© 2025 Connecticut Public

FCC Public Inspection Files:
WEDH · WEDN · WEDW · WEDY
WEDW-FM · WNPR · WPKT · WRLI-FM
Public Files Contact · ATSC 3.0 FAQ
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Top Instagram reels from Goats and Soda in 2025: Plumpy'Nut, aid cuts, soccer grannies

By Marc Silver,
Ben de la Cruz
Published December 26, 2025 at 10:37 AM EST
From left: Players celebrate during the grannies soccer tournament in South Africa. A Dalit kitchen in India. Plumpy'Nut bars manufactured at the Edesia Nutrition plant in Rhode Island. Mary Mayongana, 42, lost access to her HIV medicine as a result of U.S. aid cuts in Zambia.
From left: Ryan Brown for NPR; Diaa Hadid/NPR; Gabrielle Emanuel/NPR; Ben de la Cruz/NPR
From left: Players celebrate during the grannies soccer tournament in South Africa. A Dalit kitchen in India. Plumpy'Nut bars manufactured at the Edesia Nutrition plant in Rhode Island. Mary Mayongana, 42, lost access to her HIV medicine as a result of U.S. aid cuts in Zambia.

Instagram reels are reely ... er ... really popular. (Editor's note: It turns out that "reely" is really an alternate spelling for "really" from long ago — way before reels were invented.)

Is there data to back this up? Mark Zuckerberg says so. The CEO of Meta, which owns Instagram as well as Facebook, reports that in 2025 reels have reached new heights on these platforms: 200 billion plays a day.

NPR's global health and development blog was responsible for millions of those views. Here are our biggest Instagram reels this year.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Tags
NPR Top Stories
Marc Silver
Ben de la Cruz
Ben de la Cruz is an award-winning documentary video producer and multimedia journalist. He is currently a senior visuals editor. In addition to overseeing the multimedia coverage of NPR's global health and development, his responsibilities include working on news products for emerging platforms including Amazon's and Google's smart screens. He is also part of a team developing a new way of thinking about how NPR can collaborate and engage with our audience as well as photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, animators, and graphic designers to build new visual storytelling avenues on NPR's website, social media platforms, and through live events.
See stories by Ben de la Cruz

Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.

Donate

SOMOS CONNECTICUT is an initiative from Connecticut Public, the state’s local NPR and PBS station, to elevate Latino stories and expand programming that uplifts and informs our Latino communities. Visit CTPublic.org/latino for more stories and resources. For updates, sign up for the SOMOS CONNECTICUT newsletter at ctpublic.org/newsletters.

SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

Federal funding is gone.

Congress has eliminated all funding for public media.

That means $2.1 million per year that Connecticut Public relied on to deliver you news, information, and entertainment programs you enjoyed is gone.

The future of public media is in your hands.

All donations are appreciated, but we ask in this moment you consider starting a monthly gift as a Sustainer to help replace what’s been lost.

Donate

Related Content