Gabriele Münter as an artist, as a person, that I feel it's only just on the horizon that this painting will come to light."

"Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World" is on view at the Guggenheim in New York through April 2026.

Ciera Crawford edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/nx-s1-5610792

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SUNDAY PUZZLE | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 6:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Sunday Puzzle: P-A-R-T-Y words and names

By Will Shortz

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

On-air challenge

Today I've brought a game of 'Categories' based on the word "party." For each category I give, you tell me something in it starting with each of the letters, P-A-R-T-Y.  For example, if the category were "Four-Letter Boys' Names" you might say Paul, Adam, Ross, Tony, and Yuri. Any answer that works is OK, and you can give answers in any order.

1. Colors

2. Major League Baseball Teams

3. Foreign Rivers

4. Foods for a Thanksgiving Meal

Last week's challenge

I was at a library. On the shelf was a volume whose spine said "OUT TO SEA." When I opened the volume, I found the contents has nothing to do with sailing or the sea in any sense. It wasn't a book of fiction either. What was in the volume?

Challenge answer

It was a volume of an encyclopedia with entries from OUT- to SEA-.

Winner

Mark Karp of Marlboro Township, N.J.

This week's challenge

This week's challenge comes from Joseph Young, of St. Cloud, Minn. Think of a two-syllable word in four letters. Add two letters in front and one letter behind to make a one-syllable word in seven letters. What words are these?

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Wednesday, December 31 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Time to play the Puzzle.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVEN HENLEY JR.'S "PLAY THE PUZZLE")

ESTRIN: Joining us, as always, is Will Shortz. He's the puzzle editor of The New York Times and puzzlemaster of WEEKEND EDITION. How's it going, Will?

WILL SHORTZ: Excellent. Welcome back, Daniel.

ESTRIN: Oh, thank you. I'm really glad to be back speaking with you. Please remind us of last week's challenge.

SHORTZ: Well, it was sort of an odd one. I said I was at a library. On the shelf was a volume whose spine said, out to sea. And I said when I opened the volume, I found that the contents had nothing to do with sailing or the sea in any sense, and it wasn't a book of fiction either. What was in the volume? Well, it was a volume of an encyclopedia with entries reading from O-U-T to S-E-A.

ESTRIN: Yes. I knew it. I thought that that's what it was. I was trying with my father and my sister to puzzle that one out. Well, there were 985 correct entries, and this week's winner is Mark Karp of Marlboro Township, New Jersey. Congratulations, Mark.

MARK KARP: Thank you.

ESTRIN: So how did you figure it out?

KARP: Well, it came to me right away. Growing up, we owned the 1964 World Book Encyclopedia. And I remembered that on the spine, each book had a range of nonsense syllables which spanned the first three letters of the subject name. So the premise sounded familiar.

ESTRIN: Very good. So how long have you been playing the Puzzle?

KARP: Well, my friend Phil clued me into the Puzzle. And since then, I've been listening to the Puzzle in downloaded batches. But in the last few weeks, I started listening early enough to submit answers, and I got lucky.

ESTRIN: And what do you do when you're not playing the Puzzle?

KARP: I'm a recently retired database engineer and spend my time hiking, biking, skiing, playing in multiple softball leagues and doing The New York Times word puzzles. The crossword's been part of my daily routine since the Eugene T. Maleska days, and I've probably done, I'd say, 99% of the Will Shortz-edited crosswords.

ESTRIN: Very nice. Well, I guess you are ready to play this Puzzle, but I have to ask. Mark, are you ready to play the Puzzle?

KARP: Well, my son Matt told me I was born for this, so we'll see.

ESTRIN: All right. Take it away, Will.

SHORTZ: All right, Mark and Daniel. Today, I brought a game of categories based on the word party. For each category I give, you tell me something in it starting with each of the letters P-A-R-T-Y. For example, if the category were four-letter boys' names, you might say Paul, Adam, Ross, Tony and Yuri. Any answer that works is OK, and you can give the answers in any order. Here's your first category - colors.

KARP: Purple. Azure?

SHORTZ: Yes.

KARP: Red, turquoise, yellow.

SHORTZ: Yellow is it. Good job. Your next category is Major League Baseball teams.

KARP: Pirates, Angels, Reds, Yankees.

SHORTZ: Yes, and there's two Ts. One of them is in Detroit.

KARP: Oh, Tigers, of course.

ESTRIN: And there's also the Minnesota Twins. Good job. Your next category is foreign rivers.

KARP: Po?

SHORTZ: I've heard of that. Where is the Po?

ESTRIN: The Po is in Italy.

SHORTZ: OK. There's also the Parana - it's the second-largest river in South America - and the Paraguay, also in South America. OK. Go ahead.

KARP: Yangtze.

SHORTZ: Good. A, R and T.

KARP: The Rhine, or the Rhone.

SHORTZ: Good. A and T.

KARP: Might need some help here, Daniel.

SHORTZ: There's an A that's literally one of the longest rivers in the world, and it's in South America.

KARP: Oh, the Amazon.

SHORTZ: The Amazon, of course. And T? There are several, but maybe the best-known one is the one that goes through London.

KARP: Oh, the Thames.

SHORTZ: The Thames. Also, the Tigris and the Tiber would work. And how about foods that might be served at a Christmas meal?

KARP: Turkey.

SHORTZ: Good.

KARP: Yams.

SHORTZ: Yes.

KARP: Potatoes.

SHORTZ: Good.

KARP: Asparagus?

SHORTZ: Asparagus is good. Also, apple...

KARP: And...

SHORTZ: ...Pie. Good. All you need's an R.

KARP: Radishes.

SHORTZ: Radishes. OK. Well, I think you can do better than radish. How about - what's something that you might serve? What might people...

KARP: Rice.

SHORTZ: ...Put butter on at the start of the meal?

KARP: Rice or rolls.

SHORTZ: Good job. I'm impressed.

ESTRIN: Well done. So am I. How do you feel, Mark?

KARP: Not as smart as I did 10 minutes ago, but I'm all right.

ESTRIN: (Laughter) I think you did great. Well, for playing our Puzzle today, you're going to get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, as well as puzzle books and games. You can read all about it at /puzzle. And final question, Mark - what member station do you listen to?

KARP: I listen on the website and via podcasts.

ESTRIN: Great. That works, too. That's Mark Karp of Marlboro Township, New Jersey. Thank you for playing the Puzzle.

KARP: Thank you, too.

ESTRIN: All right. Will, what's next week's challenge?

SHORTZ: Yes. It comes from Joseph Young of St. Cloud, Minnesota. I said, think of a two-syllable word in four letters. Add two letters at the front and one letter at the end to make a one-syllable word in seven letters. What words are these? So again, a two-syllable word in four letters. You can add two letters at the front and one letter at the end to make a seven-letter word in one syllable. What words are these?

ESTRIN: When you have the answer, go to our website, /puzzle. To submit your response, just fill out the form on the Puzzle page. Remember, just one entry, please. Our deadline for entries this week is Wednesday, December 31, at 3 p.m. Eastern. Don't forget to include a phone number where we can reach you. And if you're the winner, we'll give you a call. And if you pick up the phone, you'll get to play on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and puzzlemaster of WEEKEND EDITION, Will Shortz. Thanks, Will.

SHORTZ: Thank you, Daniel.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEVEN HENLEY JR.'S "PLAY THE PUZZLE")

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103243

OBITUARIES | SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2025 • 5:52 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Brigitte Bardot, sex goddess of cinema, has died

By Elizabeth Blair

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

Brigitte Bardot, the international sex goddess of cinema in the 1950s and '60s, has died aged 91. Bardot's animal rights foundation announced her death in a statement to news agency Agence France-Presse on Sunday, without specifying the time or place of death.

Stylish and seductive, Bardot exuded a kind of free sexuality, rare in the buttoned-up 1950s. She modeled, made movies, influenced fashion around the world and recorded albums. She married four times. Her list of lovers famously included Warren Beatty, Nino Ferrer and singer-songwriter-producer Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she recorded the French hit Bonnie and Clyde.

Bardot's look was copied by women around the world, says Claire Schub who teaches French literature and film at Tufts University.

"Her fashion choices, her hair, her makeup, her pout ... She became this icon, this legend, all over the globe," says Schub.

But her image changed in her later years. Bardot was found guilty multiple times in her native France of "inciting racial hatred," mainly for comments attacking Muslims.

As an actor, Bardot worked with some of France's leading directors including Henri-Georges Clouzot in La Vérité (The Truth), Jean-Luc Godard in Le Mépris (Contempt) and Louis Malle in Viva Maria!

Born Catholic to an upper-middle-class couple in Paris in 1934, Bardot studied ballet and modeled before becoming an actor. As a teenager, she appeared several times on the cover of Elle magazine, attracting the attention of Roger Vadim who was six years her senior. The two married in 1952. Bardot's parents made them wait until she turned 18.

Vadim, an aspiring director, has been credited with turning Bardot into the iconic sex symbol she became. In his 1957 film And God Created Woman, Bardot plays a provocative young woman on a quest for sexual liberation.

Vadim wanted Bardot's appearances in his films to shake off sexual taboos. He once said that he wanted to "kill the myth, this odd rule in Christian morality, that sex must be coupled with guilt."

The New York Times panned the film but wrote that Bardot "moves herself in a fashion that fully accentuates her charms. She is undeniably a creation of superlative craftsmanship."

Youtube Video

The media savvy Vadim made sure Bardot appeared often in the French press. Not that it took much convincing — Bardot's alluring images helped sell both magazines and movie tickets. "To be fair, if Vadim discovered and manufactured me," Bardot once said, "I created Vadim."

Bardot's liberating sexuality

While she was one of France's best known exports, she wasn't always beloved at home. She was often ridiculed by critics who derided her acting even as they gushed over her body.

Reviewing the 1959 film Babette Goes to War, in which Bardot does not bare all, one critic wrote, "In deciding not to reveal her body, Brigitte Bardot wanted to unveil only her talent. Alas, we saw nothing."

Despite the misogynistic comments and constant scrutiny of her private life, Bardot's popularity coincided with changing attitudes about sex. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir took note of France's love-hate relationship with Bardot's sexual appetite.

"In the game of love, she is as much hunter as she is prey," de Beauvoir wrote in her 1959 essay for Esquire, "Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome."

Bardot was hounded by the paparazzi, suffered from depression and attempted suicide. "What I rejected the most during my life as an actress was the limelight," she wrote in her autobiography, "That intense focus...ate at me from the inside."

After starring in dozens of movies, Bardot retired from acting in 1973. She started an animal rights foundation.

Convicted for 'inciting racial hatred'

In her later years, Bardot became notorious for her racist and homophobic comments and her association with France's far right. Her fourth husband, Bernard d'Ormale, was an aide to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party.

In her 2003 book, Un Cris dans le Silence, she disparages immigrants, gays, French schools and contemporary art. She called Muslims "invaders" and railed against the killing of animals in the name of religion. She apologized in court in 2004 but also doubled down on what she called the "infiltration" of France by Islamic extremists.

In her biography of Bardot, author and French film scholar Ginette Vincendeau writes "the high priestess of freedom resents almost everyone else's rights to exercise it."

Bardot, the stunning, desirable beauty who once stood for sexual freedom for women, spent the latter part of her life at her home near Saint Tropez with her husband and a menagerie of pets.

Transcript

DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:

Brigitte Bardot has died. The French movie star became an international sex symbol more than half a century ago. Later in life, she was an animal rights activist, and French authorities charged her more than once with inciting racial hatred. Her death was announced in a statement by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation. She was 91. NPR's Elizabeth Blair has this obituary.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: In the 1950s and '60s, the world gushed over Brigitte Bardot. She was called ravishing, incandescent and the impossible dream of married men.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BRIGITTE BARDOT: (As character, speaking French).

BLAIR: Bardot sang, danced, modeled and starred in dozens of films. She wasn't just stunning, with her hourglass figure, tousled hair and lush lips. She was also overtly sexual, revolutionary for the buttoned-up 1950s. Bardot was raised Catholic and upper-middle class and studied ballet. As a teenager, she appeared on the cover of L Magazine, attracting the attention of future filmmaker Roger Vadim, who was six years her senior. The two married in 1952. Bardot's parents made them wait until she turned 18. In Vadim's 1957 movie "And God Created Woman," Bardot plays a seductive 18-year-old. Set in Saint-Tropez, she lounges about in the nude, tempts the men around her and is unashamed. In one of her most famous scenes, she dances barefoot with abandon.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BLAIR: Vadim wanted Bardot's appearance in his films to shake off sexual taboos, as he said in this undated interview from the documentary "Vadim Mister Cool."

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "VADIM MISTER COOL")

ROGER VADIM: (Speaking French).

BLAIR: "I have always aimed to kill the myth, this odd rule in Christian morality," Vadim said, "that sex must be coupled with guilt." Bardot was the perfect partner in killing that myth. Even the feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir praised her independence. In the game of love, de Beauvoir wrote in Esquire in 1959, Bardot is as much a hunter as she is a prey.

CLAIRE SCHUB: The word freedom would be the one that was the word that was most associated with her.

BLAIR: Claire Schub teaches French literature and film at Tufts University.

SCHUB: Her fashion choices, her hair, her makeup, her pout - she became this icon, this legend all over the globe.

BLAIR: In a long, languorous scene in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film "Contempt," Bardot lies nude in bed with her husband, who is fully clothed. She names each part of her body and asks him if he loves them.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CONTEMPT")

BARDOT: (As Camille Javal, speaking French).

MICHEL PICCOLI: (As Paul Javal, speaking French).

SCHUB: There's that sort of mixture of innocence and seductiveness that I think was very striking.

BLAIR: Bardot famously had lots of lovers, including Warren Beatty and the French singer-songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she recorded a number of songs.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BONNIE AND CLYDE")

BRIGITTE BARDOT AND SERGE GAINSBOURG: (Singing) Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde.

BLAIR: Bardot's every move was covered in the media. Hordes of photographers and onlookers followed her constantly. The attention and the often misogynistic reviews of her acting got to her. In her autobiography, she writes that she suffered from depression and attempted suicide. In 1973, she retired from acting and moved permanently to Saint-Tropez. Claire Schub.

SCHUB: She was hounded by the paparazzi. She was hounded by everyone. She was 39 yearsold, and she said, I've had it. You know, I don't want to answer to anyone anymore.

BLAIR: She also believed that she had a much higher calling, namely protecting animals. In an interview for the 2019 documentary "Brigitte Bardot, Oath To Animals," she dismissed her life as a movie star as frivolous.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "BRIGITTE BARDOT, LE SERMENT FAIT AUX ANIMAUX")

BARDOT: (Speaking French).

BLAIR: "An animal's life," she said, "is more important than all of these antics I was doing." In retirement, she founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which campaigns against the fur trade, foie gras and trafficking puppies, among other causes.

Later in life, Bardot's image took a turn. She started supporting right-wing political candidates. She made racist and homophobic comments. She called Muslims invaders and railed against the killing of animals in the name of religion. The French government charged her with inciting racial hatred multiple times. Brigitte Bardot, the stunning beauty who once stood for sexual freedom for women, made headlines for very different reasons as she aged. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HARLEY DAVIDSON")

BARDOT: (Singing in French).

Full article: https://www.npr.org/1130645838

CULTURE | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 12:30 PM EST | VIEW ON NPR

'Wait Wait' for December 27, 2025: Season's greetings from Wait Wait!

Heard on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

This week, we finally get to open the presents underneath our tree, which include visits from Bob Costas and Jim Rice, a trip back to Hawaii with Carissa Moore, and more!

Transcript

JENNIFER MILLS, BYLINE: The following program was taped in front of an audience of real, live people.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ALZO SLADE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm the gift you get for the person who has everything, Alzo Slade. And here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Thank you, Alzo, and thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for being with us.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Well, everybody, we made it. We made it through 2025, a year that began with terrible apprehension about the future and has ended the exact same way.

SLADE: My motto is, instead of worrying about what's about to happen, enjoy some things that already did.

SAGAL: So this hour, we're going to relish the things we did get to do in 2025, such as talking to the legendary sportscaster Bob Costas, which we did in September, along with guest scorekeeper Che "Rhymefest" Smith. Now, I asked Bob if, as per the cliche, he started talking about sports because he couldn't play them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

BOB COSTAS: You know, I wouldn't say that I failed. I wasn't that bad by schoolyard standards, but I couldn't make my high school baseball or basketball team. And the baseball coach, who was also a math teacher - that's the way it works in high school - he actually said to me something to the effect of, you're not bad with the glove, and you can run a little bit, but I don't think you can hit your weight, and I don't think you weigh 130.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: Which might have been true when I was 16 years old. And then he actually said, you know, you're always talking about baseball, and you know more about baseball than any of my players. Have you ever thought about broadcasting? And I said, that's pretty much all I think about. And he actually said, as if it was a movie, good. Try that.

SAGAL: Whoa.

PETER GROSZ: That's awesome.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And have you ever gone and, like, found any of the guys who did make the team and say, how long did your career in sports last?

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: One of them actually pitched in the major leagues for two years. He did make it to the big leagues. The rest of them have scattered to the four winds, and I'm sure they're aware of me, and I'm not quite aware of where they are, and I don't care.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And you went off to Syracuse University - right? - the Newhouse School to learn your trade. This is, of course, if you don't know, it is the Harvard of broadcasting schools. And...

COSTAS: Yep.

SAGAL: ...But I'm curious, as, like, how do you learn to do sports broadcasting? Like, what are the skills you have to study?

COSTAS: You know, you cannot learn it in a classroom. You want to get as good and as well-rounded an education as you possibly can and to be a reader because it improves your appreciation of language and turns of phrase. And the broader your frame of reference is, the more you can bring to bear where appropriate, in a sports broadcast or any kind of broadcast. But the only way you actually learn to be a broadcaster is by doing it. You can't sit there in a classroom and learn it. You just have to find out if you have a knack, and then you work on that knack as you move along.

SAGAL: So, OK, you're a Hall of Fame broadcaster and an absolute legend in the industry. Nobody's perfect all the time. Can you remember a time when, like, you just blew it on live TV?

COSTAS: Oh, my, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: Now, I realize it's NPR.

SAGAL: Yes.

COSTAS: Do you want the unedited...

SAGAL: Please.

COSTAS: ...Version of this?

GROSZ: Yeah.

SAGAL: Yes.

GROSZ: Give us the MTV version.

COSTAS: OK.

SAGAL: I mean, go...

COSTAS: OK.

SAGAL: ...Go ahead, Bob. What are they going to do, defund us?

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: Here you go (laughter).

(CHEERING)

GROSZ: Now, if everybody clapping...

COSTAS: Yeah.

GROSZ: ...Could give $5,000...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: ...That would be really wonderful.

SAGAL: Go ahead. Go ahead.

COSTAS: All right, so here's the deal. My first job out of Syracuse, I did minor league hockey my first - my senior year at Syracuse - 30 bucks a game. But I was lucky enough right after that, at age 22, to go to St. Louis - big station, KMOX, 50,000-watch station - to broadcast the game for the Spirits of St. Louis in the old ABA. The first night they play on a Friday night, they have a big lead with about two minutes to go, and the game slips away. They're up by 7, and somehow the game slips away. Two nights later, they're playing at home again, and they're ahead by 5 with, like, a minute to go. And I turned toward the analyst, who was a wonderful gentleman named Bill Wilkerson. And I said the following - Bill, it appears as if the Spirits have this game well in hand, but Coach Bob MacKinnon, taking a time out here, wanting to take no chances because the last thing he wants to see is a repeat of Friday night's blow [expletive].

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: I actually said that.

SAGAL: You did?

COSTAS: I actually said that. You know, they blew the game, and, you know...

SAGAL: Ah.

COSTAS: ...The syntax just got kind of mangled, right?

SAGAL: Well, I mean...

COSTAS: And...

SAGAL: ...If you think about it, I mean, it is his job, and if he blew the game, it just sort of comes naturally...

COSTAS: Yeah, yeah.

SAGAL: ...To that phrase, doesn't it?

COSTAS: And my thought is - I looked at Wilkerson...

SAGAL: Yes.

COSTAS: ...And he looked at me and his eyes got as wide as saucers. And the engineer just made that circular thing with the index finger like, keep on going...

SAGAL: Yeah.

COSTAS: ...Keep on going. We can't have all this dead air. And I was a hundred percent certain that the next morning, I'd be on a flight back to Syracuse. But the station manager took pity on me and said, don't ever let this happen again.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: Oh, I certainly will try not to.

GROSZ: A lot of people called in and they were like, can we get more of that Bob Costas guy?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I have been a fan - I'm a baseball fan, not at your level, but I have been watching a lot of you over the decades broadcast baseball. And I remember vividly your reaction the first year they had the wildcard on the playoffs in baseball.

COSTAS: Oh, yeah.

SAGAL: So you're against that. You're also against the designated hitter. Now there are six wildcard teams every year and everybody has a designated hitter. What is it like to be that influential?

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: Yeah. You know, it's just another small indication of the general decline of Western civilization. What can I tell you?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Let me ask you this. You've over the years - obviously, not just baseball - NFL games, NBA games, horse races and the Olympics, of course, for many, many years on NBC. So out of all those things, can you tell me, like, what the weirdest or most unusual sport is you've ever had to broadcast and comment on?

COSTAS: Well, I didn't do play-by-play as the host of the Olympics, but you're commenting on and showing highlights of almost everything - curling in the winter Olympics. You know, think about getting a gold medal, an Olympic gold medal for an activity in which you can drink beer while doing.

SAGAL: Yes.

(APPLAUSE)

COSTAS: But even more so in the summer Olympics, race walking is a staple. Now, there may be, I don't know, 200 race walkers in the United States, but in parts of Eastern Europe, like in Romania or something, you know, race walkers are like Michael Jordan, apparently. So 1992 in Barcelona, I'm hosting the Olympics, and there's a package of highlights, and it ends with a bunch of race walkers. And you know what it looks like, right?

SAGAL: Yeah.

COSTAS: It looks like, got to go, got to go, go to go...

SAGAL: Yeah.

COSTAS: ...Right now is what it looks like, right?

SAGAL: Fifteen men in shorts who really need to use the restroom. I understand. Yes.

COSTAS: Right. Exactly. But I - so I come off of it. I think it's completely harmless, and the people on the set laugh. I said, isn't a competition to see who can walk the fastest a little bit like a contest to see who can whisper the loudest? Eventually, don't you just, like, cross over and start running? Now, you would think that was completely harmless. But the very small race walking community wanted my head on a pike.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And that's why you can never go back to Romania.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTAS: That's correct (laughter).

SAGAL: Well, Bob Costas, it is such a pleasure to talk to you. And we have asked you here today to play a game...

COSTAS: Yes.

SAGAL: ...We're calling...

RHYMEFEST: And The Emmy Goes To...

SAGAL: We are right now in the eye of the Emmy storm. The Creative Arts Emmys were last weekend. The Primetime Emmys are this weekend. So no one is talking about anything but the Emmy Awards. Ooh. We're going to ask you three questions about these JV Oscars. Answer two correctly and you'll win our prize for one of our listeners. Rhymefest, who is Bob Costas playing for?

RHYMEFEST: Bob is playing for Matt Johnson (ph) of Houston, Texas.

(CHEERING)

COSTAS: All right.

SAGAL: Ready to play?

COSTAS: Mm-hmm.

SAGAL: Here is your first question. Where...

COSTAS: Yes.

SAGAL: ...Does the name Emmy for the award come from? Is it A, it's the initials M-E for Mamie Eisenhower, who presided at the first awards; is it B, strangely, it is named after our own panelist Emmy Blotnick...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...Or C, it was named for the image orthicon tube, an important bit of early TV technology?

COSTAS: I'm going with C.

SAGAL: You're going to go with C, and you are right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The image orthicon tube was known as Immy. Huge advance. TV technology, so much so that Emmy was named for it.

BRIAN BABYLON: Yeah.

SAGAL: Here's your next question. The whole point...

COSTAS: Yes.

SAGAL: ...Of the Emmys, of course, as you know, is to promote TV. But at the 2015 Emmys, Andy Samberg went above and beyond to encourage people to watch the HBO show "Game Of Thrones." How did he do it? A, by wearing a handmade 15-foot-long dragon costume on stage; B, by giving out to the live international audience his actual HBO login and password; or C, by playing a video in which his head was CGI'd onto every character in every sex scene from that season?

COSTAS: (Laughter) You know, I should know this, but somehow, I missed that particular telecast. I'm just going to guess B.

SAGAL: You're going to guess B, he gave out his HBO login and password to the Universe. He did.

COSTAS: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: And people report everybody at first immediately ran over to their televisions or whatever, and it worked for a few days. All right. Very good, Bob. Here is...

COSTAS: Two for two.

SAGAL: Two for two. Right, as someone in your profession might say.

COSTAS: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: You're batting 1,000.

SAGAL: He is. He's batting 1,000. Let's see what he does with this pitch.

In Dame Helen Mirren's acceptance speech, after winning an Emmy for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I, she said that her greatest triumph was what? Was it A, making her Queen Elizabeth I recognizably different from her Queen Elizabeth II; B, the voiceover work that she had done for the film "Legends Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'Hoole," which she was unfairly snubbed; or C, she said her greatest triumph was, quote, "not falling ass over tit" as she climbed the stairs to the podium?

COSTAS: It is without question C.

SAGAL: You are right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: You called your shot, as you might say. And allegedly, the censors who were manning, you know, that bleep button were so charmed by her British accent that the remark made it to air and now again to us.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Rhymefest, how did Bob Costas do on our quiz?

RHYMEFEST: Bob got three for three. He got them all right.

SAGAL: Congratulations.

(CHEERING)

COSTAS: It's the trifecta. It's the hat trick.

SAGAL: It is.

COSTAS: It's the triple crown.

SAGAL: (Laughter) What - that's a good thing. Part of your job is coming up with catchphrases and names. What should we call it when someone goes three for three on this game?

COSTAS: The Costie (ph).

SAGAL: There you go.

BABYLON: The Costie.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Bob Costas is a Hall of Fame broadcaster and, not coincidentally, the winner of 28 Emmy awards himself. Bob Costas, thank you so much for joining us on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

(CHEERING)

COSTAS: Thank you, Peter.

SAGAL: Thank you.

COSTAS: Thank you, everybody.

SAGAL: Take care, Bob. Bye-bye.

COSTAS: So long.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SAGAL: When we come back, we warm up the winter with a return to Hawaii and a talk with one of the greatest surfers of all time. That's when we return with more of WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SLADE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Alzo Slade, filling in for Bill Kurtis, and here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Illinois, Peter Sagal.

SAGAL: Thank you, Alzo.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much. So it is late December in Chicago, and the days are short and the winds are cold, so we are all getting nostalgic for the trip we took to Honolulu, Hawaii, in October. We had such an amazing time. It's hard to choose a favorite moment.

SLADE: Not for me. The best thing I saw in Hawaii was me standing there in Hawaii.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's right. Alzo and I were there. We did two shows in the Aloha state, and now we are going to hear part of that never-before-broadcast second show. We saved it for a moment when we needed it most, like now.

SLADE: First, a Bluff The Listener game with panelists Shane O'Neill, Dulce Sloan and Helen Hong, and then a visit with one of the greatest surfers ever, Honolulu native and Olympic champion Carissa Moore.

SAGAL: It is now time to play the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

RICH: Aloha.

SAGAL: Aloha.

RICH: Aloha. Yes. My name is Rich.

SAGAL: Hello, Rich, where are you calling from?

RICH: I'm calling from Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii.

(CHEERING)

RICH: Can't beat it.

SAGAL: You can't beat it. What do you do there?

RICH: I'm recently retired and I'm very active in Rotary, and I volunteer as a mediator at the Mediation Center of the Pacific.

SAGAL: Really?

RICH: Really.

SAGAL: I'm sorry. I mean, I know I'm a visitor to these lovely islands, but I can't imagine anybody ever has a problem they need to mediate. It just - it all seems like a happy place.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, Richard (ph), great to have you with us. You're going to play a game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Alzo, what is Rich's topic?

SLADE: Carpe Diem.

SAGAL: Sometimes you have to seize the day - climb that mountain. Tell her you're in love with her. Move to Europe forever because things got really awkward after you told her you're in love with her.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This week, we heard about somebody really going forward. Pick the one who's telling the truth, and you'll win the WAIT WAITer of your choice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes.

RICH: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I'm sorry, did somebody in the room with you have to tell you to say yes?

(LAUGHTER)

RICH: No. No, that didn't happen.

SAGAL: That didn't happen. OK. Never...

RICH: No, it didn't happen.

SAGAL: Didn't happen. Standing there on your own, your own talents, brains brought to this, no help at all. Let's first hear from Shane O'Neill.

SHANE O'NEILL: Kristen Elliott (ph) of Maple Bluff, Wisconsin, is a busy woman, a resident at the UW hospital. She puts in 24-hour shifts in their emergency room. She goes to Pilates classes three times a week and volunteers at the soup kitchen at her local church. But when an invitation came for an ex-boyfriend's wedding, she knew she needed to squeeze in one more thing into her busy schedule - finding a date. So last Saturday, she set up 18 hours' worth of mini dates. That's 180 dates in one day.

She kept track of the marathon day with a spreadsheet, adding numerical ratings and columns for physical attributes, red flags, hygiene and whether they showed up in a fleece quarter-zip. Sadly, none of these dates seemed suitable. So she plans to schedule a second day of seven-minute-long second dates. Unfortunately, with the extra two minutes, I can only book 73 dates in a day, she said, sadly, before strapping on a helmet, climbing onto her scooter, and rolling off to a sip and paint party where she plans to finish half a bottle of wine and no fewer than three paintings and two ceramics pieces.

SAGAL: A woman seizes the day by scheduling 18 hours of speed dates during them. Your next story of someone capturing the moment comes from Dulce Sloan.

DULCE SLOAN: Rusty Albertson (ph) of Cleveland, Georgia, retired from being a middle school geography teacher for 47 years. His wife, Jeannie (ph), also retired from nursing, and now they finally have the time and money to travel. Growing up in Cleveland, Georgia, Rusty was always fascinated that the names of cities can repeat in other states or even countries. So Rusty wondered if there were any other Clevelands. Much to his excitement, there are seven other Clevelands in the United States for a total of eight Clevelands. As a fan of the rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, he always wanted to visit Cleveland, Ohio, but now there are six other Clevelands for Rusty's Cleveland tour. Jeannie, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic. She said, well, I thought he meant traveling to somewhere fun, like all the cities named Paris or Miami, to which Rusty supplied all the Miamis. I don't mind going to Indiana or Missouri, but I'll be damned if I ever go to Texas.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: A man sets off in his dream to visit all the towns in the country named Cleveland. Your last diem carpe comes from Helen Hong.

HELEN HONG: It's not easy getting a Guinness World Record. You might have to hold your breath for 20 minutes or eat 80 hot dogs in one sitting, or you could create your own original world record and make it uniquely painful. That's what Gabrielle Wall did when she chose to set the first-ever record for the fastest 100-meter sprint barefoot on Lego bricks.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: I know. Her training included jumping up and down in a kiddie pool filled with Legos. Wall also went barefoot for months, and when she explained that she was training to sprint over Legos, people inevitably asked, why would you do that?

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: Why? Naysayers notwithstanding, Wall completed the spiky sprint in 24.75 seconds. Her husband immediately presented her with fluffy pink slippers that she'll probably never take off again.

SAGAL: All right.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Here then, Rich, are three stories of someone seizing the moment. Is it from Shane O'Neill, someone trying to maximize their chances, having speed dates for 18 hours all fit into one day, from Dulce Sloan, a man determined to live out his dream of visiting every Cleveland in the country beside his own Cleveland, or from Helen Hong, a woman who fulfilled a lifelong dream by setting a world record, in this case, the land speed record for running on Legos?

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: Which of these was the real story we found in the week's news?

RICH: I got to go with number three, the Lego lady. I tell you, she beats them all.

SAGAL: She does. And you figured that out all by yourself.

(LAUGHTER)

RICH: All by myself.

SAGAL: All by yourself. All right, you're going to choose then - you're going to choose Helen's story about the Lego run. Well, we spoke to someone who actually had the inside dope on this particular story.

KYLE MELNICK: She wanted to set a world record, so she decided that she would run over Lego bricks.

SAGAL: That was Kyle Melnick. He's the reporter for The Washington Post, talking about the record-breaking Lego run. Congratulations, Rich. You got it right.

HONG: Yay, Rich.

SAGAL: Helen was telling the truth. She's going to win a point. You're going to win our prize - the voicemail of anyone you choose. Thank you so much for calling.

RICH: Thank you.

HONG: You can share it with your backup.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOSE YOURSELF")

EMINEM: (Rapping) If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted...

SAGAL: And now the game where we ask people who were really, really good at one thing about another thing, we call it Not My Job. So not far from us right now in Honolulu, there is a 100-foot-high mural on the side of a building with two people painted on it.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: You've seen it. One of the two figures is Duke Kahanamoku, the legendary father of surfing. He introduced the sport around the world in the 1930s. And the other is Carissa Moore, the first-ever female Olympic gold medalist in shortboard surfing, and generally acclaimed as the greatest woman ever to ride a wave. And one of those two icons joins us now. Carissa Moore, welcome to WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.

CARISSA MOORE: I'm so happy to be here.

SAGAL: We're so happy to have you.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: Since I brought up the mural, I got to ask, what is it like? 'Cause you live in Honolulu, still, where you grew up. What is it like to drive around and see your own sort of visage painted next to, like, one of the great national heroes, and you're in front of him?

MOORE: I mean, I definitely have to, like, pinch myself. It's super surreal. I can't believe they still have it up.

SAGAL: Really?

MOORE: Yeah.

SAGAL: It's a - if somebody painted a 100-foot-high painting, they don't just, like, wait a couple of days and paint over it.

MOORE: No, I...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You don't, like, erase it.

MOORE: Well, yeah, I hope it stays up for a little while longer. I want to show my daughter one day and be like, that's Mom.

SAGAL: Yeah.

HONG: Definitely take a lot of selfies.

SAGAL: You know what'd be great? I don't know if this is true, but if there were a liquor store across the street, and you went in and they asked you for ID, and you just pointed.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It's a dream. It's really cool. You grew up here in Honolulu. You grew up surfing at Waikiki - right? - which was basically the birthplace of surfing. There's the statue of Duke right there. And you got famous pretty early, right? I saw an interview of you - an interview with you that was done when you were 7 years old surfing at Waikiki. And you said to the interviewer, you like surfing because - and I will quote you - I like it because it's different each day. And it's not always the same.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Unquote. So I ask you now, do you still stand by that?

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Yeah. I sounded pretty good.

SAGAL: Yeah, you sounded...

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Yeah.

SAGAL: You looked pretty good.

MOORE: (Laughter).

SAGAL: They said - you know, it's interesting. You were 7 and they were already - you were already in the local news, and people were saying, this is going to be a professional surfer someday. And so that was something that you knew was perhaps on your path early on?

MOORE: I don't know if I knew, but my dad knew.

SAGAL: Yeah.

MOORE: And he's here tonight.

SAGAL: Is he really?

MOORE: Yeah.

HONG: Dad.

SLOAN: Yay, Dad.

HONG: Yes, Dad.

MOORE: I don't know where he is, but he's here.

SAGAL: He's somewhere.

MOORE: He's here.

SAGAL: He's somewhere. 'Cause he was an athlete himself, a great swimmer here, right?

MOORE: Yes, he was.

SAGAL: And a - he's in that report, by the way, paddling out with you.

MOORE: Yeah.

SAGAL: So I got to see him. I know about stage moms - right? - the classic. Are there surfer dads? It's like, you're going to catch one more wave. Get back out to the break.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Maybe.

SAGAL: Maybe.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Maybe. Did...

MOORE: No, but he is the best. He still paddles out with me.

SAGAL: He does?

MOORE: Mm-hmm.

SAGAL: Wow. Do you - really? At your level of achievement, your world championship status, you have to paddle yourself out? Nobody paddles you out?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Nobody volunteers?

MOORE: No, we do surf together all the time, still, and I feel really lucky that we get to continue to share this journey together.

SAGAL: Right. Do you ever, just for fun, literally surf circles around him?

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Just - there's this nice dance that we both have out there, for sure.

SAGAL: You see, I don't know a lot of surfers, but I had always thought of surfers as being very outgoing, very confident 'cause it's a dangerous and difficult thing that you do pretty much for fun. But you see, you don't seem that way. You seem kind of, like, not particularly egotistical, and you're the best in the world. That seems weird to me.

MOORE: (Laughter) I struggle with confidence. I do.

SAGAL: Really?

MOORE: Yes, I doubt myself and overthink everything all the time.

SAGAL: You remember when I said the best in the world thing just a moment ago?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Like championships, world championships, Olympic gold medal.

MOORE: Yeah. You could keep telling me that, but somehow I don't believe it still.

HONG: I think you should wear the medal every day.

SAGAL: Yeah.

HONG: Like, wear the medal on the daily.

SLOAN: Yeah.

HONG: Just wear it around everywhere.

SAGAL: Yeah. Well, that's interesting because surfing is not easy to begin with. And on the level you competed at, like, all around the world against the very, very best surfers in the world, where you get, like, one chance to, like, do it or wipe out, did you, like, psyche yourself up? How did you get yourself out of this lack of confidence of what you mentioned and get yourself into the right headspace?

MOORE: I like to have random dance parties before I go out surfing.

HONG: Yes.

MOORE: So actually, right before I paddled out for the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2020, 2021...

SAGAL: Yeah.

MOORE: ...I FaceTimed my husband and we did a dance to Ed Sheeran.

SAGAL: You did a dance to Ed Sheeran with your husband over FaceTime?

MOORE: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: It just helps me, like, get out of my head a little bit.

SAGAL: Right.

MOORE: Yeah.

SAGAL: And is it true that, like, you were rather pregnant during your last competition?

MOORE: I was pregnant, yes. I was 10 weeks, so she was really tiny.

SAGAL: Right. 'Cause we saw a video of you when you were much more pregnant, and it's, like, how did you get on the board to, like, paddle out?

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: It is a wonder of the world.

SAGAL: It really is.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Watching me do that. Yes.

SAGAL: Yeah. 'Cause I just - I mean, I didn't see it, but I imagine, you know, you're very pregnant and you lie face down on the board and your hands can't reach the water 'cause you're like...

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: My butt is really high up in the air, and I kind of look like an inchworm and I can't...

SAGAL: (Laughter).

MOORE: ...Like, lift my head. It's really quite a sight.

SAGAL: And your daughter, yes?

MOORE: Yes.

SAGAL: Is how old?

MOORE: Seven months.

SAGAL: Seven months.

MOORE: Yeah.

HONG: Whoa. Congratulations.

MOORE: Thank you.

HONG: You're a new mom.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Is there a surfboard equivalent to a jogging stroller? Can you, like, strap her in and go out and surf with her?

SLOAN: (Laughter).

MOORE: Well, I'm, like, the human strap.

SAGAL: Right.

MOORE: It's a lot of just going straight.

SAGAL: Yes.

MOORE: And just making sure that she's safe.

SAGAL: Yes.

MOORE: And she's not upset.

SAGAL: Yes. That's...

MOORE: And she's enjoying it. So...

SAGAL: Does she enjoy surfing?

MOORE: Yeah. I think she does. I mean, there's no crying.

SAGAL: Yeah, that's important.

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: Is her first word going to be gnarly?

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: I hope it's Mom.

SAGAL: Oh, that would be better.

HONG: But then gnarly.

SAGAL: Well, Carissa Moore, it is such a pleasure to talk to you. We have asked you here to play a game that this time we're calling...

SLADE: Shortboard, Meet Really Bored.

SAGAL: So you're one of the greatest shortboard surfers ever, but what do you know about being bored? We're going to ask you three questions about boredom. Answer two out of three correctly and you'll win our prize for one of our listeners. Alzo, who is Carissa Moore playing for?

SLADE: Alicia Plant (ph) of Tumwater, Washington.

SAGAL: Here's your first question.

MOORE: OK.

SAGAL: BuzzFeed, once published among their many lists, a guide to things you can do if you're bored, including which of these activities? A, making adorable little dolls out of your cat's hair; B, opening four browser windows and watching Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV and HBO Max at the same time...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...Or C, seeing how much soap you can put in your pasta sauce before you can taste it.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: I think I'm going to go with A.

SAGAL: You are right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: You're right to do so.

MOORE: OK.

SAGAL: Yes. BuzzFeed suggests buying a book called "Crafting With Cat Hair."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, that's good. You got one right.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: Beloved children's TV host Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers, would often get restless and bored in the company of adults. His widow says that when a grown-up gathering a party of some kind got dull, Rogers would liven things up by doing what? A, bring out a puppet he always carried with him, this one called Prince Eric the Drunk...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...B, change into his leather cardigan...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...Or, C, start farting.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: Ooh.

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: C.

MOORE: I kind of think it's A, but I like the way you said leather cardigan.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: So I might have to go with B.

SAGAL: So you liked A, which was the puppet. Prince Eric the Drunk, who didn't normally appear in the kingdom of make-believe. But you like the way I said leather cardigan.

MOORE: Yes.

SAGAL: Yes.

MOORE: Are both of those wrong?

SAGAL: Both - they are both wrong.

MOORE: OK. So is it C?

SAGAL: It is C.

MOORE: OK, cool. Let's go with C.

SAGAL: You're right. It's C. Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Started farting.

SLOAN: He what?

SAGAL: That's what he would do. His widow, Jeanne (ph), says, quote, "he would just raise one cheek, and he would look at me and smile."

(LAUGHTER)

HONG: This makes me love him even more.

SAGAL: Even more. How could you - and you thought it wasn't possible.

SLOAN: I'm very serious.

SAGAL: One more question, Carissa. Here we go. Just this year, a man in Illinois admitted to a police officer that he did something on purpose because he was bored. What was it that he did? Was it A, he crashed his car into the back of the policeman's car; B, he went outside in February and intentionally stuck his tongue to a frozen flagpole; or C, he had a Cubs uniform printed up with his name on the back and managed to spend two innings in the dugout before somebody caught him?

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: I think it's A.

SAGAL: You think it's A? It was A. You did it again.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It was A. He crashed his car. He just (vocalizing) into the back of the policeman's car. Policeman goes, what the hell was that? The guy was like, I don't know. I was bored. And then he wasn't bored anymore. Alzo, how did Carissa Moore do in our quiz?

SLADE: She was gnarly. Three out of three.

SAGAL: Yes.

(CHEERING)

SLOAN: Yay (vocalizing).

SAGAL: Carissa Moore is the first-ever winner of the Olympic gold medal in women's shortboard surfing, a world champion and a living treasure here in her hometown of Honolulu. Carissa Moore, thank you so much for joining us on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME. Carissa Moore.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SURF WAX AMERICA")

WEEZER: (Singing) The sea is foaming like a bottle of beer. The wave is coming, but I ain't gonna fear. I'm waxing down so that I'll go real fast.

SAGAL: When we come back, baseball Hall of Famer Jim Rice explains his complex approach to becoming one of the greatest hitters ever. And pay attention 'cause it happens pretty quick. That's when we come back with more of WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SLADE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Alzo Slade, and here's your host at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, Peter Sagal.

SAGAL: Thank you, Alzo. Thanks, everybody.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: So we've been having a lot of fun this week because this week we decided to focus on the past and completely stop thinking about tomorrow.

SLADE: Go to hell, Fleetwood Mac.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So here are some more remarkably fun moments we have with our panelists this year.

Alonzo, according to a frightening new study, more than a quarter of 18- to 35-year-olds who drink beer do what?

ALONZO BODDEN: Wash down their weed? I don't know.

SAGAL: No.

BODDEN: Let's see. Can you give me a hint?

SAGAL: Yeah. It's perfect if you love your beer cold and watery.

BODDEN: Oh, they put ice in it.

SAGAL: They put ice in their beer.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: According - ooh.

EMMY BLOTNICK: Wow. Well, the entire city of Chicago just...

SAGAL: We can do depredations, crimes of all kinds, autocrats planning to live forever. Ice in beer, though, and you're like, that's too far.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Yes. According to a new survey, 28% of young adults put ice in their beer, completely spitting in the face of decades of put the glass in the freezer technology. The problem here is, of course, that your ice cubes will melt kids, and it will water down the beer. What you really want to do is decant your Bud Light...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...And drink it at room temperature, so it really opens up.

BODDEN: Do they actually do these things just to annoy previous generations?

SAGAL: Probably.

BODDEN: Like, watery beer is awful.

SAGAL: Hey. Hey, Grandpa, watch this. Plink, plink, plink.

(LAUGHTER)

BODDEN: Yeah. It...

SAGAL: It seems like there's an obvious solution here to the problem of warm beer, if you feel that's a problem. Step 1 - Google, does beer freeze? Step 2 - make beer ice cubes. Step three - forget about the beer ice cubes that you made. Step 4 - be like, why are these ice cubes so disgusting?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Shane, according to realtors, before deciding to buy a house, more and more people are asking to do what?

O'NEILL: Oh, just use the restroom.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Oh, more than that.

O'NEILL: Oh, spend a night with the realtor in the master bedroom, the main bedroom.

SAGAL: I'm going to give it to you, although the realtor is not necessarily invited.

O'NEILL: Oh, people want to have sex in the house?

(LAUGHTER)

BLOTNICK: He just went - you went there.

SAGAL: You went there. You went right there. No, people want to spend the night in the house.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

O'NEILL: OK, yeah. Spend the night.

BLOTNICK: Some of us sleep at night, Shane.

SAGAL: I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: More and more home buyers are asking to spend the night in the house before they fully commit to buying it. And it makes sense. You're spending your life savings, right? You should get the chance to make sure everything works, see what it's like at night, change the locks and then sell all the current owner's possessions.

(LAUGHTER)

O'NEILL: What is the rationale? Is it just to see if it's haunted?

SAGAL: Well, basically - well, sort of. Some - they want to see what it's like. Some people say, well, I want to see what it feels like to be there alone. I want to see if there's noises at night. And some of the realtors are like, well, that's OK. Some of them are like, no, because of liability. I mean, what if something goes wrong? And if something really goes wrong, bang, now they have to sell a house that's haunted.

(LAUGHTER)

BLOTNICK: Yeah. I - my childhood home was for sale. And I went to look at it, and the realtor did not know that I had grown up in this house, and it had been on the market for a really long time. And she said, you know, I wonder if something bad happened in this house. I was like, I could tell you lots...

SAGAL: Sister, I got stories.

O'NEILL: You have no idea.

BLOTNICK: ...Lots of bad things happened in this house.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Emmy, after an airplane passenger posted photos of the snack her seatmate brought on the flight, people are arguing over whether it is OK to eat what on a plane?

BLOTNICK: Wheat Thins.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Are Wheat Thins problematic?

O'NEILL: It's got to be...

BLOTNICK: I'm withholding.

SAGAL: Are Wheat Thins problematic in your view?

O'NEILL: What are Wheat Thins? Like commune...

(LAUGHTER)

ALEX EDELMAN: It's a cracker.

BLOTNICK: How much time do we have?

O'NEILL: Is that like a communion wafer?

SAGAL: Well, I think...

BLOTNICK: It's sort of if a Triscuit had less hair.

O'NEILL: Oh.

SAGAL: Oh, boy. Nabisco, have I got the slogan for you?

O'NEILL: (Singing) Bald Triscuits. Bald Triscuits. Oh...

SAGAL: No, I will...

O'NEILL: (Singing) ...Oh, oh. Bald Tiscuits. That's it.

BLOTNICK: Oh, that's good.

O'NEILL: Thanks.

SAGAL: No, I will give you a hint, Emmy. What was amazing was she had all these, but she didn't even bring dye to make Easter eggs or anything.

BLOTNICK: Oh, were they soft-boiled - hard-boiled eggs?

SAGAL: Hard-boiled eggs.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Yes.

BLOTNICK: I'm going to go hard-boiled.

SAGAL: She had seven hard-boiled eggs. And I also would have accepted...

O'NEILL: That's a no.

SAGAL: ...Corn and the cob and an entire whole boiled potato because those were the side dishes.

O'NEILL: Does she only know how to boil things?

SAGAL: Apparently.

O'NEILL: Like, what is he a pilgrim? Who is eating that?

(LAUGHTER)

BLOTNICK: We've got to get this lady an oven.

SAGAL: Who brings this kind of food on a plane? Even paleo bros are like, lady, too far. Also...

BLOTNICK: It sounds like a meal my dog wants to be left alone with.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I know.

EDELMAN: That sounds like witchcraft.

O'NEILL: Did she - were they pre-peeled? Because if you have to sit there...

SAGAL: No, this is the thing...

O'NEILL: ...And peel all the stuff.

SAGAL: According to the person who posted the picture, she said four of them were peeled. Three of them were not yet peeled.

EDELMAN: Witchcraft. That's witchcraft, man. That's wican stuff.

BLOTNICK: Yeah, that just made all our astrological signs change.

EDELMAN: Yeah.

O'NEILL: Yeah.

SAGAL: So clearly, our theory is this woman bought too many eggs about a week ago, and now she's going to go out of town on a long trip. She didn't want to waste them. Or she's a mongoose.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Alex, this week, we learned about a new technology that promises to improve your life by monitoring your health and your wellness, all by placing a tiny camera in your what?

(LAUGHTER)

EDELMAN: Perineum? I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Actually, you're - that - you're not...

BLOTNICK: It's not far away?

SAGAL: ...Far off from that.

EDELMAN: What? No. Come on, man.

SAGAL: Yeah. No. It's - that's part of the view. It's like you take the lens cap off and you put the seat down.

EDELMAN: Not toilet.

SAGAL: Yes, in your toilet.

EDELMAN: God dang it.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The legendary bathroom fixture company, Kohler, introduced the Dekoda, that is a $600 camera that you clamp to your toilet seat. You point it down. And it analyzes your waist to give you valuable health data.

BLOTNICK: Visually?

SAGAL: Point it up, and your dreams will be haunted forever.

(LAUGHTER)

EDELMAN: Oh....

BLOTNICK: Wait.

EDELMAN: ...My God.

BLOTNICK: What can it tell?

SAGAL: It can analyze your gut health and hydration levels and also whether or not you've had beets.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now I'm unclear. I'm unclear in how you actually get to see the photos. I hope it's not that you walk out of the bathroom and there's, like, a big screen with them all on it, like after a rollercoaster ride. No, actually, of course, you - this will not be a surprise - you have to subscribe to their service.

BLOTNICK: Oh, my gosh.

SAGAL: You pay them $7 a month, and you get to see the photos and your health data.

BLOTNICK: No. I would...

SAGAL: You don't - if you...

BLOTNICK: I would pay not to see the photo.

SAGAL: ...If you don't pay them, everybody else sees them.

(LAUGHTER)

O'NEILL: I don't like it. I just - I just feel like there's always, like, data leaks and, like - no pun intended. I don't want this to come back to bite me in the butt.

SAGAL: Yeah. Well...

O'NEILL: No pun intended.

SAGAL: That's also a pun, yeah. There's no way of talking about this without eventually arriving there. Yeah.

EDELMAN: I would buy this if it let you know when you set a personal best.

(SOUNDBITE OF MARK AYRES' "CHARIOTS OF FIRE (FROM 'CHARIOTS OF FIRE')")

SAGAL: Finally, in May, I got the thrill of a lifetime. We visited Boston, where I spent much of my childhood, and we got to talk to one of my childhood heroes, Hall of Famer Jim Rice of the Boston Red Sox.

SLADE: As soon as Peter stopped giggling like a 10-year-old boy, he asked Jim what it's like to walk the streets of Boston like a god among men.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

SAGAL: Do you - I'm assuming you get - well, of course, you're also on TV, helping to broadcast Red Sox games, so I'm assuming you get recognized a lot.

JIM RICE: Yes, this is a very sports-minded city, regardless you playing baseball, football. They know who you are.

SAGAL: We hear about Boston - I am one, a Boston Red Sox fan - that we can be a little abrasive. Does anybody ever give you grief for anything, or are you way beyond that?

RICE: No. When I first got here, being from the South, I was brought up that you speak to everyone as you're walking down the streets and things like that. And someone stopped me and said, we don't do that here.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: So it was hard for me to make that adjustment, being a Southern guy and, you know, being hospitable and things. Like, we don't speak.

SAGAL: You came up here, and you had manners. And they're like, that's not what we do in Boston.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: That was it.

SAGAL: So, Jim, you played in front of the Green Monster at Fenway. For people who don't know, that's this very high, close-in wall that makes left field in Fenway particularly hard to play. Did you just, like, enjoy yourself when opposing teams would go out there and watch them screw it up?

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: We did. But as a player, this is like your house, which we knew. By the time we hit the ball, we knew we had a chance to get a double. Now, the opposing team - they didn't have any idea how good I was. They were getting a single.

(LAUGHTER)

JOYELLE NICOLE JOHNSON: Yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So this would happen, right? I mean, it happens sometimes to this day that an opposing player will hit the ball high off the wall. That's a hard-hit ball. They're like, I'm taking two. Easy. And the next thing you know, you've got it into second base before they're even rounding...

RICE: Well, we had a team here the other day. I guess they call themselves the Mets, I believe.

SAGAL: I've heard of them.

RICE: And there was a guy...

ADAM FELBER: Good team.

RICE: ...Soto (ph) making all this dough, and he hit one out. He stood there and he tried to style a little bit.

SAGAL: Yeah. He was admiring his...

RICE: Thank you.

SAGAL: He was admiring his job.

RICE: And it didn't work out pretty good.

SAGAL: No 'cause it's a really high wall.

RICE: Yeah, it is.

SAGAL: It really is. You are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, a rare and extraordinary achievement.

RICE: Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: You were elected in your last year of eligibility, 15th year.

RICE: I got in on my last year.

SAGAL: Yeah. And what were you doing when you got the call?

RICE: Well, do I have to say it?

SAGAL: I believe you do.

JOHNSON: Please.

RICE: OK. My mom and I - she was a "General Hospital," and I was a "General Hospital," "Young And The Restless." And so - no, I'm serious. And so my whole career, I watched "Young And The Restless." So when I got the call, I was watching "Young And The Restless."

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: And I was asked, well, you just made it to the Hall of Fame. I said, look, I'm looking at "The Young And The Restless." Call me back later. I swear to you.

SAGAL: Really?

MAZ JOBRANI: Good for you.

JOHNSON: Your stories.

SAGAL: Wait a minute. So, like, they call you. They say, Mr. Rice, I'm calling from Cooperstown. And you're like, wait a minute, it just turned out that's not Denise. It's Denise's evil twin. I'll call you back.

RICE: I knew that because they said if you get in the Hall of Fame, they'll call you at a certain time.

SAGAL: Right.

RICE: Don't bother me at 12:30. 12:30 to 1:30. No. And...

(LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: It couldn't wait for "Bold And Beautiful"?

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: Well, now, believe it or not, "Young And The Restless" is much better than "Bold And Beautiful."

JOBRANI: Oh, I believe it.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: You go from "The Young And The Restless" to the "Bold And The Beautiful" or vice versa. And so if you watched it, the guy's name is Victor (ph). And I have it on my phone.

SAGAL: Oh, he's a very famous actor who did this role for...

RICE: I have it on my phone. And he called me and said, Jim, I know you're watching "The Young And The Restless." Congratulations, you're in the Hall of Fame.

SAGAL: So you got a call from Victor.

RICE: I have it on the phone. Yeah.

SAGAL: That's amazing.

JOBRANI: That's great.

RICE: I have it on my phone.

SAGAL: That's amazing. But you said...

JOHNSON: Oh, my gosh.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: ...You said that you watched it your whole career.

RICE: Yeah.

SAGAL: So what did you do during, like, day games? It's like, Jim, you're up. You're like, no, my stories are on.

RICE: No, no.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: You could have it taped. But...

SAGAL: (Laughter).

RICE: ...A good friend of mine, Bob Montgomery, which was behind (inaudible). We play golf a lot. And he asked me one day, he said, why we always have to play golf and be back before 12:30?

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Really?

RICE: Yeah. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink, and I didn't really have lunch because I'm very nervous. I was so antsy about the game.

SAGAL: Sure.

RICE: So I didn't really - and so that was my downtime to watch "Young And The Restless."

FELBER: Have they ever - have you ever thought of doing a walk-on?

RICE: I thought about that, but I'm too - like, my hands are sweating now by being up here. I'm...

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: I can play in front of a crowd, but this here is terrifying.

SAGAL: Really?

RICE: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly is, yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

RICE: I'm sweating. I'm sweating.

FELBER: Wow.

RICE: Because I'm not accustomed to this.

SAGAL: You're not accustomed to the...

RICE: No, no, no.

SAGAL: ...Sitting in - well, yeah.

JOBRANI: I got a quick question, too. I never had a chance to talk to a Hall of Fame hitter. You guys, it's about - what? - less than a second to decide to hit the ball. So what, like, what's - can you talk us through the mechanics of when you decide to swing and don't? And, like, how does that work?

RICE: See ball, hit ball. See ball, hit ball out.

(LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: See ball, hit ball.

SAGAL: And that, ladies and gentlemen...

FELBER: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we called analytics back in the day.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Well, Jim Rice, it is an absolute thrill for me personally to talk to you. And we have invited you here to play a game that this time we're calling...

BILL KURTIS: Watch Out for These Green Monsters.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So, as we said, you're one of three Hall of Famers so far to play in front of the Green Monster in Fenway Park. So we're going to ask you about actual monsters that are green. Answer two out of three correctly, you'll win a prize for one of our listeners. Bill, who is the legendary Jim Rice playing for?

KURTIS: Colton Johnson (ph) of Boston, Massachusetts.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: OK.

JOBRANI: You got this.

SAGAL: Here's your first question. The very green, Incredible Hulk has been smashing things since his appearance in the comics in 1962. But one of his most exciting adventures happened in the 1990s, which saw the Incredible Hulk taking on what enemy? A, 100 baby ducks; B, the boy band New Kids on the Block; or C, Marvel's quarterly financial report and future projected earnings.

(LAUGHTER)

JOBRANI: See question, answer question.

SAGAL: Exactly.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: No. 3.

SAGAL: No. 3. You're right.

JOBRANI: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

FELBER: Woo.

SAGAL: It was the Marvel annual report, which was printed that year as a comic book, in which the Hulk discussed publishing revenues with stockholders.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here's your next question. That's very good. In Dr. Seuss' book, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas," the Grinch is shown in black and white, and the Grinch only became green for the animated TV version. How did animator Chuck Jones decide the Grinch should be that shade of green? A, it happens to be the exact same shade as stomach bile; B, it was the same color as the really ugly rental car he took to meet Dr. Seuss; or C, his ink supplier was having a sale on that shade the week they went into production?

RICE: I'll go with C.

SAGAL: You're going to go with C, his ink supplier was having a make them green. It's cheap. No, it was actually the color of the rental car. Nonetheless...

RICE: OK.

SAGAL: ...I mean, you're used to this. You get a couple of chances to get a hit. OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here's your last question.

RICE: OK.

SAGAL: "Sesame Street's" green monster, Oscar the Grouch, has been living for decades in a trash can that never gets emptied, which is a good thing because which of these, according to "Sesame Street" lore, is in that trash can? A, three tons of Big Bird guano...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...B, 17 elephants, a bowling alley, a skating rink and an Olympic-sized swimming pool; or C, 36 human bones?

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBERS: B.

RICE: B.

SAGAL: B. And, ladies and gentlemen, he hits it out of the park.

MAZ JOBRANI AND JOYELLE NICOLE JOHNSON: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: It is B. Oscar's trash can canonically is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Bill, how did Jim Rice do in our little game?

KURTIS: Two out of three - Hall of Famer.

(CHEERING)

KURTIS: That's a win.

SAGAL: Jim Rice is a baseball Hall of Famer. He spent his whole career playing for the Boston Red Sox and will never pay for his own soda in Boston. Jim Rice, thank you so much for joining us.

RICE: Thank you.

JOBRANI: Yeah.

(CHEERING)

SAGAL: What an absolute honor to meet you.

JOHNSON: Yes.

SAGAL: Thank you so much for being here. Jim Rice, ladies and gentlemen.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: That's it for facing the future while looking backwards edition.

Thanks to everybody you heard this week. That would be our panelists, our guests, Bill Kurtis, of course, as well as his able backups, Alzo Slade and Che "Rhymefest" Smith. And thanks to all of you for listening. I'm Peter Sagal. We'll be back with you next week.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SAGAL: This is NPR.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103455

OBITUARIES | SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2025 • 4:26 AM EST | VIEW ON NPR

Perry Bamonte, guitarist and keyboardist for The Cure, dies at 65

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Perry Archangelo Bamonte, longtime guitarist and keyboardist for the influential goth band The Cure, has died. He was 65.

The band made the announcement on their official website on Friday.

"It is with enormous sadness that we confirm the death of our great friend and bandmate Perry Bamonte, who passed away after a short illness at home over Christmas," the band wrote.

"Quiet, intense, intuitive, constant and hugely creative, 'Teddy' was a warm hearted and vital part of The Cure story," the statement continued. "Our thoughts and condolences are with all his family. He will be very greatly missed."

Bamonte worked with the band in various roles from 1984 to 1989, including as roadie and guitar tech. He officially joined the band in 1990, when keyboardist Roger O'Donnell quit. It was then that he became a full-time member of the group, playing guitar, six-string bass and keyboard.

Having joined just after the band's mainstream breakthrough, 1989's "Disintegration," Bamonte is featured on a number of The Cure's albums, including 1992's "Wish" — which features the career-defining hits "Friday I'm in Love" and "High" — as well as the 1996's "Wild Mood Swings," 2000's "Bloodflowers" and 2004's self-titled release.

Bamonte was fired from The Cure by its singer and leader Robert Smith in 2005. At that point in time, he had performed at over 400 shows across 14 years. Bamonte rejoined the group in recent years, touring with the band in 2022 for another 90 gigs.

In 2019, Bamonte was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame alongside the rest of The Cure.

His last performance with the band was on Nov. 1, 2024 in London for a special one-off event to launch their latest album and first in 16 years, "Songs of a Lost World." The concert was filmed for "The Cure: The Show of a Lost World," a film released in cinemas globally this month. It is also available to purchase on Blu-ray and DVD.

The Associated Press described "Songs of a Lost World" as "lush and deeply orchestral, swelling and powerful" — one of the best of the band's career.

Full article: https://www.npr.org/g-s1-103794

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