Rough Translation

Rough Translation, hosted by Gregory Warner at NPR, follows a familiar argument into another country and asks how it sounds there.

Parenting advice, protest tactics, a viral idea about work. The reporting stays with people who have to use the idea, not with a panel scoring it from a studio.

The show is narrative foreign correspondence for listeners who do not think of themselves as news consumers. A concept you thought was American turns out to have a cousin, and a cost, somewhere else.

Episodes are self-contained. The strongest ones start with a small domestic scene and only later name the big word.