What The Hell America!

A lot happened this week, and NPR has you covered to catch up on the big news and culture moments you might have missed (and the experts to tell you all about them). We spoke to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about his decision to release the screenshots from the Signal group chat he was mistakenly added to about war plans, author John Green played a game of Wild Card and a columnist explains why critics were so angry about Meghan Markle’s new show.

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg has released nearly all of the transcript of the Signal group chat that he was included in, where Trump administration officials planned a deadly military strike on Yemen earlier this month.

In an interview with Here & Now’s Deepa Fernandes, Goldberg defended his decision to release the Signal chat that has put a spotlight on how the administration handles sensitive information.

“The White House issued some sort of anodyne statement about how this is sensitive and it shouldn’t be out, but there was no specific request on data,” Goldberg said. “So we decided since they said that this is not a problem and that there’s nothing secret or classified in it, we decided that we should put it out and let people decide for themselves.”

Read or listen to the full interview.

More interviews on the Signal group chat news:

Critics and the internet are angry about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — again.

This time, the viral uproar is about Meghan’s Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, which premiered on Netflix in early March. The lifestyle show follows Meghan as she offers tips on homemaking and entertains celebrity guests at a beautiful California estate.

Netflix has renewed the show for a second season slated to stream in the fall.

The first season, though, was met with harsh critiques. Some reviews labeled the show as being out of touch, while memes and TikToks lambasted the actress-turned-princess’ on-screen persona.

So why all the hate, the snarky memes, the takedown pieces?

Leslie Gray Streeter, a columnist for The Baltimore Banner, thinks she knows why. Earlier this month, she published a column headlined “The real reason people are mad at Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle show.”

She joined Morning Edition host Michel Martin to discuss why she believes Meghan is being subjected to such criticism.

Different people have different reference points for John Green. He is most famous as the young adult author who wrote the massively popular book The Fault in Our Stars, which was turned into a movie by the same name. But then there are the millions of people who know and love him from his many YouTube channels, especially Vlogbrothers, and Crash Course, which he does with his brother Hank.

John Green’s latest project is another book, but it’s way different from the coming-of-age stories that catapulted him into the culture. It’s titled Everything Is Tuberculosis, and it is, as advertised, a nonfiction account of the most deadly disease on the planet, and how simple it would be to wipe it out — if societies just made it a priority.

But the truth is, this book makes sense coming from John Green. Because everything he creates — books, essays, YouTube shows — they are all designed to make you engage with the broader world and to care about other people.

A Chinese scholar who studies the United States has some opinions about the early moves of the second Trump administration.

Da Wei spoke with NPR last year. He told us then that his decades of studying China’s rival gave him some idea of what made America strong, including a “mature political system,” stable institutions and immigration, among other things.

Now the U.S. has a new president, so we asked to meet Da Wei again to hear what he’s thinking now.

American Amanda Knox was catapulted into global infamy after being accused of the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, during a study abroad program in Perugia, Italy. Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before her conviction was overturned, and she was eventually exonerated. Still, Kercher’s murder remains the defining moment of Knox’s life.

“Two very young women went to Perugia and one of them didn’t get to go home and one of them came home completely and utterly changed,” she says. “It’s a grieving process for me for both of us.”

In the years since her exoneration, Knox has worked to reclaim her narrative. In her first book, Waiting to Be Heard, she focused on the details of her conviction. Her latest memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning, goes beyond the events of her trial and imprisonment and explores the realities of reintegrating into society and rebuilding a life.

Some of the most touching scenes in Việt and Nam happen underground, when the two young coal miners at the center of the film embrace each other in silence. Those are moments when they can love each other freely.

But their relationship almost takes a backseat in the film, which will hit select theaters in the U.S. on Friday. Set in 2001, it follows the lovers’ quest to find the body of Nam’s father — a soldier who died during wartime in Vietnam — and Nam’s decision to leave the country for a better life.

Writer and director Trương Minh Quý says the film, which debuted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, was banned in his home country of Vietnam because the movie is “very dark.” The Vietnam Cinema Department has not responded to NPR’s requests for comment.

Read the full interview here.

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