The Year in Photos, Tension in South Sudan, The Art of Spoken Word

Coming up on today’s show:

• What photographs made the biggest impact this year? The Takeaway talks with some of the photographers behind the most memorable and haunting photos of 2016, including Jeffrey Scales, photo editor at The New York Times, Ben Lowy, who covered the election for TIME, and Stephanie Keith, a photographer for Reuters, Getty, and The New York Times. 

• After a Christmas market was attacked earlier this week, Germany is now confronting a new reality about security that may conflict with its open door policy on migrants and refugees. Constanze Stelzenmüller,Robert Bosch senior fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, explains. 

• Last week, more than 150 documentary filmmakers and photojournalists signed an open letter to camera giants like Nikon, Canon and Olympus, calling for the manufacturers to build encryption into their products to help protect the individuals behind the lens. Harlo Holmes, director of newsroom digital security at Freedom of the Press Foundation, has the details. 

• On any given day, there are approximately 415,000 children living in foster care. We take a closer look at the foster care system through the eyes of child welfare advocate Marcia Robinson Lowry, a lawyer and the founder and executive director of the advocacy group A Better Childhood.

• Two years after South Sudan’s civil war, militias in the country have started to mobilize along ethnic lines. Last month, the head U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said that “the scale of rape of women and girls is frankly mind boggling,” and that the nation is on the cusp of another ethnic conflict. Ken Scott, U.N. commissioner on Human Rights in South Sudan, weighs in. 

• George Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet. His art often blurs the lines between music and theater, and he joins The Takeaway today to discuss his creative process.