‘It’s coming from inside the house.’ Last summer, the Marvel Cinematic Universe became the first ever franchise to earn more than US$30 billion in global box office revenue. It's emblematic of how franchises have conquered the entertainment industry. Back in the 1980s, franchise films accounted for roughly one-fourth of American box office sales; now, it's nearly three-fourths—while there are fewer original cinematic stories than ever. Why?

Today, Andrew deWaard explores how big entertainment conglomerates, working with even bigger financial firms, have transformed Hollywood.

—Gustav Jönsson

111 MHz: ‘There Are Easier Ways to Disappear (but I’m Only Good at This One).’ The Beirut-based composer Yara Asmar uses metallophone, synths, and accordion (with effect pedals) to create shimmering towers of sound—in the mode of modern minimalists like Harold Budd or Pauline Oliveros. From her new album, Stuttering Music. Drones with clattering percussion; a sunbeam in musical form.

—Brendan Hasenstab

Get yourself together. Local governments in China have built up huge debts over the past few years, and many of these governments are now having trouble paying for basic operations. Which is why, on November 8, the country’s central government announced it’d give the localities US$1.4 trillion in debt relief spread over the next five years. The funding, Beijing says, should allow them to keep making critical investments.

But investors are unimpressed. On the next trading day, stock prices fell on the Hong Kong exchange, China’s most important market. Meanwhile, shares and currencies across Southeast Asia are closely tied to the Chinese economy, and their values nearly all declined, too—even though the debt relief just enabled Chinese localities to give Chinese companies favorable deals on land purchases and tax breaks to increase production, which should theoretically boost the Chinese economy.

What’s happening here?

In September, Victor Shih looked at the problems behind China’s sluggish economy. Local-government debt, Shih says, is one of a few major structural issues—also including population decline and a housing-market crash. But these debts are now so high that Beijing would need a stimulus two to three times as high as the one announced this month to revive the economy. Yet they’re also so high that China can’t afford it.

—Michael Bluhm

The killer. Believe it or not, Canada’s government says India’s home minister organized the murder of a Sikh separatist—and Canadian citizen—on Canadian soil, through a local mob boss. Strange as it sounds, it’s what Canada’s deputy foreign minister has reported to Parliament. Now, Ottawa has kicked six Indian diplomats out of the country, while Canada’s prime minister has said the killing was part of a campaign to harass and intimidate Sikh activists there.

India denies these allegations—but there are more of them. American officials have charged an Indian intelligence officer with planning the failed assassination of a Sikh activist in the U.S., while British officials have implicated the Indian government in harassing Sikhs in the U.K. What’s this all about?

Today, Omair Ahmad looks at Sikh separatism in India, Delhi’s reaction to it, and how India’s conduct in the West potentially belongs to a bigger shift in Delhi’s international allegiances.

—Michael Bluhm

111 MHz: ‘Sometime Too Hot.’ The composer Tullis Rennie—also a professor of music in the U.K.—here sculpts slightly out-of-this-world club music. Layered rhythms blend with strings, sax, and synths that fade in and out. Woozy and joyous. From his new album, Safe Operating Space.

—Brendan Hasenstab

5 W Main: Polarized by Degrees. Donald Trump won last week’s U.S. presidential election with a surge of working-class support. In 2020, American voters who made less than US$50,000 voted against Trump by 11 points; this time, they voted for him by 3 points—a fact that not only Democrats but more than a few journalists are struggling to make sense of. Why would such a rich man, who made such a policy priority of cutting taxes for the wealthy, get such backing from America's working class?

There’s going to be a lot of accounts to sift through—among them:

• Many Americans have been experiencing economic hardship. The cost of groceries, for instance, has risen considerably since Trump's presidency, and low-income households have felt that most acutely.
• Vice President Kamala Harris was more concerned with demonstrating that she wasn’t a political radical, as Republicans claimed, than she was with appealing to working families—and in the weeks leading up to the election, she stumped with Mark Cuban, the billionaire, more times than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, one of America's most prominent labor unions.
• Per internal recriminations, the Democratic Party has for years been losing sight of the working class altogether.

But as Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins explore in their new book Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, there's another, long-term trend at play between America’s political parties—with the Democrats having become the party of credentialed elites and the Republicans now attracting the support of most non–college-educated voters. Which, Grossmann and Hopkins write, helps make sense not only of the parties’ changing cultures but of the cultural issues they fight over.

—Gustav Jönsson

111 MHz: ‘Sorry.’ From her album Space Is an Instrument, the French composer Félicia Atkinson is back with a mix of piano, field recordings, and electronics. This track has a majesty to it, textured by a layer of howling wind recorded on her phone—at once complex and peaceful.

—Brendan Hasenstab

A fall in Berlin. On November 6, Germany’s government collapsed. Olaf Scholz, the Social Democratic chancellor, threw the Free Democratic Party out of his governing coalition, leaving his party with only the Greens in a minority government. Scholz also called for a confidence vote in the Bundestag in January, which his unpopular cabinet is certain to lose. And that will mean early elections within 60 days.

Since the end of World War II, it’s been very unusual for a German government to fail serving out a full term. What happened?

In October, Matthias Matthijs pointed out that the Greens and Free Democrats had long been a bad fit as coalition partners: They hold opposing positions on many of the country’s most important policies.

Still, Matthijs says, mismatched coalitions like this are becoming increasingly common across Europe as a result of political fragmentation—specifically, of the formerly dominant parties of center-right and center-left losing voter support to the far right and far left, as well as to new parties. Which is making it harder to form governing majorities—and also harder to govern.

—Michael Bluhm

Outmanned and outgunned. For decades, Europe has relied on the United States for security. The Americans have some 80,000 troops in Europe, and Washington has long said it would respond in kind to any nuclear attack on the continent.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed everything. Suddenly, European countries saw a real security threat along the borders of half a dozen NATO member states. They’ve raised defense spending, re-energized relationships with NATO, and moved troops closer to Russia. Still, many countries haven’t hit their spending targets, and a lot of military analysts have expressed their doubts about whether Europe’s equipment is good enough or whether its troops are prepared for combat. Is it?—and are they?

Today, John R. Deni looks at how European countries see the threat from Moscow specifically, the continent’s security generally, and the financial challenges complicating their efforts to turn a vision for collective security into a reality …

—Michael Bluhm