Lebanon’s facing a massive crisis right now. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the past two weeks amid Israel and Hezbollah’s war. Also, with flights to Iran, Lebanon and Iraq canceled, many travelers are stranded in Turkey, a regional transit hub. Our reporter takes us to the scene, as we hear how people stuck-in-transit are thinking about the escalation of war in the Middle East, and how they’re feeling about its impact on their lives. Also, Japan shut down all 54 of its nuclear reactors after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Only a dozen reactors have been restarted since then. The national government wants to more than double that figure by 2030, saying it’s essential to meeting energy and climate goals. But hurdles abound. And, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam just acquired a botany book by an author and illustrator named Maria Sibylla Merian, who was accused of exploiting native knowledge of enslaved people without credit. The German artist embarked on a self-funded voyage to Suriname in 1699 as a 52-year-old divorcee driven by relentless curiosity about the lives of insects.
Listen to today’s Music Heard on Air.
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