Author: Matt

More than 55,000 people in the U.S. are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to research from The Sentencing Project.

Behind bars, they are largely unseen and unheard.

The Visiting Room Project is an effort to change that. It’s a collection of first-person testimonials of people who are serving life sentences.

We hear inmates tell their stories and talk with Calvin Duncan, co-creator the project, which invites the public to sit face-to-face with people who have no chance of parole.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated billions of dollars to Puerto Rico to help it rebuild from Hurricane Maria with more resilient infrastructure. Five years after the storm, only a tiny fraction of it has been spent, and Hurricane Fiona has again left much of the island in the dark.

NPR’s Adrian Florido explains how Fiona has left some Puerto Ricans feeling like their recovery has gone “back to zero.”

Sergio Marxuach, with The Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rican think tank, explains why the island’s power grid is so fragile, despite dedicated federal funding to improve it.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

As record numbers of people in the U.S. die from drug overdoses, communities are searching for tools to prevent them. A new program in Canada could serve as a model.

Over the past few years, government-approved clinics have opened across the country, where people can use street drugs under medical supervision. If they overdose, they can get life-saving care immediately. Some doctors are even prescribing powerful opioids to patients to keep them from using street drugs that may be laced with deadly chemicals.

It’s a controversial program, and some in the medical community argue that it could encourage drug use.

NPR’s addiction correspondent Brian Mann visited some of those supervised injection sites in Ottawa, to see how the program is working.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

For many in the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth was synonymous with the monarchy. As she’s laid to rest, King Charles faces a potentially “existential” challenge in convincing the British and global public that the monarchy is a force for good, according to historian Dan Jones.

That may be a difficult task in the Commonwealth, a group of 56 countries connected in part by a history of British colonial rule. Many see the monarchy as inextricably linked to the injustices of that colonial system.

Jones talks to NPR’s Rachel Martin about the Queen’s legacy and the shoes Charles must now fill.

Jamaican member of Parliament Lisa Hanna explains why she believes the monarchy is at a crossroads and must use this moment to correct historical wrongs committed by the British Empire against people of the Caribbean.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

For the past six months, dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles have been striking almost every weekend.

This is because the strippers say they’ve faced unsafe working conditions, including assault and harassment from customers.

After the dancers say they were unable to meet with club managers to discuss their demands and were not allowed to work, they launched an effort to form a union.

This episode also features reporting from NPR’s Brianna Scott and KCRW’s Robin Estrin.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

It’s a strange moment in the pandemic. Mask mandates and other restrictions have all but disappeared. For most vaccinated people, the risk of severe illness has gone way down.

But hundreds of people are dying of COVID-19 every day. For their loved ones, grieving a terrible loss as the country is moving back to normal can be jarring.

Everyday Americans are weighing the threat the coronavirus poses to them. Scientists, too, are debating how dangerous the virus is right now.

NPR’s Rob Stein reports on the debate about whether COVID is more or less dangerous than the seasonal flu.

And Susan Reinhard with the AARP’s Public Policy Institute argues that more still needs to be done to protect nursing home residents.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Over the past week, the Ukrainian military has retaken thousands of square miles of territory from Russian troops, in a counteroffensive east of Kharkiv. Retreating Russian soldiers left behind tanks and ammunition as they fled.

We’ll hear the stories of Ukrainians who spent months under Russian occupation, and take a look at what the counteroffensive means for the next phase of the war.

This episode also features reporting by NPR’s Ashley Westerman.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Social media platforms have helped fuel political polarization and incitements to violence across the globe, from the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

This is because algorithms consistently select content that evokes anger and outrage from its users to maximize engagement. And sometimes, those extreme emotions turn into extreme actions.

New York Times reporter Max Fisher took a deep dive into the impact of social media in his book, “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World.” He shares with us how platform leaders have prioritized profit and growth over safeguards and how the polarizing effect of social media is only speeding up.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

A lot of mobile homes aren’t actually that mobile. They’re brought in trucks in big pieces, then screwed together and put up on foundations.

At that point they’re basically just houses, with one major exception: the people who own those houses, if they live in a mobile home park, often don’t own the land underneath them.

That can leave them at the mercy of the big companies that own and manage the mobile home parks.

NPR’s Chris Arnold and Robert Benincasa have the story of a group of residents who are suing their corporate landlord, and what it might say about the mobile home industry in America.

You can read an in-depth version of the story here.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.