Has this ever happened to you?

You wake up, look at your phone, scroll through the news for a minute or two, and then think, wow, how did we get here?

Well, that's the question we tackle every week on NPR's ThruLine podcast.

We tell you the surprising stories of the people who made our history.

Carl Sagan was in people's living rooms talking about the wonders of the universe, making

science feel personal and important to an everyday person.

Listen to Thuringland from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.

Music Marine life is under threat from rising ocean acidity.

We're entering a situation where we've never experienced these kind of conditions.

I'm Carolyn Beeler, why scientists are alarmed about pH levels in our planet's oceans,

and truckers strike in Iran where the economy is struggling.

There's been reports of upwards of 40 arrests across the country.

An assassination attempt in Colombia has people worried about returning to the bad old days.

These kinds of events remind Colombians very deeply about the pain that political violence causes.

Ben will hear about the impact of falling diamond prices on Botswana

and meet a family in Syria that's been keeping an old religious tradition alive.

We've got all those stories and more today on the world.

This is the world. I'm Carolyn Beeler. Marco Ruman is out today.

A canary in the coal mine is a familiar cliche, but we can also talk about oysters in the ocean, warning us about dangerous conditions, in particular that the ocean is becoming too acidic.

So they're not able to produce their shells as well as they used to be able to. So if you imagine the calcium carbonate kind of

growing around the shells as really small spat and juveniles, that's not forming properly. And you end up

with shells that look deformed or slightly cracked. That's Helen Finley at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory

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