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Maybe you had a bad 2016 but pandas didn't
After years facing adversity and near-extinction, pandas have won at 2016.While other species (read: humans) suffered crippling disease, warfare and political infighting, pandas made it off the...
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Chinese fish farmers are trying to clean up their aquaculture practices
With unsustainable fishing affecting about 30 percent of the ocean’s wild fish populations and most of the rest already fished to the limit, aquaculture is playing an ever bigger role in putting fish...
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There's an intriguing theory that illiterate miners invented the alphabet
Who invented the alphabet, and why?First, the hard facts: The earliest evidence of what’s thought to be the world’s first alphabet is a group of 3,500-year-old inscriptions found in Egypt’s Sinai...
View ArticleThis Republican holds out hope for a Trump conversion on climate change
On the day that Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination for president in July, listeners of PRI’s The World heard this from one of the many Republicans who stayed away from his party's convention in...
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This lost Native language of Massachusetts is waking up again
Wampanoag is a Native language of Massachusetts and, like many Native American languages, it's fighting to survive.The Wampanoag nation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island has more than 2,000 tribal...
View ArticleOh, for fox sake: Thousands of Londoners join petition to ban 'fox cull'
In the last two days, more than 16,000 signatures have been added to an online petition calling for London’s mayor to end an anticipated "fox cull" in the new year. The killing of foxes by professional...
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Indonesia’s rapidly disappearing forests, in four charts
Indonesia has lost almost a quarter of its forest area in the past 25 years.That’s significantly more than has been lost in the other countries with the most forest area. Russia, the United States,...
View ArticleA village's first female chief ended illegal logging with spies and checkpoints
A main road through the district of Sedahan Jaya in western Borneo is just a ribbon of brown dirt. But that’s better than the muddy mess it used to turn into after heavy rains."The road was so bad when...
View ArticleWhy the moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare
"What’s in a name?" Shakespeare’s star-crossed Juliet famously wanted to know. And for those of us peering skyward, it’s a question for the ages: Where do celestial bodies get their names from?There...
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The weight of gender bias on women’s scientific careers
A series of high-profile sexual misconduct investigations have sent waves through the scientific academy this year.The cases have shed light on the sexual harassment and assault that many scientists...
View ArticleSweden tries to curb buy-and-throw-away culture through tax breaks
If you wear your jeans a lot, eventually they’ll start to get a hole. What do you do? You throw them away and buy a new pair, of course. Everybody knows that.Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets and...
View ArticleListen to the audio sorcery used in the Broadway show 'The Encounter'
There is no curtain-raising in “The Encounter.” The show simply begins — with the actor Simon McBurney telling a story, and each member of the audience listening through a set of headphones.The show,...
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Seeking the long-lost 'City of the Monkey God' in dense Honduras jungle
When archaeologists ventured into a thick Honduran rainforest in 2015, they were searching in an unexplored valley for the remnants of a long-lost city. Legend had it that an ancient metropolis was...
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Muslim environmentalists give their religion — and their mosques — a fresh...
The Koutoubia Mosque is one of the iconic landmarks of Marrakech’s old city. Its first stone was laid in 1150, and almost 900 years later, renovations continue.The latest can be found up a flight of...
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2016 brought more record temperatures. So what climate course will the US and...
It's all but official — 2016 will almost certainly go into the books as the warmest year on record. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's the third year in a row we're saying it.It's hard to...
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With melting glaciers and mining, Bolivia’s water is running dangerously low
The rugged Dakar Rally auto race is about to blaze through Bolivia. But to many Bolivians, the timing could not be worse.Thousands of La Paz residents have been protesting these days. Now they’re also...
View ArticleA major water crisis in Syria's capital worsens as fighting continues
The water from rebel-held Wadi Barada, which supplies four million people in Damascus, has been cut since December 22, causing major shortages.The regime and rebels have traded accusations over...
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Welcome to Carmel, Indiana — 'Roundabout City, USA'
If you want to start a fight here in Boston, you might just mention your love of rotaries. You know, big ol' traffic circles at major intersections.A lot of Boston drivers hate rotaries with a...
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How to bring out the wild in zoo animals
When Hilda Tresz was 17, she walked into the office of the director of the Budapest Zoo and demanded a job.Laughing, she recalls, “I was a young, ignorant child who doesn't know that [you’re] not just...
View ArticleMillennials are the new 'fossil fuel freedom fighters'
A new generation of nature writers is coming of age in America. They are beginning to understand how much of the pristine landscape their parents and grandparents enjoyed is now gone.Some of the work...
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