Big Story

In Uganda, they call it Mivumba — secondhand clothes — and for most people, it's simply how you dress. In Sweden, engineers are building machines that give discarded garments a second life. And in Stockholm, one company is composting its worn-out products to grow food. The Rewear Revolution takes the Big Story podcast from the chaos of Kampala's Owino Market to the cutting edge of circular fashion...

In the Andes mountains, ancient forests hold the key to water survival for millions of people across South America. But centuries of deforestation have pushed these ecosystems to the edge — disrupting rainfall, triggering droughts, and threatening the communities that depend on them. This week on The Big Story Podcast, we travel across three countries to meet the people fighting to bring these lan...

The U.S. stands at the forefront of medical innovation, but this progress comes at a staggering cost. Exorbitant bills often push people to choose between their health or financial ruin.  'Triage: Healthcare in the U.S.' takes a closer look at the patients, doctors, and providers trying to make sense of a system that should be looking out for Americans but too often leaves them unattended and brok...

Thailand is grappling with an unsettling trend: a rise in homegrown gun violence and mass shootings. Big Story’s senior correspondent Jason Motlagh talks to survivors and experts trying to make sense of horrific scenes that were once observed at a distance and are now closer and more frequent.

In Louisiana, a police chase ends with the death of an unarmed black man, Ronald Greene. In Mississippi, Rasheem Carter’s body is found in the woods one month after his disappearance under mysterious circumstances. Not far away from there, two men, also African American, are subjected to different types of torture and abuse by the “Goon Squad,” an infamous group of policemen who would eventually f...

Portland, Oregon, is an epicenter of the deepening opioid crisis in the United States, where a life is lost to drug use every eleven minutes. Fentanyl, a cheap and highly potent synthetic opioid up to fifty times stronger than heroin, has been responsible for the majority of overdose deaths. In 2023, the overdose death rate topped 112,000 in twelve months for the first time, with more lives lost t...

Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed 20 million gallons of an herbicide known as Agent Orange over Vietnam. The purpose was to decimate the canopy of the native jungle and gain a military advantage over the Vietcong in the Vietnam War. After half a century, the consequences of this chemical war are still palpable to the Vietnamese. According to Red Cross estimates more than 3 million people hav...

Tiny Laos has the sad distinction of being the most bombed country in history because of an overt military intervention by the U.S. During the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos, more than twelve times the amount dropped on Japan in World War II, or a ton of bombs for every person living in the country. Almost a third did not explode, and f...

Dozens of children in western Venezuela begin their daily journey to school before 5 a.m. But this is no ordinary school – it is located across the border in Colombia. They live in the Guajira peninsula, facing the Caribbean Sea, a region shared by Colombia and Venezuela. The area is also home to the Wayuu indigenous people, the largest indigenous group in both countries. The Wayuu face numerous c...

Haiti is a broken state. Since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, street gangs armed with military grade weapons from the US have filled the power vacuum, taking control of 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and swathes of the countryside. Killing and kidnapping-for-ransom are at an all-time high, and tens of thousands are fleeing to escape violence the United Nations...

Since declaring the War on Drugs fifty years ago, the US has spent billions in Colombia to fight cocaine. The result: more cocaine than ever before, and a black market that fuels corruption, and weakening states across most of Latin America. It also pushed Colombia into a decades-long armed conflict. Now the Colombian government is promising an end to the War on Drugs by trying new approaches like...

San Francisco: From the Gold Rush boom to the Silicon Valley era, California’s “city by the bay” has long symbolized the prosperity of the American West, and the promise of new beginnings. Today, this city at the heart of America’s largest economy is struggling to keep its population as it battles with homelessness and a drug epidemic.

The Endless Harvest is a compilation of stories from all over the world showing us that sustainable growth is not only possible but actually happening. In Florida, an NGO is linking with several companies from the hospitality industry to guarantee that the unused soap and toiletries from their guests can be reused in a circular fashion. They are not only recycling the contents but also the package...

Coping With Long COVID tells the story of three patients suffering from ongoing conditions after initially being infected with the COVID-19 virus. Each has a particular set of symptoms and wide-range of continuing health problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1.13 million people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S., and approximately one in five COVID...

Racism against Asian Americans has been largely underreported until recently. But anti-Asian sentiment has existed in the U.S. for centuries. In this Big Story podcast, we travel to San Francisco to report on the increasing number of attacks on Asian Americans and explore the roots of this racism.

In the mid-1950’s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in schools to be unconstitutional. But more than 50 years later many black students in New York City are still feeling the effects of discrimination. On this Big Story podcast, we hear some of their stories.

St. Louis, Missouri was once one of America’s most industrialized cities. Industry drew many new residents, including a large number of African Americans. But today, St. Louis has become a hub of violence where the lines of segregation are still firmly in place.

In 2001, when the U.S. led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, the country had less than 50 miles of paved roads. The U.S. helped invest billions to create a new Ring Road connecting major Afghan cities. On this Big Story podcast, we take a drive along Ring Road today. With the U.S. forces gone, the battered roadway now illustrates the struggles and heartbreak of a war-weary nation.

Big Story launches its podcast series with ‘Unbearable – Sandy Hook 10 years later’, an examination of the elementary school shooting that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults. The shooting sent shockwaves across the country. This podcast takes a look back at this terrible tragedy and explores the issue of gun violence in the U.S. today.