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 The U.S. The U.S. and China are in a trade war, while governments in Europe look for new trading partners.

We will focus, like a laser beam, on the 83% of global trade that is beyond the United States.

I'm Carol Hills. Ecuador is gearing up for a hotly contested presidential election,

and there's a new carbon tax for cargo ships, but some say it falls short.

If you're a climate scientist like me, I spent the last 20 years trying to work on delivering

deeper emission reductions, and this is just not going far enough fast enough.

And an Armenian American who worried that her heritage was a social liability.

My only means of survival as a new middle school kid was to make one whole friend and to not

scare anyone away with my first and last name. That's all ahead today on the world. I'm Carol Hills.

Thanks for joining us on this Friday. It's been a wild week for the global economy with the Trump

administration's chaotic tariff

policies creating all kinds of uncertainty.

But one thing is now clear.

Washington and Beijing are engaged in a trade war, and the rest of the world is looking

for safe haven.

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