Scott Detrow (3:01)

And started sounding like this. NPR is doing everything possible to keep this trusted and free public service going. With your support. We will not be silent. Please give today@donate.NPR.org thanks. AI data centers use a lot of electricity, and you may be paying for it.

Anna Maria Serre (3:25)

I think it's almost inevitable that ordinary.

Scott Detrow (3:28)

People are going to end up subsidizing.

Anna Maria Serre (3:31)

The wealthiest industry in the world.

Scott Detrow (3:33)

On the latest Planet Money podcast, how data centers might be hijacking your electric bill. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anna Maria Serre (3:43)

What's in store for the music, TV and film industries for 2026? We don't know, but we're making fun, bold predictions for the new year, plus setting some personal pop culture resolutions. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Scott Detrow (4:10)

It's consider this from npr. Bad Bunny's concert residency in Puerto Rico this summer brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism spending to to the island, but it also became an immense source of local pride for many young people. The shows rekindled a determination to stay and make a life on the Island. This summer, NPR's Adrian Florido spent time in Puerto Rico and brought us this report.

Adrian Florido (4:33)

As soon as she landed back on the island, Michelle Garcia Mercado felt at ease. She doesn't get to come home too often, but she was not going to miss Bad Bunny's concert.

Anna Maria Serre (4:44)

Oh my God. Like, I feel at home. I feel at peace. I feel like happy for the first time in months.

Adrian Florido (4:49)

She's one of hundreds of thousands of people who've left Puerto Rico in recent decades in search of opportunity. She remembers boarding the plane to Orlando three years ago.

Anna Maria Serre (4:58)

I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this because I was like, I was trying to stay here for like the longest time.

Adrian Florido (5:05)

But Puerto Rico is not an easy place for young people right now. Its economy is weak, good jobs are hard to find, housing's gotten so expensive as gentrification and tourist rentals have swallowed up units. There are constant power outages. A lot of people give up trying to make it here. Garcia's family on the island, like so many, has been hollowed out.

Anna Maria Serre (5:26)

My brother left three years before me. My youngest brother and my mother left two years before me. They don't want to leave, but they did not feel like there was a future here.

Adrian Florido (5:41)

Bad Bunny's concert CE series has been a reason to come Home for Garcia and for many people who, like her, never really wanted to leave. She had a blast at the show.

Anna Maria Serre (5:59)

It's a love letter to Puerto Rico and the culture and especially to the people that have left.

Adrian Florido (6:11)

The concert's titled no me quiero IR veki. I don't want to leave here. For three hours, San Juan's biggest concert arena pulsates with the rhythms and traditions of Puerto Rican culture, The things that make life here so rich despite the struggles. There's bomba drum music that was first danced by enslaved Africans along the island's.

Scott Detrow (6:38)

Coasts.

Adrian Florido (6:43)

Musicajivara, peasant music that came from the rural mountains. There's plena, Salsa, Reggaeton, house park, Visceral joy. And yet all around, people are crying, kissing their friends, their fathers, their grandmothers. It's the nostalgia, the sorrow of so many families that have had to say goodbye to the people they love. And then Bad Bunny speaks to the 18,000 people in the arena, those who still live here and those who don't. For those us who've had to leave but dream of coming back, he says, to those of us who are still here, we don't want to leave. We're still here. This song, in the rhythm of Plena, has become an anthem on the island. It's just about wishing you'd taken more photos of the people you've lost. Yarimar Bonilla is a political anthropologist at Princeton. She's been to the concert more than once this summer. Like many Puerto Ricans, she found great success in the States. But also, like many of them, she's long felt guilty about leaving. Bad Bunny's message that where you live doesn't make you any less Puerto Rican has been like a balm for her soul.

Yarimar Bonilla (8:28)

Oh, I get emotional. It's almost like forgiving. I think for those in the diaspora, it feels like we've been forgiven, you know, it's like a recognition that we left unwillingly and that we've never forgotten this place, that we are still part of it.

Adrian Florido (8:45)

But her favorite parts of the concert are the defiant ones. Many young people are no longer just accepting that they'll have to leave to find opportunity. Many are putting up a fight to stay, getting politically active, protesting the sorry state of affairs. Bad Bunny's songs reflect that too.

Yarimar Bonilla (9:04)

When he says.

Adrian Florido (9:08)

They won't force me out of here. I'm not moving. Tell them this is my home. This is where my grandfather was born.

Yarimar Bonilla (9:17)

And then everyone.

Adrian Florido (9:34)

Tanisha Galarza is playing her cuatro, a Puerto Rican folk guitar, in the public plaza of her hometown, Guayanilla, on the island's southern coast. I'm blessed that most of my family has not had to leave, she says. She's 23. She wants to pursue her musical career in Puerto Rico. She has worried that she might have to leave. Her mother, Joyce Figueroa, says, look around at this plaza. It's frozen in time. She says the Catholic church was destroyed by an earthquake five years ago. It's still not been repaired. The city hall just finally being repaired eight years after Hurricane Maria damaged it. The town library closed for lack of funding. It's hard to convince your children that they should want to stay and build a future here, she says. She and her daughter and their whole family went to Bad Bunny's concert together. They cried and cried. It was an amazing feeling. Galarza says she's been learning Bad Bunny songs on her cuatro. Bad Bunny is making young people so proud to be from here, her mother says. And when you're proud of your homeland, you try a little harder for it, she says. You fight just a little harder to stay. Adrian Florido, NPR News, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Scott Detrow (11:34)

This episode was produced by Katherine Fink, Elena Burnett and Liz Baker and featured reporting from Anna Maria Serre. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watananan and Gigi Douman. Our executive producer is Sam Mi Yenigun. It's CONSIDER THIS from npr. I'm Scott Detrow. On Wait, Wait, don't tell me famous actors remember their days of obscurity, like when Pedro Pascal remembered the stress of being a waiter, the logistical labor of meeting everyone's needs in the right manner. The, you know, act one, the water, act two, the drink. Listen to Wait Wait in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Unidentified NPR Reporter (12:20)

As we say goodbye to 2025, our reporters are looking back at some of the most memorable international stories they covered in the last year. From a city in Africa emerging from war to resilient Indian turtles, liberated refugees to defiant Austrian nuns, global favorites from the last year. Listen to State of the World on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anna Maria Serre (12:45)

Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon prime members can listen to Consider this sponsor free through Amazon Music, or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get consider this plus@plus.NPR.org that's plus.NPR.org.