10/26 to 11/1, 2025

The week began with hope in Cambodia, and it had a familiar face attached to it. Welcome back to This Week, Basically. Thank you for joining me tonight, and, for those of you who are new here, I’m Robyn Davies.

Eighteen Cambodian soldiers remain imprisoned in Thailand after a July border clash that left dozens dead. Their families, desperate for news, are now pinning their hopes on Donald Trump. The president is set to attend peace talks in Malaysia, where he’s expected to announce a deal between the two countries. For the families, Trump isn’t just a mediator; he’s the only one they believe can bring their loved ones home. One woman told the Times, “The survival or death of my husband depends on him.” After helping broker a cease-fire in Gaza earlier this month, Trump’s brand of personal diplomacy, transactional, theatrical, and unpredictable, is once again shaping the fate of people far from Washington.

The administration’s attention isn’t limited to Southeast Asia. This week, Trump’s escalating sanctions on Russia have pushed the war in Ukraine into a new phase — the energy front. Russian gas and oil are under fresh restrictions, forcing Moscow to rely more heavily on barter trade with China and Iran, while the U.S. and Europe scramble to keep fuel prices stable before winter. For Ukraine, the sanctions are a double-edged sword: they weaken Russia’s economy but also raise fears that Moscow will retaliate by striking energy infrastructure as temperatures drop. The diplomatic chess continues, but the human cost remains the same — rising prices, power outages, and exhaustion across a continent that’s been at war for almost four years.

Back in Washington, the energy struggle has another name: rare earths. The Trump administration this week unveiled a sweeping plan to break the U.S. dependence on Chinese minerals used in electric vehicles, weapons, and data centers. The strategy involves direct government investment in American and allied mining companies, including a 15 percent federal stake in MP Materials, which operates the only rare earth mine in the U.S. It’s a rare mix of nationalism and industrial planning, drawing praise from economists who say the policy is overdue, and criticism from those who warn it could create a taxpayer-funded “gold rush” for untested companies. The irony, of course, is that the clean energy revolution still runs on dirty minerals.

Meanwhile, a quieter story unfolded in the Bronx, one that says something about how cities change without anyone quite deciding to change them. The humble public bench, once a cornerstone of New York’s parks and sidewalks, is disappearing . New benches haven’t been installed in years, and many old ones are being quietly removed: casualties of redevelopment projects, complaints from businesses, and the city’s ongoing discomfort with homelessness. The result is subtle but telling: more places to buy, fewer places to rest. The piece describes older New Yorkers carrying folding chairs on walks, and a group of activists cataloguing lost benches on Instagram. “It’s urban subtraction,” one of them says: not decay, but design by omission.

Across the Atlantic, Europeans are confronting another kind of cultural import. The pumpkin spice latte — that syrupy American emblem of autumn — has made its way into cafés from Paris to Prague, and not everyone is pleased. Some see it as a cheerful novelty; others, as one French columnist put it, “a liquid invasion.” The divide isn’t really about coffee. Europe’s café culture has always prized restraint, ritual, and a certain bitterness. Pumpkin spice, with its sweetness and marketing, feels like the opposite. It’s globalization in a cup, and not everyone wants a sip.

In Nepal, young people are confronting a different loss of flavor: the dullness of opportunity. Unemployment is soaring, and an entire generation of Gen Z Nepalis is preparing to leave the country. The mood, as one student put it, is “study, wait, escape.” The government’s promises of reform haven’t stopped the migration, and even those who stay describe a kind of emotional emigration: the sense that their future is elsewhere.

Elsewhere in Europe, a mystery finally ended with a small heartbreak. In a coastal town in Spain, a missing Picasso painting was discovered hidden in a private home — one that locals had spent years mythologizing as cursed. The discovery thrilled art historians, but residents said it also ended something precious: the mystery itself. “The story was better than the truth,” one said.

And in the U.S., another mystery is deepening. As tariffs against China spread to technology and minerals, Canada has become the latest target. Trump announced a new 25 percent tariff on Canadian aluminum and rare metals this week, reportedly triggered by a political spat over a campaign ad referencing Ronald Reagan. Canadian officials called it “absurd,” but the pattern is familiar: in Trump’s trade playbook, every grievance can become a negotiation.

It’s been a week of rebalancing — countries testing alliances, cities rewriting habits, people recalibrating hope. Cambodia waits for a signature that might bring its soldiers home. New York sits without its benches. Somewhere between those two points is the shape of the modern world: still looking for a place to rest, still hoping someone remembers to build one.

What a week. But we made it! Anyway, that’s This Week, Basically. I’m Robyn Davies. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.