War News Radio is a mix of NPR, PBS NewsHour and 60 Minutes -- with a student twist.

The student-run news organization has operated since early 2005 from Swarthmore College, a leading liberal arts school near Philadelphia. Its shows air on terrestrial radio and online -- featuring news updates, interview segments and issues-based reporting. Its content is smart, occasionally witty, often international in scope and appreciably unafraid to share the stories of people in conflict zones that are frequently overlooked or stereotyped by the professional press.

"Coverage of war and politics can quickly devolve into a haze of statistics, strategies and expert predictions," WNR's About page contends. "Lost are the completely real effects policy decisions have on real people around the world. We at War News Radio are trying to rediscover the voices of real people."

Here are four fascinating facts I learned about the world from listening to a recent episode -- one that touches on topics as varied as urban gun violence, the continuing unrest in the Ukraine and the craziness of North Korea's Kim Jong-un.

1. At this very moment, "spy dolphins" are being trained to kill.

combat dolphins

In Clayton's words, "They actually knife enemy frogmen with blades tied to their backs. Now there's an image that's going to haunt my nightmares."

2. North Korea has a space program.

National Aerospace Development Administration

As the duo shared on air, "Hilariously, it also spells the Spanish word 'nada,' which means, literally, nothing. Which maybe tells us something about North Korea's position in the space race."

3. All North Korean males may have to wear their hair like their supreme leader.

rumored

Is the report actually true? Hard to say, since its original sources are unnamed. But as Batten and Clayton point out, the fact that many are willing to believe it speaks to the perceived lunacy of the country's ruler.

4. "Water-skiing squirrels pay much better than urban gun violence."

According to WNR's Tyler Welsh, "Although recent mass shootings in the U.S. certainly merit attention, they also provide a facade that blankets the truth -- that gun violence does not solely occur infrequently in deadly bursts, but rather on a daily basis. In many cities across the country, gun violence instills a sense of fear in a significant portion of Americans, yet it remains under-covered by the mass media."

In an interview, Jim MacMillan, founder and editor of the non-profit journalism group The Gun Crisis Reporting Project, attributed the lack of coverage to a range of factors. Among them: "reverberations of racism" within the mainstream press; a news cycle calling for constant novelty and the economic realities of digital journalism.

"Online journalism has shown that you get more traction, more sharing on happy stories than sad stories," he said. "So, if you need to sustain your business by selling advertising through page views, water-skiing squirrels pay much better than urban gun violence."

Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where he also advises The Hawk student newspaper. He is the author of Journalism of Ideas (Routledge, 2013) and maintains the student journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.