A Soviet-era Central Asian pop music anthology shines a light on the region's ethnic diversity and music that transcends genres from Korean brass bands to Uyghur garage rock to Crimean jazz.

(Image credit: Ostinato Records)

In Central Asia, the world's youngest desert occupies a basin that once held a vast saline lake. The Aral Sea.

Up until the 1960s, the sea spanned more than 26 thousand square miles across two countries. It supported thriving fishing communities along its shores. But then, in the name of progress and development, much of the river water that fed the sea was diverted for agriculture. Now the Aral Sea has all but disappeared, shrunk to about tenth of its original size. The UN Environment Programme has called the Aral Sea's destruction quote "one of the most staggering disasters of the 20th century."

On this episode of The Sunday Story, Above The Fray Fellow Valerie Kipnis takes us to the Aral Sea to try to understand what went wrong and whether anything can be done to save the little water that's left.

The leaders of China and Russia have joined other foreign leaders in Central Asia. Top concerns include Russia's war in Ukraine.

(Image credit: Alexandr Demyanchuk)

Veterans of the Soviet Union's decade-long war in Afghanistan see parallels — and stark contrasts — with the U.S. experience and exit after two decades there.

The Ebola-like virus is found mainly in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.