Boston Calling

It’s not just the wall. There are lots of invisible barriers keeping immigrants from coming into the US. On this edition we explore some of those barriers. We meet a three-year-old on Canada’s no-fly list; we speak to a student from India who grew up in the United States yet his visa expires as soon as he turns 21; we find out how much it costs to smuggle someone across the border and the lasting impact that debt can have on a family; and lastly we get a little loopy with musician Joe Kye. (Image: A border patrol officer stands guard along the U.S.-Mexico border February 7, 2018 in San Ysidro, California. Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

Former homeland security adviser Fran Townsend says we need new methods of addressing gun violence. Also: we learn how the gun lobby brought gun violence research to a halt in one US agency; a constitutional scholar puts America’s right to bear arms in a global context; Russian bots seize on the Parkland shooting to amplify divisions; gun rights supporters say Israel could serve as a model for the US but some Israelis disagree; and what does a year of mass shootings sound like ... in piano notes? Listen here. (Image: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez speaks at a rally for gun control at the Broward County Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 17, 2018. Credit: Rhona Wise/Getty Images)

"I got out of the car and I looked at the people and they all looked like me… and at that moment I realised where I came from." On the programme: A fourth-generation Chinese American travels to his ancestral village in China; two Chinese adoptees return to their orphanage to help those left behind; Reem Kassis hopes her cookbook 'The Palestinian Table' will help her kids connect to their heritage; some residents of New Mexico have received surprising news about their ancestry; plus a man in California embarks on a dangerous quest to revive Yemeni coffee. (Image: After a long search, 64-year-old Russell Low (left) visited his great-grandfather's ancestral home in Guangdong Province in southern China in May 2016. Credit: Ariana Lai)

Six stories that all take place within greater Boston. #MeToo echoes through a play about Nigeria; a black church provides sanctuary to an unauthorised immigrant from El Salvador; two Rohingya refugees start a new life; a chef brings back lessons from a three-star restaurant in Paris; a university student prepares to be the first black ice hockey player to skate for team USA in the Olympics; and a preview of a show by The James Hunter Six coming to Boston soon. (Image: A rainbow arcs over the skyline of Boston University in Boston, MA. Credit: Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

Levi Draheim, 10, is suing the US government over climate change with 20 other young people. Also: fishermen in Greenland are doing better than ever, and that’s in part thanks to climate change; instead of fighting global competition, Alaska's wild salmon industry (reluctantly) embraces it; a researcher imagines what the US would look like if sea levels were to rise by two meters; solar power entrepreneurs come to Puerto Rico; plus what it’s like to fly in a plane when most of the passengers are pets. (Image: Levi Draheim, 10, lives in Satellite Beach, Florida. Credit: PRI’s The World)

Fewer international students are coming to the US for post-graduate degrees in science and engineering. We look into why. Also: Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine but many US patients can’t get it without breaking the law; a tech start-up synthesizes Marco Werman’s voice; tomato pickers in Florida work together to stop sexual abuse; a bioengineer has a plan to defeat disease-bearing mosquitoes with mobile phones; plus the band Mosquitos releases their first album in 10 years and the buzz is that it’s great. (Image: Stanford bioengineer Haripriya Mukundarajan, center, began the Abuzz project after contracting malaria while she was in college. Credit: Kurt Hickman)

Jasiel López never expected to be an activist. Then he learned that the DACA programme, which allows him to stay in the US, could be rescinded. Also: why the jarana, a guitar-like instrument from Mexico, is showing up at protests in the US; women veterans want their voices to be heard in the #MeToo movement; we remember Mathilde Krim, who played a pivotal right in the fight against AIDS; and we speak to the authors of a biography of Josephine Baker, singer, dancer, and civil rights activist. (Image: Jasiel López is a student at Florida International University in Miami. Credit: PRI’s The World )

For George Lampman and Lee Sook Ei it was love at first sight. Then, the Korean War broke out. Also: A monastery in Missouri, about to close its doors, is saved by monks from Vietnam; Spanish speaking actors in Miami unionise to fight for better working conditions; doctors in the US get lessons from doctors in Cuba in how to reduce infant mortality; an amateur mathematician from Tennessee discovers the largest known prime number; plus we listen to Bjork and reminisce about unrequited crushes. (Image: Lee Sook Ei and George Lampman met at the US embassy in Seoul. Credit: Courtesy of the Lampman family)

Flying out of the US? You might have to go through a facial scan at the airport. We discuss the implications of that. Plus: we find out why a selfie app that drastically alters the way you look is all the rage in China; we get introduced to the women artists of the Renaissance who have been hidden in the archives; we meet a man who survived the Holocaust by drawing portraits of his Nazi guards; plus comedian Dean Obeidallah discovers that for a moment he was literally the face of fake news. (Image: Passengers have their luggage screened at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

About 80 percent of garment industry workers are women. For the past few months, Jasmine Garsd has travelled the globe to meet these workers, in person. We start in Roanoke Rapids in North Carolina, a formerly bustling cotton mill town, that’s gone quiet. Next, we go to Los Angeles, were we learn how a sweatshop raid in 1995 changed the garment industry in the US forever. Lastly, we got to Bangladesh, where a large portion of our clothing now gets made. Want to find out how fair your fashion is? Here’s the website mentioned in the programme: https://interactive.pri.org/2017/fair-fashion-quiz/ (Image: Mother and daughter, Rongmala Begum (standing) and Mayna Begum, both work in clothing factories in Bangladesh. Credit: Ismael Ferdous/PRI)

"Some men dream of fortunes. Others dream of cookies." This is a real fortune cookie fortune. It would be a prescient fortune for Yongsik Lee. He invented the fully automatic fortune cookie machine in the early 1980s and built a business on his invention. The Korean immigrant sold fortune cookie machines and fortunes to companies all over the US. It was a good business until one day, one of his employees stole his fortunes and his customers. We get to the bottom of a theft that forever changed Yongsik Lee's life. (Image: Fortune cookies on display at The Ritz Carlton in Miami Beach, Florida. Credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

Edmaris Carazo, a blogger in San Juan, adjusts to life in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Also: the destruction in Puerto Rico has a ripple effect on hospitals on the US mainland; reporter Jason Margolis investigates where trickle-down tax policies have been tried and worked outside of America; Jamaica tries to get in on the marijuana market but some farmers worry about being left behind; a conversation with Rainer Weiss, the Nobel Laureate, who detected ripples in the fabric of space and time. (Image: Hospitals in the US mainland are facing shortages of IV fluids and medicine because of Hurricane Maria's damage to Puerto Rico. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

It’s the beat that drives the bugaloo and mambo. Ayana Contreras travels to Cuba to understand the clave. Plus, we go beneath a motorway flyover in Rio de Janeiro, where US hip-hop from the 1990s gets re-imagined every Saturday night; we meet a 9-year-old boy who is preserving his family’s Cambodian history through dance; South African superstar Johnny Clegg tells us how he helped form an interracial dance troupe during apartheid; and we remember Johnny Hallyday, “the French Elvis Presley”. (Image: Dancers at the weekly Saturday night charme dance in Madureira, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro's North Zone. Credit: Catherine Osborn)

"Every time you hear a piano note, that's another mass shooting." A new way to hear the stark numbers on gun violence. Also: Adam Lankford, a criminology professor, turns to data to explain why the US has more mass shootings than any other country; Susan Cruz, a Salvadoran-American, remembers holding a gun at the age of six; two sisters with different opinions on guns go to a shooting range; we learn about the origins of the Second Amendment; plus we hear from faith leaders all over the US. (Image: Visitors view gun displays at a National Rifle Association outdoor sports trade show on February 10, 2017 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Credit: Dominick Reuter/Getty Images)

Hollywood has been criticised for its practice of whitewashing. Now, the voice acting world faces questions. Also: Kelvin Han Yee, a Chinese-American actor, broke his parents' heart and wonders if it was worth it; a birdwatcher begs Hollywood to get its bird sounds right; Disney/Pixar’s “Coco,” which was a hit in Mexico, comes to the US; Laela French, a Star Wars buff, explains the origins of Darth Vader’s costume; and in the documentary “Dreamland” the Wabanaki people take back their narrative. (Image: For years, G.K. Bowes was the official voice of Barbie. Credit: Courtesy of G.K. Bowes)

Wilmot Collins came to Helena as a refugee. Now he’s been elected as the city’s mayor. Also: Abdi Nor Iftin tells us what it feels like to win the green card lottery; we find out what award-winning olive oil tastes like (it’s kind of peppery); the Boston Red Sox get their first Latino manager; beauty contestants in Peru stage a protest against gender-based violence that goes viral; and a blind man, hoping to kayak across the Bosphorus Strait, turns to mythology for inspiration. (Image: For Maddie, left, and Wilmot Collins, coming to the US wasn't easy. In their first few months in Montana, their home was graffitied with "Go back to Africa" and "KKK." But they stayed. Credit: Courtesy of Wilmot Collins)

Selina Wang, a tech reporter for Bloomberg News, says that Twitter could still do more to stop Russian and Ukrainian spam accounts from spreading misinformation on the platform. Also: people on social media keep blaming “Sam Hyde’’ for mass shootings, even though he's innocent, and we finally find out why; Facebook saves a dying mill town in the Pacific Northwest; Uber meets its match in Lebanon; a robot becomes a Saudi citizen; and a couple of amateur astro-explorers plan a trip to Mars. Image: Colin Stretch, general counsel at Facebook, Sean Edgett, acting general counsel at Twitter, and Richard Salgado, director of law enforcement and information security at Google, testify before Congress on October 31, 2017 in Washington, DC. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Victoria Barrett, a college student in Wisconsin, aged 18, is suing the Trump administration over climate change. Plus: we meet one of the first meteorologists to talk about climate change on TV in the US; we learn the history of the design of nuclear fallout shelter signs made during the Cold War; we visit the laboratory of a “wood detective” in Germany; we hear the “voice" of an iceberg and it’s pretty eerie; and we dance to some “ye-ye” music sung by a NASA scientist in California. (Image: Victoria Barrett is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Credit: Courtesy of Victoria Barrett)

Thousands of French women post the name of their sexual harasser on Twitter, using the hashtag, "Squeal on Your Pig". Plus: we meet a woman helping undocumented immigrants in the US experiencing sexual harassment; we find out why the reaction to the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Russia is the opposite of the reaction in America; we learn about a burgeoning feminist movement in China; we hear about efforts to combat sexual harassment at work in Nigeria; and we close with the song "Come with Me" by Nneka. (Image: Attorney Gloria Allred (L) and her client Heather Kerr speak during a press conference regarding the sexual assault allegations that have been brought against Harvey Weinstein on October 20, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Dave Rank, a high ranking diplomat, resigned over Trump’s climate change policy. Also: a former sheriff worries that new legislation in California to protect unauthorised immigrants will make it harder for police officers to do their jobs; a member of India’s lowest caste moves to New York and becomes a train conductor; a journalist travels around the world to see how people pay taxes; Harry Truman’s grandson impersonates him in a play; plus we meet some four legged civil servants: bomb sniffing dogs. (Image: Dave Rank is the former head of the US embassy in Beijing. Credit: Ashley Ahearn/Terrestrial. http://kuow.org/programs/terrestrial )