The Doomscroll News Report

Hanna and Amanda ignore the PLA elephant surrounding the island in favor of some other newsworthy topics, including North Korea's involvement in Russia's war in Ukraine, the new tax China is levying on condoms and other contraceptives, and the obnoxious way the super-rich rang in the new year.

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna (mostly) take a break from current news to reflect on how we manage to stay high-information, low stress by talking to some other professionals in the news world about how they achieve work-life balance when their job literally is the news (especially in these crazy times)! We'll be hearing from Eric Gao, a copy-editior and anchor at Taiwan Plus, Iris Hsu host of...

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda reflect on the news story that most impacted Amanda in the year 2025: the on-going saga of U.S. "Secreatary of War" Pete Hegseth. They also briefly discuss events from the past week, including the Bondi Beach terror attack, Jimmy Lai's verdict, and the Vanity Fair whitehouse article. Read along with us: Weekly event recap: 1. What we know about the Bondi Beach Han...

The hosts reflect on the news story that most impacted Hanna in the year 2025: the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

This week, Amanda and Hanna are tackling: Trump raging against South American druglords while pardoning one, Google’s release of Nano Banana PRO and what it means for the future of visual journalism, and Oxford’s entry to the “word-of-the-year” arena. Read along with us! Trump pardons former Honduran President: 1. Trump formally pardons former Honduran President Juan Orland...

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda are going over the latest updates on the war in Ukraine, the seemingly never-ending escandalo surrounding former president of Brazil’s  Jair Bolsonaro, and finally, a bit about "free birthing": a dangerous trend promoting pregnancy without any prenatal care and birth without any medical assistance. Read along with us! Ukraine and the proposed "peace pla...

This week, Amanda and Hanna are tackling: the Cloudflare outage and what (if anything) it means, a New York Times opinion debate that blamed women for “ruining the workplace”, and finally what it says about 2025 that Cambridge's “word of the year” is PARASOCIAL. Read along with us: Cloudflare outage: 1. Cloudflare Outage Disrupts X, ChatGPT and Thousands of Sites (Alexandra...

This week, hosts Hanna and Amanda are talking about the AI ​​bubble (whether such a bubble exists, and if it does, whether it'll burst?), the political and economic situation in Argentina right now, and finally, the future of mushrooms as the computer hardware of the future. Read along with us: Chekov's AI bubble: Argentina's economic situation: Mushroom computing:

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna are discussing the lack of discussion on the Sudanese civil war and the upsetting satellite footage of the carnage, missing food assistance as the U.S. government shutdown becomes the longest in history, and one last bit of good news about plastics in the ocean.  Read along with us: The Sudanese civil war: 1. A simple guide to what is happening in Sudan (Nata...

Hanna and Amanda finally get around to talking about all the drug boat operations the Trump administration has been carrying out since early September. Also on the docket is the world's failure to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre‑industrial levels, and what that means for the future.

This week, hosts Amanda and Hanna are looking at the many news stories that both dominated and seemed to fly under the radar in the last week, despite being... pretty big news? They'll discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan's latest ceasefire, what happened at the Louvre on the same day, and what Amazon Web Services are and why the blackout made Amanda so nervous. (No, it's not just about her Duolingo s...

This week Hanna and Amanda discuss Japan, where Sanae Takaichi just won the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election and is on track to become their first female prime minister, as well as what’s been going on with EVA Airlines here in Taiwan. Read along with us: Japan’s new PM: 1. Sanae Takaichi set to become Japan's first female prime minister (Shaimaa Khalil, BBC), 2. Gl...

First, Amanda and Hanna take a look at yet another youth protest that has broken out in Madagascar, and how it both reflects and differs from similar situations covered on Doomscroll this year. Then,  looking at changes in the Israel-Palestine situation now that the war has passed the two-year mark, including brand new news, fresh off the presses about the new ceasefire deal, and which parts...

Hanna and Amanda talk about the United States government shutdown and what's at stake, plus Russia's recent activities not just in Ukraine but also in other nearby countries. 

This week, Amanda and Hanna touch on the freedom of speech meltdown that happened in the U.S. following in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. Then Amanda sits down with Michael Geier, the cinematographer for one of Taiwan's most successful documentaries to-date, "Invisible Nation" (or 看不見國家), to discuss the role of entertainment, and especially film, in informing a more engaged publi...

Hanna and Amanda talk about the youth uprisings in Nepal and Indonesia and ways in which Gen Z protesters have and haven't succeeded in changing the world. Read along with us: Nepal:   1. Nepal prime minister quits after deaths at protests sparked by social media ban (Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, and Gaurav Pokharel in Kathmandu, The Guardian), 2. Nepal appoints its first female PM after h...

This week, Amanda is back in the driver's seat and covering a topic she and co-host Hanna have been looking forward to for a long time-- The results of the first anti-trust lawsuit against Google (even if they're disappointed by the results). Then they update on a topic they are both much less excited about, updates of Israel's attack in Qatar and the invasion of Palestine in-general. Read along w...

Hosts Hanna Bilinski and Amanda Stephens are finally in the same room together again and are discussing reunions and first-time unions of another sort. They discuss how India cozying up to China may or may not be the beginning of a "new world order" and what reasons U.S. President Donald Trump may have for reversing course (haha) and allowing Chinese foreign excange students back into the country....

This week, Hanna has invited boss lady Iris back into the studio to discuss the other side of the argument when it comes to nuclear power in Taiwan, plus the tricky matter of nuclear disarmament among the world's three biggest nuclear powers. Iris also shares a piece of her mind regarding gender representation in the newly reshuffled Cabinet.

Hanna invites former Rti host turned TaiwanPlus reporter Chris Gorin back to the studio to talk about Taiwan's future in AI and what the outlook is for the Ukraine war. 

Hanna brings Joey Chou back on to get his opinion on the ongoing tariff drama, the way Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is manuevering in the midst of it, and what's to be done about wildfires.

With Amanda away on a much needed vacation, Hanna brings Fil onto the show to talk Europe and his home country of Slovakia and to muse about whether the historic natural disasters that hit Russia recently feels like foreshadowing.  Read along with us: Taiwan and the EU: 1) Slovakian elections: 1) Russian earthquake: 1)

This week, Hanna's back to host a roundtable discussion with fellow Rti hosts and reporters, Iris Hsu and Tristan Hilderbrand, to talk about what happened with Taiwan's mass electroal recall movement, otherwise known as the Great Recall.  Read along with us: 1) Taiwan is paralyzed by political gridlock. A mass recall of ‘pro-China’ lawmakers could break that (Wayne Chang, CNN), 2)...

This week, Amanda is joined again by guest co-host Joey Chou to sew up loose ends from last week's episode into conspiracy theories and the Epstein Files case happening in the United States. Then, Amanda and Joey bond over shared shock and concern at the news that xAI, the parent company for X's infamous chatbot Grok, has recieved a heafty contract with the U.S. military just a week after that cha...

This week we have a special guest, Lauren Mastroni  the leading author of the thesis, “I one-hundred thousand percent blame it on QAnon”: The impact of QAnon belief on interpersonal relationships from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. We discuss how belief in the “big tent” conspiracy QAnon changed the political landscape, and paved the way for the Epst...