Impact of Brazil's politics on the Amazon rainforest

Amazon deforestation down by a third in 2023

Read this article to understand how Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who started his term on January 1, 2023, has been successful in reducing deforestation in the Amazon region. Deforestation dropped by 33.6% in the first six months of...

Interviews with loggers, tribespeople, environmentalists, ranchers, and scientists about Amazon rainforest deforestation.

Around for 10 million years, the Amazon Rainforest might completely disappear before the end of the century. This 10-minute read shares personal accounts from loggers to Indigenous people, with satellite images of the deforestation of a 134,000...

Why is the Amazon rainforest important?

Watch this five-minute video from National Geographic to learn about the importance of the Amazon rainforest and the risk of what's to come if humans continue to deforest it. The Amazon rainforest is about the same size as the continental United...

Amazon fires: Causes, impact, and prevention strategies

This article explores the issue of rampant fires in the Amazon rainforest, detailing their root causes, devastating impacts, and potential prevention methods. The Amazon rainforest's unique biodiversity and climate conditions make it unsuitable for...

Finance sector has power to help the Amazon rainforest

Read this article to uncover the potential role of the financial industry in addressing deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity loss in the Amazon rainforest. The finance sector can significantly contribute to conservation efforts by...

NASA satellite data and sound recordings used to assess rainforest health

This two-minute video describes the work of scientists who are analyzing the impact of repeated forest fires in the Amazon by recording the unique sounds in degraded forests. The team is using acoustic sensors to record sounds of wildlife in the...

Nonprofits strive to replant the Amazon and slow global warming

This article explores the efforts of nonprofit organizations like Rioterra in reforesting the Brazilian Amazon to mitigate climate change. Their goal is enormous: reforest an area twice the size of Germany, costing over 20 billion dollars. In order...

Henry Ford once ran a failed rubber plantation in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest

In 1927, Henry Ford bought 2.5 million acres of land off the Amazon River in Brazil, with the intention of creating an American-style Ford factory to produce the rubber needed for tires. The development, known as Fordlandia, was never able to produce enough rubber, and Fordlandia was officially shut down in 1945.

The fascinating urban planning experiment that birthed Brazil's capital city

In 1960, the country moved its capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, a city in the middle of the country built from scratch in just four years.

A podcast about Honduras' narco-Presidente

The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was once a US ally in the war on drugs, but he now stands accused of overseeing a narco-state. Hernandez served as Honduran president for eight years, once considered one of the United...

An ethnomusicologist breaks down bossa nova's American popularity

Kaleb Goldschmitt is a professor at Wellesley College who wrote the book "Bossa Mundo: Brazilian Music in Transnational Media Industries," which analyzed how and why bossa nova became so popular in the US in the early 1960s. According to Goldschmitt, much of it was due to the music's seemingly apolitical aesthetic, a notion that was reinforced by the Brazilian government.

Go inside the global effort that led to the Montreal Protocol in this narrative podcast

Nobel laureate Mario Molina and other key voices recount how science and diplomacy converged to develop a plan to close the ozone hole, offering insight into history's most successful environmental treaty.

Young Brazilians protested their country's hosting of the 2014 World Cup

In 2013, the Confederations Cup in Brazil was marked with widespread protests in a period dubbed "Generation June." Many were angry about the looming 2014 World Cup, which they believed was an affront to the country's many pressing issues.

Hear about why Europe obeyed the Monroe Doctrine, despite American military weakness

This podcast explores the European background of the Monroe Doctrine, highlighting France's efforts to install aristocratic Bourbon monarchs in the newly independent Latin American republics—and how US opposition, British threats, and Spanish resistance ultimately disrupted those plans.

Brazil is leading a cheese revolution and challenging European dominance in the industry

Brazil has plenty of traditional dishes that rely on cheese, but it’s only in the last decade that the country has emerged as a powerhouse in artisanal cheesemaking. While the cheeses may be inspired by European traditions, options like cocoa-dusted goat cheese or an Amazonian buffalo cheese are pure South American.

Behind the scenes on tariff politics

Economist Gene Grossman joined the Trade Talks Podcast to discuss why tariffs really happen. The episode digs into how voters, politicians, lobbyists, and even campaign cash can affect when protectionist trade policies are put forward. Produced in 2019, the podcast also discusses how populist trade policies and identity politics accounted for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Presidential election.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

The Keep America Beautiful campaign shifted the blame for litter from manufacturers to individuals

This podcast examines how one organization reshaped the American public's relationship with recycling, asking why responsibility for a cleaner environment falls to individuals rather than to the companies that produce waste.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure

This podcast takes on the thorny mismatch between recent research linking herbicide exposure to Parkinson's disease and federal and state regulators' conclusions that there is insufficient evidence to establish causality. Though the main company that produces the herbicide Paraquat has recently stopped making it, dozens of others continue to do so, prompting concerns from some Parkinson's patients and scientists about disease risk and the pace of scientific answers. 

Governments are arguably very dependent on consulting firms like McKinsey and Deloitte

This podcast episode discusses the consultancy industry’s rise and how these firms make billions of dollars, even amid significant scandals.

Why the ozone hole altered Southern Hemisphere jet streams and rainfall patterns

Ozone depletion over Antarctica shifted jet streams southward, drying Australia while increasing rainfall in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Around the turn of the millennium, these trends began to slow as the Montreal Protocol phased out ozone-depleting substances.

Hear how the first moon landing was saved

This podcast series explores Apollo 11 through firsthand stories from the engineers, mission controllers, and astronauts who made the moon landing possible, culminating in 13 minutes of NASA archive audio leading up to the landing.

Walmart has historically been one of Amazon's largest competitors

While Walmart has been America’s largest retailer by revenue for over three decades, Amazon is now fighting for the title, seeking retail supremacy. In this podcast episode from the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Nassauer explores the efforts Walmart has taken to keep its crown.

B2 models the interactions of air, water, soil, plants and microbes at the LEO

The Landscape Evolution Observatory at Biosphere 2 examines how factors such as climate change, water flow, weathering and community development impact landscape structures comprising 500 metric tons of crushed rock. Research is also conducted at biomes representing savannas, mangroves, coastal fog deserts, oceans and rainforests.

More than 200,000 people are diagnosed with leprosy annually

The disease still occurs in more than 120 countries. Brazil, India, and Indonesia continue to report more than 10,000 new cases annually.

Leticia Bufoni is a world-class skateboarder from Brazil

She has won six gold medals at the X Games and represented her country at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the debut year of the sport in the Olympics. She’s seen as one of the most influential women in extreme sports and also performs stunts with Red Bull.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Poison ivy will likely become both larger and more resilient due to climate change.

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.