From our listeners: can AI understand beauty?

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we're bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. It's a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Elyn MacInnis, founder of the Kuliang Families and Friends Groups, about a little-known chapter in the history of China-US relations.

Imagine paying good money to send your kid somewhere with no Wi-Fi, no electricity, and a whole lot of manual labor, on purpose. That is not a punishment; that is the pitch. It is called "eat bitterness" camp. Are these hardship camps actually building character, or just selling a feeling? On the show: Steve, Yushun & Yangyang.

As part of our National Day holiday special, we are bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You, a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience and understand each other. Today's episode features a conversation with three Yale University students who are members of the Whiffenpoofs, one of the world's oldest collegiate a cappella groups.

For years, shared bikes have made short-distance travel easier in Chinese cities, but they have also brought familiar headaches. This September, regulators moved to fix that. A new national standard for internet-based rental bicycles has been approved, setting out, for the first time in one document, exactly what operating companies must do, from hiring and training staff, to equipping bikes, to how they collect user data, to how they manage parking. On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yangyang.

As part of our National Day holiday specials, we're bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You. This is a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. Today's episode brings you a conversation with Jeffrey Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, about the history of the Flying Tigers and the extraordinary stories of cooperation between Chinese and American people during World War II.

With Mid-Autumn and National Day bookending a rare calendar gap, travelers are pouncing on what might be 2026's biggest escape window. Domestic hotspots are surging, but overseas demand is climbing fast, too. So what is really driving this rush, and where is everybody going to go? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan.

Consider all the small conversations you did not have today. The barista, the neighbor, the colleague you passed without stopping. On their own, each one seems like nothing. Together, they add up to thousands of words that were never spoken, and a new study suggests this is becoming the new normal. So what have we traded away without noticing, and is there any reason to want it back? On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun

Beijing is crawling with a problem you cannot ignore. American white moth caterpillars are raining down from trees, blanketing sidewalks, and turning a simple walk into something close to a nightmare. The city's answer sounds like science fiction. Release hundreds of millions of parasitic wasps and let them do the work. Why has this year's infestation exploded and can this tiny-winged counterattack can actually work? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

The fishing boats are back and the ports are buzzing with fresh seafood heading to market. What you will not see on your dinner plate is the millions of tonnes of aquatic food lost or wasted every year. On September 29, the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, we follow the catch from ocean to table and ask how much of the fish we pull from the sea never actually makes it to our forks. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

Have you ever cried at a song whose words you never understood? That wordless pull toward beauty feels deeply human, yet AI now writes poetry, scores films, and paints portraits that move people to tears. So does it truly feel beauty, or simply mimic everything we've always called beautiful? On the show: Steve, Yushan & Yushun