Noel King

United States

Co-Host and Editorial Director at Today, Explained

@today_explained previously passed the background check @NPR @upfirst @morningedition @planetmoney

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Articles

America is a country of doomsday preppers

3 days ago | vox.com | Hady Mawajdeh |Noel King

If you’re anything like me, following the news makes it feel like the world is on the verge of collapse. There are wars on multiple continents, millions are dying because of famine, extremism is on the rise, natural disasters caused by climate change have become the new norm, and the economy seems headed for a recession.
Pope Leo XIV elected: What his history can tell us about his papacy

4 days ago | vox.com | Amanda Lewellyn |Noel King

Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Prevost, is the first American pontiff. He was elected on Thursday, less than three weeks after the death of Pope Francis, and his elevation immediately made history. Leo grew up in Chicago, majored in math at Villanova University, and spent decades serving the Catholic Church in Peru. Significantly, Pope Leo is also the first pontiff to hail from the Augustinian order, which was founded in 1244.
Would you pay more for an American-made TV? This influential thinker thinks you will.

1 month ago | vox.com | Noel King |Miles Bryan

Most mainstream economists agree that the massive tariffs Donald Trump is imposing on most of the United States’s trading partners are a bad idea — that they will make the economy weaker and inflation worse. Not Oren Cass.
Would you pay more for an American-made TV? This influential thinker thinks you will.

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Noel King

5 hours agoAsked about the spat, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue." WASHINGTON — Elon Musk on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, as a "moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" in a spat …
How Trump’s tariffs could help China

1 month ago | vox.com | Noel King |Gabrielle Berbey

President Donald Trump’s new tariff chart, which he unveiled Wednesday at the Rose Garden, had a mixture of surprising and predictable countries on the list. A high tariff on China? Not so surprising. But among the top 10 countries on his chart, eight are in Asia. Many close US allies like South Korea and Japan were stunned by the steep rate increases applied to their exports. Since the announcement, markets in Asia have tumbled.
One big reason for fewer babies: the phones?

1 month ago | vox.com | Noel King |Miles Bryan

All across the world, people are having fewer children. The birth rate is declining quickly in countries ranging from the United States to Finland to Mexico and Turkey. Fertility data used to be a fairly esoteric concern. Not anymore. Vice President JD Vance talks about it regularly, Elon Musk calls it civilization’s greatest threat. There’s even a convention for “pronatalists,” Natalcon, taking place later this month in Texas.
Richard Hanania interview on DEI, MAGA, and Trump

2 months ago | vox.com | Noel King |Miles Bryan

Four years ago, Richard Hanania was a little-known right-wing intellectual, one of many posters building a brand with tweets and Substack posts attacking “wokeness” and other conservative bugbears. But in the middle of 2021, one of his ideas took off.
Germany’s rightward swing in its elections, explained

2 months ago | vox.com | Noel King

This weekend, German voters signaled their desire for change. Germany elected a new government headed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a center-right party, sweeping out the center-left Social Democrats. The results put the CDU in a position to lead the formation of a new governing coalition in the Bundestag, the German parliament. Another headline from the election? The strong performance of Germany’s far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD.
The roots of Donald Trump’s fixation with South Africa

2 months ago | vox.com | Avishay Artsy |Noel King

Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping all aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to white South Africans.
RFK Jr., Donald Trump’s health secretary nominee, says he’ll make America healthy again. His top adviser explains.

Jan 30, 2025 | vox.com | Miles Bryan |Noel King

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate finance committee Wednesday to make his case that he should be confirmed as President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pursue his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Democrats focused their criticism on Kennedy’s long-standing vaccine skepticism. The former environmental lawyer has spent decades spreading pseudo-science and lies about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and their debunked links to autism.