Things That Go Boom

Ah Long spent years building a life in Shanghai. Then the pandemic arrived.

China's Zero-COVID policy cost him his job, his relationship, and eventually his faith that he could build a future there. So he did something almost unimaginable: he set out alone for the United States, crossing the Darién Gap, surviving robberies, and surrendering at the US-Mexico border to seek asylum.

But by the time he arrived, America had changed, too.

I...

A few hours outside Bogotá, a giant yellow circus tent rises above the countryside. Inside, families laugh at clowns, gasp at acrobats, and cheer for trapeze artists soaring overhead.

The performers are all members of the Colombian military.

For more than three decades, Circo Colombia has sent active-duty soldiers across the country to perform for communities, many of them in regions shaped by decades of armed conflict. Military offi...

After a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, residents were told the air was safe and the situation was under control. But for many people living there, the emergency never really ended.

In this episode, East Palestine resident and Rail Watch founder Jess Conard takes us inside the chaos and confusion of the derailment’s aftermath: shifting evacuation zones, lingering chemical smell...

Wars. Raids. Climate disasters. Political violence. Economic shocks. Surveillance. States of emergency that never seem to end. We live through them all while still trying to get dinner on the table, make rent, raise kids, and imagine a future.

This season, Living in the Emergency follows people navigating a world shaped by permanent urgency — and examines who benefits when fear, instability, and crisis become the organizing lo...

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For decades, the US economy has been deeply intertwined with war-making — from Cold ...

As violence continues in Gaza, a new strategy inside the Palestine solidarity movement is taking shape — one aimed not at city streets or college campuses, but at the arteries of the global economy.

Around the world, dockworkers have refused to unload ships tied to Israel’s military supply chain. In Italy, Morocco, India, and Sweden, those refusals have sparked national strikes and port shutdowns. But in the United State...

For a century, the weapons industry has helped shape St. Louis — from the McDonnell Douglas fighters that once symbolized American air power to Boeing’s sprawling factories today. But when thousands of machinists walked off the job this year, something cracked in “Fighterland, USA.”

In this episode, we head to the picket line to hear from the workers who build America’s bombs and jets — those stru...

San Diego’s Barrio Logan is a place defined by both proximity and resistance — pressed against naval shipyards, fenced in by freeways, and crowned by the Coronado Bridge. For decades, the community has lived with the noise, the pollution, and the promises that never quite came true.

When the USS Bonhomme Richard went up in flames in 2020, the Navy said there was “nothing toxic in the smoke.” Residents knew be...

When 27-year-old Gabriel Sanchez won his Democratic primary in Smyrna, Georgia — home to a massive Lockheed Martin plant — few expected an outspoken anti-war socialist to carry a district built on defense jobs. But Sanchez has managed to do just that, working to push for better benefits, wages, and labor rights across the state. In this episode, we look at how he’s building bridges between anti-war ideals and pro-...

When a 77-year-old Vietnam vet and former city councilman takes on a luxury apartment development in Scottsdale, Arizona, it sounds like classic NIMBY politics. But this fight isn’t just about height limits or desert views — it’s about who gets to decide the future of a community. The developer, Axon, isn’t your average builder. It’s one of the most powerful policing tech companies in the world —...

Why do local governments keep handing out tax breaks to defense contractors… even when the promised jobs don’t materialize? In the first episode of our new season, reporter Taylor Barnes takes us deep into the Utah desert, where Northrop Grumman is building the next generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles with the help of massive state subsidies. But when she asked how many jobs those subsidies were supposed ...

Across the country — from DC to Los Angeles to Chicago — the military is more visible in daily life than it’s been in years. But behind the boots on the ground lies a much bigger system. One that puts grenade launchers in the hands of police, surveils our every step, and ships weapons overseas. And it's grown bigger and more powerful than ever before. 

This season on Things That Go Boom, we trace the reach of ...

Mahmoud Khalil became the face of Palestinian rights at Columbia University when the Syrian-born refugee refused to wear a mask and negotiated on behalf of the encampment with the University administration. Now the US wants to deport him using a deep-cut statute in the immigration act that gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers to decide who could have “adverse” foreign policy impacts on the United States. How did...

If you live in the US, buying a gun can be as easy as going to Walmart. In countries with strict gun laws, such as most of Europe or Australia, you need a little more ingenuity. Although not that much more: since March of 2020, anyone with access to a cheap second-hand 3D printer and experience putting IKEA furniture together can do it. Does that mean the rest of us should start printing bunkers, presto? Or are we worried for nothi...

Nearly everyone has played dress up at some point in their lives, whether putting on mom or dad’s clothes as kids, for Halloween, as their favorite Marvel character at ComicCon… or even, maybe, as a Civil War soldier.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where historians say Civil War casualties were highest, attracts many reenactors. They carry their muskets, pull on their blue britches, and revel in the past. But today that hobb...

Initially assigned to $100 million bank failure investigations, Mike German’s FBI career took a pivotal turn in 1992, when he went undercover to infiltrate neo-Nazi groups in LA. The years that followed gave him a front-row seat to the Justice System’s handling of domestic terrorism from the 1990s to his departure in 2004.

When Mike left the FBI, it was after reporting deficiencies in the bureau’s counterterrorism ...

True to his promise, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, he pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the attack at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — an event many observers accuse him of instigating. He also commuted the sentences of the six organizers of the riot, those convicted of the most serious crimes. 

What does these paramilitaries’ return to public life mean for ...

Amy Cooter has been studying US militias since 2008 when, as a graduate student in Michigan, she attended a public meeting of a group that was thought to be a cover for an underground neo-Nazi movement.

As it turned out, that assumption was wrong. 

It was then that Amy realized this militia movement she encountered was worthy of study all on its own. And at the time, most academics weren't studying it, partly because they believ...

In 1970, Canada’s streets were full of troops and the country was on edge. Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte had been captured by a militant French separatist group, the FLQ, and the Canadian government worried thousands of FLQ sympathizers could be ready to unleash chaos in Quebec. As it turned out, the group that caused so much fear throughout the 1960s was never more than a few dozen individuals. 

This season on T...