The border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, which had previously flared up in July, resumed on December 7. More than 20 people, including four Thai and 11 Cambodian civilians, have reportedly been killed in the resumed hostilities since then. Half a million more people have been evacuated from border areas across both countries. This comes less than two months after the Thai prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, and his Cambodian counterpart, Hun Manet, signed a peace deal on the sidelines of a meeting for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Malaysia. The US president, Donald Trump, who helped broker the end of the conflict, called the deal 'historic'. So, why are the two countries fighting again' For Anutin, the peace deal presented a clear domestic challenge as the border conflict had led to an outpouring of ultra-nationalist sentiment. He had recently replaced Paetongtarn Shinawatra as prime minister, after Shinawatra was removed from the premiership for being too conciliatory towards Cambodia....

Commemorative coins aimed at celebrating America's 250th anniversary in 2026 were unveiled by the mint on Dec. 10, 2025, and they reflect the country's currently divided politics and views of history. In an unexpected move, most of the original designs for the 'America 250' coins that were approved by two official committees in 2024 were abandoned and replaced. Most notably, the Black Abolition, Women's Suffrage and Civil Rights quarters were replaced with quarters that instead commemorate the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address. As a cultural geographer and coin collector, I believe the release of these new dimes, quarters and half-dollars offers a reminder that coins, despite their small size, share important messages about what it means to be an American. The production of these America 250 coins, part of the celebration formally referred to as the 'American Semiquintennial,' was authorized by the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in January 2021....

Using YouTube's takeover of podcasts as a starting point, he explores how video has devoured audio and turned podcasts into something closer to daytime TV and late-night talk shows. NPR's Rachel Martin, host of the celebrity-interview show Wild Card, joins to talk about her own shift from intimate, audio-only conversations to highly visible video chats with mega-celebrities. She explains how the visual layer changes everything'from building trust with guests and audiences to deepening parasocial relationships, and why showing your face is necessary in a low-trust media world. To trace the business and cultural arc of this pivot, Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman explains the rise and fall of the podcast 'gold rush''from the Serial era to Spotify's billion-dollar bet, to the collapse of expensive narrative audio and YouTube's emergence as a true power player. Then, writer and Plain English host Derek Thompson joins to explain his theory that 'everything is television now.' Warzel and Thompson explore how short-form video, autoplay feeds, and video podcasts are reshaping our attention, our politics, and even our sense of self'turning podcasts into background 'wallpaper' while nudging more of us into broadcasting our lives. Together, the conversations sketch a weird, slightly berserk future where video podcasts aren't just a format'they're a window into a lonelier, more fragmented, video-first culture....

Donald Trump is unpopular for many reasons, not least of which is the public perception that he has failed to bring down costs, as promised. Next month, more than 20 million Americans may see their health-insurance premiums spike, some by double or more, when expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies expire. Also, American support for the 2010 health-care law, otherwise known as Obamacare, has reached a new high of 57 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. Despite these facts, Republicans just voted to let ACA subsidies expire. How is the public likely to respond to this between now and the 2026 midterm elections' Probably not by warming up to Republicans. Fifteen years after its passage, the ACA is a gigantic political pain point for the GOP. You would think Republicans would have made their peace with the law by now and turned their attention to other issues. But unlike pretty much every other conservative party in the industrialized world, where the legitimacy of universal health coverage is largely a given, the GOP seems resigned to bleed out on health care....