Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

News

Janet Yellen is (probably) tripping

Janet Yellen

Janet Yellen

Reuters
Make us preferred on Google
During a visit to Beijing last month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reportedly ate a magic mushroom-based dish known as Jian shou qing. In English, that’s “see hand blue,” a name probably meant to warn those who would consume it that this particular mushroom is hallucinogenic. “I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later,” Yellen said, and your GZERO team is willing to suspend its disbelief. And they’re supposedly harmless when fully cooked.

But we do have questions. Will the mushrooms Yellen consumed change her US recession forecast? Do these mushrooms allow people to see the data on China’s youth unemployment rate, which has abruptly become invisible to the rest of us? And finally, in the interest of journalistic due diligence, where can we get some of these mushrooms?

More For You

Zhuque-3 rocket by China’s private rocket firm LandSpace, takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Zhuque-3 rocket by China’s private rocket firm LandSpace, takes off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China, December 3, 2025

LandSpace/Handout via REUTERS
China wants to reduce, reuse, and recycle — rocketsChinese aerospace company LandSpace successfully recovered the first stage of a rocket on land for the first time on Wednesday, marking a major step toward reusable rockets. Reusability is crucial in the growing space race because it can dramatically reduce the cost of putting satellites into [...]
A man votes at a polling station in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary in Columbia.

A man votes at a polling station in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., February 29, 2020.

REUTERS/Eric Thayer
If Democrats want to take control of the Senate in November, winning Michigan is a must. Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who pulled off a razor-thin victory in last month’s primary, will face Republican Mike Rogers, and the race is widely considered a toss-up. A big risk for El-Sayed: a crucial bloc within the state’s Democratic electorate — [...]
High maintenance
Will Fitzpatrick
The milestone brings warnings of a looming fiscal crisis, with national debt more than doubling in the last decade: when Donald Trump first entered office in 2017, debt stood at $19.95 trillion. During his first term, debt rose by $7.9 trillion, more than half of which came during his last nine months facing Covid. His second term has already [...]
Nigeria’s presidential race kicks off
Will Fitzpatrick
Campaigning for Nigeria’s January 2027 presidential election officially kicks off today, and President Bola Tinubu faces strong headwinds in his bid for a second term. His All Progressives Congress has governed Africa’s most populous country for more than a decade, but rising insecurity and frustration that Tinubu’s pro-business reforms have not [...]