Host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories that remind us just how small our planet really is. The World, the radio program, is heard each weekday on over 300 public stations across North America.
Reading the feed…
Arabic music filled the air of Laura Elkeslassy’s Moroccan Jewish childhood home in Paris, especially on Fridays before Shabbat. But she didn’t grow up speaking Arabic, so she didn’t understand the words. In New York as an adult, Laura’s search for a wedding song takes her on a rich musical, spiritual, and political journey — leading to a bookstore in Jerusalem where she discovers that this work to preserve her culture continues what her ancestors began. Elkeslassy's conversation with Meklit Hadero, host of the Movement podcast, first aired Jan. 13, 2026.
This summer has been brutal across Europe with extremely high temperatures. France was hit hard, with many concerned that this is the new normal. Some parts of the country reached close to 110 degrees. Adeline Sire reports on the many ways in which the French kept cool.
Gotham FC's star striker, Esther Gonzalez, has left the New York team and has signed on to play for a Premier League team in Saudi Arabia. Gonzalez is openly gay and married to a woman. In Saudi Arabia, same sex relationships are illegal. The World's Marco Werman speaks with Cyd Zeigler, founder of LGBTQ+ sports publication Outsports, about what this means to her fans.
Unlike the Seine, the Tiber, which courses through Italy's capital, is still considered too polluted for safe swimming. So instead of going in the water, they're going deep underground. DW’s Angelo van Schaik visited an ancient Roman quarry to see how it works.
We begin with a brief update on the situation in Nepal, where flash flooding swept away entire villages in the Himalayan region bordering Tibet. The official death toll is nearing 600 people and continues to climb. The list of missing people is almost 2,500.
Iceland has long kept the EU at arm’s length. But Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland have prompted a rethink, with growing calls for Iceland to move closer to the bloc. On Saturday, Icelanders will vote on whether to restart talks on EU membership. But there’s fierce opposition, particularly from the country’s powerful fishing industry. The World's Europe correspondent Orla Barry reports.
Gas prices in the United States have risen roughly 40% since the start of the war with Iran six months ago. Triple-A is predicting this August will be the most expensive month ever at the pump in the United States. People around the world have felt the pinch, too. But one South American country has been preparing for this moment for decades ... and is weathering the global storm in fuel prices. Michael Fox has the story from São Paulo, Brazil.
It’s been a tense week in Haiti after nearly 50 people were killed and over 50 more were kidnapped in a coordinated gang attack in a town outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. Wethzer Piercin is an editor at AyiboPost in Port-au-Prince and joins Host Marco Werman with the details.
Former Serbian General Ratko Mladic, the so-called "Butcher of Bosnia," has died at the age of 84 in a prison hospital at The Hague, in the Netherlands — where he was serving a life sentence. Mladic oversaw numerous atrocities during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.
In Paris, the city's first shop devoted exclusively to French butter has opened. So far, it's proving to be a hit with tourists and locals alike.
Immigration is a hot topic in Europe, especially among rightwing political groups hoping to take over the leadership of their countries. One nation where the populist right is already governing is Italy — also an external border state. And while, in the first half of this year, sea arrivals in Italy were down by 30% compared to last year, from Deutsche Welle, DW, Inside Europe's Correspondent Angelo van Schaik reports that the situation at the main immigration office in Rome is chaotic.
Wildfires have raged for weeks in Indonesia. It's poised to be one of the country's worst wildfire seasons ever. The World's Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Wahyu Perdana, from the peatland monitoring organization Pandau Gambut, about what's happening.
As we've reported this week, devastating flash floods have killed more than 350 people near Nepal's border with Tibet. But the death toll is fluid, with some 1,000 people still unaccounted for. Host Carolyn Beeler discussed the situation with Rojita Adhikari, a freelance journalist based in Kathmandu who traveled today to Trishuli Bazar downstream from where the flood started, and Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa, a glaciologist and a PhD candidate at the Department of Physical Geography at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
For most baseball pitchers, facing down a batter with a full count is one of the toughest things they'll ever do. But for Alli Schroder of the Women’s Pro Baseball League’s Boston Hunters, baseball is no sweat compared to her job back home in Canada. GBH’s Esteban Bustillos has more.
Five years ago, a heat dome stretched across British Columbia, Canada, killing more than 600 people. The paramedics trying to respond to emergency calls were unprepared to operate at that level of heat. But hot conditions are increasingly normal in places where they didn't used to be. For The Big Fix, The World's Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Brooks Hogya, an academic, paramedic and member of BC's heat advisory committee, about the lessons BC took from the heat dome.
Sweden is ordering British citizens to leave at a far higher rate than any other EU country since Brexit. The UK Foreign Office calculates that Sweden has rejected more than a quarter of residency applications from British citizens, three times the rate of other EU countries. British citizens lost their automatic right to live and work in the EU after the Brexit referendum. Now, a series of cases involving vulnerable Britons has put Sweden’s treatment of UK nationals under growing scrutiny. The World’s Europe Correspondent Orla Barry reports.
Two thousand robots participated in a Humanoid Robotics competition this week in the Chinese capital. They participated in running, jumping, soccer and ping pong competitions — breaking records — as Host Carolyn Beeler explains.
The UN and Red Cross released a joint statement Tuesday calling for more controls on autonomous weapons systems powered by Artificial Intelligence. The statement follows a report by The New York Times on Monday about a deadly Russian drone strike using autonomous weapon technology. The World's Host Carolyn Beeler learned more from Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Pentagon expert on autonomous weapons systems.
The death of Dolly Parton has led to an outpouring of tributes around the world, with celebrities, world leaders and fellow musicians lauding the country star's philanthropy and good works. Host Carolyn Beeler runs down some of the tributes.
An accomplished Spanish American percussionist from Madrid, Pablo Martín Jones, is focusing his attention on an obscure, square-shaped hand drum found only in a small Spanish village near the Portuguese border. Traditionally, only women played it, and they used a stick. It's one of those traditions that was just about gone, but Jones is helping revive the instrument, and helping it evolve. Gerry Hadden reports from Spain.
Venezuela’s government and opposition are negotiating again — but this time, analysts say the country may have its best chance in years at a democratic transition. The talks have already produced agreements on judicial reform, while arrests have slowed and political prisoners have been released. Still, deep skepticism remains after years of failed negotiations, and key opposition leader María Corina Machado is not at the table. The World's Tibisay Zea reports.
Flash floods triggered by an ice avalanche have left hundreds of people missing in Nepal along its border with Tibet. Some scientists think the tragedy may have been set off, at least in part, by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier. Simon Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland tells The World’s Host Carolyn Beeler what a satellite analysis reveals about the disaster.
This summer, a swarm of jellyfish disrupted operations at a coastal nuclear power plant in France; the same thing happened last year, when jellyfish mucked up the mechanics so badly, the entire plant temporarily shut down. So, what's with all the jellyfish? The World's Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Monty Graham, director at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, about the species — including the one named after him.
New research finds Angola's peatlands stretch over an area four times larger than previously thought. The World's Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with Mauro Lourenço, the study's author and senior researcher at The Wilderness Project, about the findings.
Over the weekend, a thousand Japanese people together pulled a 400-year-old castle about three feet closer to where it originally stood. It was moved a decade ago, so workers could fix a retaining wall damaged in an earthquake. Host Carolyn Beeler has the story.
