It’s not uncommon to wake up on a weekend morning and go downstairs to find the news playing on the TV while you’re making coffee or breakfast. Whether local, national, or global, it’s a kind of unwritten weekend morning ritual in most houses to turn on a news channel to play in the background to break the morning silence. Most people, however, will default to channels that are heavy in bias (especially political) and lack much of a global scope.

Some networks like Fox, CNN, ABC 6, have a tendency to skew information. Sure, it’s great to hear about what’s going on locally or what’s happening inside of one’s preferred political party, but it’s also beneficial to know what’s going outside of the bubble of one’s community.

You’re not going to learn about what’s happening in the Middle East, Latin America or Asia from a lot of the channels that are run in the lower 48 – or anywhere else for that matter.

Thankfully, however, BBC is our saving grace.

Although no source is completely free of bias or outside influence, BBC gets pretty close. The channel values impartiality and takes pride in its professionalism and objectivity. It is a good, reliable source to refresh one’s knowledge about the whole world in just a matter of minutes.

Some might think that a landslide in Ethiopia, or a new construction project in China is irrelevant to their lives, which is a completely reasonable mindset. It’s not always obvious how something might apply to you when it’s happening so far away, but the reality is that everything is connected.

Put it into perspective, a factory in China might produce the next phone you buy, and your neighbor might volunteer for a humanitarian cause to help those impacted by that landslide in Ethiopia. Being aware and informed of the world is so important because everything is connected, whether that connection is obvious.

When Saturday morning rolls around and you’re still not fully awake, I’d advise turning on BBC News. It’s pretty eye-opening.