Behind schools' phone bans

Deep in the Italian Alps lies a course so punishing that it has broken some of the world's best athletes. This year, it was conquered by Zhao Jiaju, a Chinese runner who once delivered takeout for a living. A year earlier, the same mountains handed him his worst defeat. This time, he did not simply finish the race. He rewrote the record book and became the first non-European ever to win. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

China is pushing harder to remove phones from classrooms, and a new Chongqing regulation marks a notable escalation. Schools there can now ban smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, but this measure sits inside a juvenile crime prevention law rather than an education policy. That raises difficult questions about the link between screen habits and criminal behavior, and whether real evidence justifies the connection. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

Every text you send, every search you run, every question you ask an AI passes through the same quiet piece of software beneath your fingertips, and it is watching all of it. In 2026, China's biggest tech companies are fighting to control that software, and the stakes go far beyond convenience. The battle to reinvent the keyboard may be the fiercest front in the AI competition, hiding in the one place nobody thinks to look. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

China has now approved the world's first national standard for BCI medical devices that use AI to interpret brainwaves, setting rules for how brain data is collected and accessed. The question now is whether that standard makes the technology safer for patients, and whether BCIs are finally entering everyday medicine. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

You walk into a room and find a stage waiting for you. Someone hands you a presentation you have never seen before. The slides make no sense, the crowd is waiting, and your only job is to keep talking. In Beijing, Shanghai, and a handful of other Chinese cities, this is a game that turns everything you know about professional presentations upside down, and once you hear why people keep coming back, you might want to try it yourself. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

Bringing someone into your home to clean or care for your family feels like a private arrangement. In China, it is also a thirty-million-person industry, one that has long run on informal deals, unclear hours, and unanswered questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong. Now nineteen new measures aim to change how that work is done, covering everything from training and insurance to background checks and pricing. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

A competitor at HYROX Beijing left a bowel accident across the sleds, mats, and rowers, forcing the other athletes onto contaminated equipment. She still finished first. With no clear rule to handle it, the incident sparked a global debate about where the line falls between pushing through pain and protecting others, and it caused HYROX to rewrite its rulebook. On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yushun

China has just opened its first major canal since 1949. The Pinglu Canal stretches 134 kilometers and represents one of the most significant infrastructure projects in the country's modern history. What could this waterway actually mean for the way we move goods, run businesses, and connect with Southeast Asia? In an age of high-speed railways and vast road networks, why build a canal at all? On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yushun

It sounded like a hit, it charted like a hit, and radio played it like a hit. There was just one catch. No human made it. Now Australia has become the first country to shut fully AI-generated music out of its official charts and its biggest awards. But if a machine makes a song that makes you feel something, does it matter who or what made it? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

A little girl opens a treasure box and finds a tiny eyeshadow palette, a lipstick, and a blush. To her, it's a toy. To her parents, it's a question mark. China is about to tighten the rules on makeup made for kids aged 12 and under, with tougher limits on contamination and stricter safety requirements. But why are children being sold beauty products at all, and will new standards actually make them safer? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun