1A

For decades, U.S. colleges and universities have been regarded as among the best in the world. From the Ivy League to state research institutions, thousands of students and professors from around the globe flocked to America year after year to study, teach, and innovate. International students represented about 6 percent of all higher education students – that’s about 1.1 million. But last year, i...

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet this week in a highly anticipated sit down as the U.N. summit continues in New York. This conference comes amid stark warnings over AI safety, U.S.-China trade anxiety, and the ongoing war in Iran. What‘s on the agenda and what do each of these superpowers want? Find more of our programs online . Listen to 1A sponsor-free by s...

No two words defined President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign more than “America first.” The name of this country has been at the center of President Trump’s rhetoric. But his administration’s approach to foreign policy tells a different story. The Trump administration has done everything from leveraging tariffs, to canceling visas, to sanctioning foreign leaders trying to influence ele...

This week the nation woke up to the potential danger of runaway tech — that AI is behaving in ways its creators don’t intend and can’t control. And that we might be as little as six months to a year away from AI being capable of acting on its own. The midterm election is coming. Prices are high. And a new Congressional Budget Office report out this week says the main reason for relentless inflatio...

Between 2020 and 2025, nearly 200 women have died from ectopic pregnancies. That’s almost double the number of deaths in the previous six years. Ectopic pregnancies happen when an embryo implants outside the uterus and can’t develop properly. If left untreated, the embryo can rupture, causing deadly bleeding. The treatment for ectopic pregnancies – which are almost never viable – is termination. B...

Last week, a researcher at the artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced his resignation on X, formerly known as Twitter.   Jacob Coxon wrote that his former company — along with Open AI, where he also recently worked — are acting irresponsibly and “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” That post went viral — it’s now been viewed nearly 200 mil...

The administration is expanding its third-country deportation campaign. Since President Donald Trump took office last year, more than 25,000 people have been sent to over 29 countries they’re not from. That includes places like Liberia, Guatemala, South Sudan, Guyana, Ghana, and Honduras. Now, more than 30 countries have agreed to accept deportees from the U.S. What does that mean for the people s...

At least a billion dollars of untraceable cash is flowing into this year’s midterm elections. That’s according to an analysis by The New York Times from late last month. These funds – referred to as dark money by campaign finance experts – are coming from super PACs, non-profits, and wealthy donors. Tracing exactly how much dark money is flowing through campaigns is difficult. Money spent to hire...

Despite President Donald Trump’s historic unpopularity, Republicans are betting on him big ahead of this year’s midterms. The party staged a first midterm convention in Dallas, Texas this week. Following renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran, the price of crude oil has risen to over $100 per barrel, meaning American drivers are in for more pain at the pump. And this week New York City Mayo...

The Lindsay Clancy murder trial captivated the American public for weeks. Prosecutors charged Clancy with murdering her three children. They say she then tried to take her own life and that her injuries left her paralyzed from the waist down. Clancy’s lawyers say she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible. But prosecutors say she planned the deaths. Aft...

The way we work has changed dramatically over the last decade. Using AI is quickly becoming the norm in many workplaces when, just a few years ago, it felt closer to science fiction. And the hybrid work model that began during the pandemic has made remote work much more common.  We’ve also seen shifts around what it means to be an “essential worker.” It’s a term that emerged during the pandemic, b...

A quarter century after 9/11, the health of those who responded to the attacks continues to be affected. Some 3,000 people died across three locations that day. An estimated 400,000 people were exposed to toxic contaminants and risked physical injury in the hours and days that followed. That’s according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the dust and debris have set...

How did you celebrate July 4 this year? What did the country’s landmark 250th anniversary, in honor of the founding of the United States, mean to you? The next 50 years likely hold a lot of change for our country where democracy, economic uncertainty, technology, and our social fabric are concerned. What do we want that change to look like? In this previously-aired episode, we opened the phones so...

Following months of a tenuous ceasefire and several rounds of failed negotiations, the U.S. and Iran traded military strikes this week threatening to once again plunge the surrounding region into conflict. A whistleblower inside the United States Postal Service is warning that the agency is rushing to implement a system to deal with mail-in ballots that, due to its untested nature, could disenfran...

If you’ve driven on any road in the U.S. lately, chances are your license plate has been captured by a Flock camera. Flock lets police around the country track your car. The company’s cameras can even help determine whether you’ve committed a crime. Now, it’s is facing big time backlash for what critics call excessive surveillance. What does widespread deployment of license plate readers on U.S. r...

Imagine a small town in rural Tennessee — a town square, a yellow brick courthouse, a family-owned restaurant, a café, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets across the Appalachian foothills. Now, imagine a group of far-right real estate developers — backed by Silicon Valley venture capital and with powerful ties to Washington — move into town. They have a vision to build a new kind of community and t...

For some of you, it’s still a week away. For others — the doors are already open. It’s back to school. But in this edition of 1A , it’s all about the teachers. They’ve been called heroes. They’ve fought for better salaries and benefits. They‘ve been asked to do more with less. They’ve started go-fund-me campaigns to pay for your classroom supplies when the funding just isn’t there. Last year, we a...

Between 1950 and 1975, an estimated 1.5 million women were sent to homes for unwed mothers across the United States. There, most were hidden away from their families and communities until they gave birth and placed their babies for adoption. Some of those adoptions were involuntary. That type of experience is hard to forget. For one family, a past that had been buried for decades finally came to l...

Following a Supreme Court decision that cleared the way, a federal judge lifted a nationwide block on President Donald Trump’s executive order that limited mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections. A historic drought in the northwestern United States is supercharging what’s on track to already be a historic wildfire season. And reporting from The Wall Street Journal indicated that Trump inter...

Four years after the fall of Roe v. Wade upended federal protections for abortion access, abortion opponents have set their sights on a new target in the world of fertility: surrogacy. A gestational surrogate is a woman who carries an embryo that was formed using the egg of another woman. Before the pregnancy, the surrogate also agrees to return the baby to its intended parents once born. At its c...

On Tuesday, August 25th, American country musician, philanthropist, and icon Dolly Parton died at the age of 80 in Nashville, Tennessee.  Years before her death, she asked her nephew and head of security, Bryan Seaver, to make a video announcing her passing. In the video posted to social media yesterday, he shared this exchange with his aunt:   “Dolly called me and said she wants to rest on a beau...

Throughout history, people have been fascinated by automation, technological progress, and how it can change our lives. In 1956, General Motors made a film about the distant future of 19 76 , when cars would drive themselves with the help of traffic-control towers. In 1993, AT&T envisioned what sounds a lot like today’s smart home and smart watch technology. Much of what the companies behind these...

The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the deadliest in the country’s history. With over 2,500 deaths and more than 5,000 confirmed cases, it’s now the second largest ever worldwide. And it’s spreading at record speed. It’s even outpacing the West Africa outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016. What do we know about why this outbreak is mov...

Imagine that the U.S. isn’t a democracy. Instead, it;s run like a corporation. The nation’s leader acts as a CEO and always has the final say. This would be a world of unchecked capitalism. It’s a world where countries are replaced with privately-owned startups, and technology renders democracy obsolete. It sounds like a setup to a dystopian sci-fi movie. But it’s a world that some of the biggest...

The United States’ national debt has now surpassed $40 trillion, a milestone that forecasters thought the country wouldn’t reach for months. President Donald Trump drew the ire of many military families, lawmakers, and the public when he was asked if the deployment of the USS Lincoln to the Middle East had gone on too long. He responded by saying, “No no no no…not nearly long enough.” Florida Stat...