Migration and Refugees
123 episodes
#6322: Why Armies Began Enlisting Their Own Interpreters
In 2008, about 75 percent of soldiers recruited into the U.S. Army's 09L translator aide specialty were green-card holders rather than citizens.
#6112: The Interpreter That Doesn't Know Who's Talking
Voice-to-voice translation is basically solved. The part where the machine knows who's in the room and who holds the power? Nobody's shipped it.
#6100: Voting From an Embassy: Israel's 4,860-Voter Election
101 polling stations in 99 missions, 4,860 eligible voters, 30 hours of polls rolling west with the sun.
#5924: Living Among the Dead: Cemetery Housing, Cairo to Manila
Cairo's City of the Dead holds roughly a million residents. Manila North, six thousand. Nobody has ever counted the global total.
#5920: The Psychiatrist in Those 1950s Patient Films
A drug salesman's papers, a bathtub, and the 1950s interviews with Dr. Heinz Edgar Lehmann that still pull millions of views.
#5838: What Customs Officers Actually Read at the Booth
Two spouses, one passport line, two completely different rooms — and a 1980 study that upends what officers think they see.
#5752: Two Frances, One Protest: Reading the Same Streets Differently
A high school walkout over unfilled teaching posts became a national movement — and two completely incompatible stories about what it means.
#5709: Life at 76°N: Inside Canada's Arctic Outposts
Grise Fiord scores 0.9839 on Canada's remoteness index. Toronto scores zero. What daily life looks like at the top of the world.
#5615: Philadelphia, Here I Come: Friel's Split Man on Stage
One actor can't hold Gar O'Donnell — so Brian Friel used two. Inside the 1964 play that split a man in half on stage.
#5586: The Ancient World Was More Connected Than You Think
Could an ordinary person travel the Roman world? The evidence says yes — and the reasons we think otherwise are revealing.
#5567: The Sinai Crossing Where a Stamp Draws the Border
A 24-hour pedestrian crossing between Eilat and Taba, where a free stamp, a one-kilometer fee waiver, and four treaty zones shape every trip into S...
#5559: Why Do People Move Countries? Migration Motives
Daniel moved to Israel for ideology, not opportunity. So are ideological migrants the exception — or just badly counted?
#5531: Crayon Lines and Custom Posts: How Border Precision Creates Absurdity
A wax pencil drawn across a 1948 map became Jerusalem's binding border. Ghajar's line is precise but unmarked. What makes a border real?
#5497: Mandelbaum Gate: Inside Jerusalem's Divided Crossing
For 19 years, one narrow seam connected two hostile halves of Jerusalem. Here's how the Mandelbaum Gate actually worked.
#5495: Musrara: Growing Up on Jerusalem's Pencil-Drawn Border
How a border drawn with wax pencils in 1948 split Musrara's homes in two — and shaped the neighborhood that raised the Israeli Black Panthers.
#5445: Israel's Periphery: Why It's Not About Distance
What "peripheria" really means in Israel — and why a $10B Intel fab sits in a town that still tops unemployment.
#5444: Carmei Gat: The Buchman of the Negev?
A planned neighborhood on Kiryat Gat's edge is pulling in Anglo olim with prices that undercut Beit Shemesh and Modiin.
#5304: The Skill of Expecting Less (But Not the Worst)
Realists beat optimists and pessimists on long-term well-being. Here's what the research says about keeping expectations accurate.
#5296: What North Korea's Borders Actually Look Like
Sixty-three defectors reached South Korea this year — every one through a third country. Here's what the DMZ, China, Russia, and sea routes really ...
#5195: When Real Danger Silences Phobias
A year of war and housing crisis erased his cockroach phobia. The science says that's not as strange as it sounds.
#5185: Why One Border Becomes Three Fences
What border fences are actually built for — and why a steel barrier that took years to engineer was cut through in minutes.
#5181: Shuafat: Jerusalem's Walled-Off Refugee Camp
Inside the Jerusalem camp that's within the city limits but beyond the barrier — taxed by the city, policed by no one.
#5180: Egypt's Gaza and Israel's Jerusalem: Two Legal Suspensions
Egypt ruled Gaza for 19 years without annexing it. Israel applied full law to East Jerusalem in 1967. Two occupied places, two very different legal...
#5171: Yiddish Was Never a Pidgin
Yiddish isn't a pidgin or corrupted German — it's a four-component fusion language, and its story is more political than you'd think.