A New Year’s special celebrating The World’s 30th anniversary

The World

PRX

News, Lethaldissent

4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been an adventurous three decades for The World and we’re glad to have you with us as we celebrate our 30th anniversary. In this special New Year’s show, we highlight some of our reporting over the years. We bring you a discussion with Neil Curry, who helped create the show and was The World's first executive producer, as well as a conversation with our reporters Matthew Bell and Shirin Jaafari, who discuss how their coverage of major global news evolved after 9/11. Also, we look at our coverage of the environment in a time of climate change. And, we take a listen to some of our favorite music over the years. Plus, you’ll even have a chance to test your global knowledge as our hosts play a round of Geo Quiz trivia.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	30 years ago today, the world went on the air for the first time.
0:09.1	This is Marina Bouten in Moscow. For many, the main event of 96 will be the presidential elections in June.
0:16.4	Reporters told us what lies ahead and you play the geo-quiz.
0:20.4	Today's geo-quiz might give you bad breath.
0:22.6	Can you tell us where most of the world's supply of garlic comes from right now?
0:26.6	We've been focused on climate change since the show began.
0:29.6	Representatives from some 150 countries have begun a conference in Geneva on global warming.
0:35.6	And of course, music has always been essential.
0:39.2	You can, like some people might call it world music, but in a sense, it's music that would never
0:44.3	have happened without America. And so it's just one of those places where hyphenation is
0:49.5	really a better strategy. Stay with us as we look back on 30 years of the world.
0:57.9	This is the world. I'm Marco Werman. And I'm Carolyn Beeler. Happy New Year to you and happy
1:03.9	birthday to us. Today marks 30 years on the air for the world. To celebrate the milestone, we have a very special show for you.
1:12.9	Looking back at three decades of both our show and the wider world, this was day one.
1:22.9	This is the world. I'm Eddie Mayer in London with Tony Kahn in Boston.
1:27.3	Tracer bullets and rocket-propelled
1:29.1	grenades lit the sky last night over Sarajevo. Not an escalation of the war, but for the first
1:35.0	time in four years in celebration of the peace. January 1st, 1996, a different theme song,
1:41.1	different hosts, but still with the top story of the day, the war in Bosnia.
1:45.6	On that first broadcast, we also heard from our correspondent in Russia, when you could still have
1:50.2	an independent journalist there.
1:51.5	This is Marina Bouten in Moscow. For many, the main event of 96 will be the presidential
	...

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