Follow the Ukraine war from an AAPI perspective

National Public Radio has sent Tim Mak to Ukraine as part of its news team.

OPINION

It is hard to imagine anyone is feeling detached from the news coming out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I imagine there are quite a few who still are wondering what it all means to the all-important "me."

On a macro-scale, the war being waged there could determine the future of democracy throughout the world. Free nations -- officially and unofficially -- sending supplies and weapons to the Ukrainians, uniting against Russia's aggression.

On the more human level individual stories are heartbreaking and inspirational at the same time: the anguish of family separations, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the fighting leaving behind homes and the invalid, a text message from a Russian soldier bewildered at being called a fascist, to his mother moments before he was killed, old men and teenagers after seeing to the safety of their family,  are heading back into the fray, being given assault rifles to fight off the invaders .

Following the war from afar is made more difficult because the disinformation campaign from both sides, clutter up the Internet. Seasoned journalists, forced to meet deadlines, are reporting the rumors with caveats to their veracity, making it difficult to find reliable news sources.

But if you want that AAPI angle, (because we are everywhere and we are as professional as anybody else), I've been following the Twitter account of journalist Tim Mak is a good start -- @timkmak. He's on the ground traveling throughout Ukraine, reporting online and filing stories.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: If you are aware of any other AAPI journos who are in Ukraine, let the Twitterverse know about them. #RepresentationMatters.)

Mak is an Investigative Correspondent for National Public Radio, where he has worked since 2018. In that role, he focuses on accountability journalism and enterprise reporting. He appears regularly on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

For 13 years, he has covered politics, national security, Congress and nonprofit organizations. During that time, he has worked for a variety of publications, including The Daily Beast and Politico. His foreign reporting has taken him to South Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Japan and Hong Kong.

Mak's feature writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and the L.A. Times, among other prominent outlets.

His first book, published November 2021, is titled 'Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA.'

Mak holds a B.A. from McGill University, where he graduated as valedictorian. He is also a former EMT who worked on the front lines of the COVID pandemic. Let's hope he doesn't have to put his EMT skills to use.

EDITOR'S NORE: For more commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.

L.A. District Attorney drops 'obstruction' charges against NPR/KPCC journalist

KPCC journalist Josie Huang

Charges against a KPCC journalist were dropped because of "insufficient evidence," said the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.

Josie Huang was recording the arrest of protestors on Sept. 12 when she was tackled to the ground, handcuffed and arrested by L.A. County deputies in Lynwood, CA. despite her telling identifying herself as a reporter for KPCC, an NPR-affiliate. She also had her journalist's I.D. on a lanyard around her neck.

"I am gratified that the district attorney’s office has reviewed the evidence, including my video recordings of law enforcement activity, and reached the conclusion that it did," Huang said in a statement, adding that she is seeking a finding of “factual innocence” in an effort to "wipe this unlawful arrest from my record."

The entire incident was recorded by Huang's smart phone and a crew from another news station.

The conclusion of the D.A.'s office said that Huang was ordered to back off but was not given time to comply before she was tackled.

The D.A.'s office also said the mere photographing of officers who are in a public space is not a violation of the law, nor interfering with them performing their duties. 

Huang's arrest brought an outcry of protests from journalists' organization.

"More than ever, I am grateful for the First Amendment, which entitles all Americans — not just journalists — to the rights of free speech and assembly," Huang said.

TGIF Feature: BTS breaks NPR viewing records to benefit public media

Public media stations got a pleasant surprise last Monday. BTS, the 7-member boy group who are the current kings of K-pop, appeared on National Public Radio's Tiny Desk concert and set a record for online viewership.

And BTS' fans, who call themselves the BTS Army, came through big-time and ended up donating generously to the NPR-affiliated PBS, Public Broadcasting Stations that aired the laid-back, intimate concert.

Public radio stations are independent operations and there’s no central database of donations, says NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara, who notes that the concert now has more than 6 million views online, and NPR Music got 100,000 new subscribers to its YouTube channel since Monday morning. The Tiny Desk concert broke the viewership record in just 25 minutes.

One doesn't usually associate K-Pop with PBS or NPR, which skew towards an oldr demographic, but the nonprofit media might reconsider their audience with the success of the BTS appearance.

BTS had intended to spend 2020 selling out arenas around the world, only to spend these last few months performing in isolation in their hometown of Seoul. It took a global pandemic to get on the group's schedule. 

Billie Eilish previously held the first-day Tiny Desk record for views, with 782,000 on the first day of her session. BTS had 700,000 views in the first 15 minutes the mini-concert was online, and more than 950,000 by end of the session, NPR’s Anais Laurent says.

Without their coordinated clothing and noted choreography, the Korean band dressed casually, seated in a row for their session, taped at the Vinyl & Plastic by Hyundai Card record store in Seoul. It was is also the first occasion on which the group performed its No. 1 hit, an upbeat, funky “Dynamite,” its first all-English recording with a live band. A couple of them couldn't sit still and had to get up and dance.

From there they went into a more mellow, ballad mode, with "Save ME," from 2016.

“It’s been the roughest summer ever,” BTS’s RM says in the session, “but we know that spring will come” before moving into another of their hits, “Spring Day.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For those who might have missed the performance on Monday, enjoy:

Anecdotally, Lara says, people—many of them for the first time—definitely seem to be donating to say thanks for the concert, something they've been missing in these pandemic times.

Gabe Rosenberg, the digital news editor for Columbus, Ohio, NPR affiliate WOSU, encouraged the BTS Army to donate to public radio stations to say thanks.

Rosenberg’s social media quickly filled with responses from BTS fans saying they’d done exactly that, a phonomenon also experienced by other NPR affiliates such as the San Francisco-based KQED.

“My TweetDeck was relatively unusable for most of the day.” Rosenberg says the surge of contributions is especially welcome during an extremely trying time for local journalism. “One Tiny Desk concert can’t really reverse the effects of a pandemic on a local newsroom’s budget, but it does something to make you a little optimistic about why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

The donations are not new to the BTS Army. When BTS donated $1 milllion to Black Lives Matter, in 24 hours, the Army matched the donation. At every concert venue, the group donates a portion of their earnings to a local charity.

US Supreme Court denies new trial for Adnan Syed, subject of the 'Serial' podcast

Adnan Syed

The long trial and tribulations for Adnan Syed appears to have run its course as the US Supreme Court Monday (Nov. 25) rejected his bid for a new trial spurred by information uncovered by the hit podcast "Serial."

The justices left in place without commenting the ruling by Maryland's highest court that denied a new trial for Syed, who was convicted of murdering classmate and ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. 

Syed was found guilty in 2000 for killing 17-year old Lee and burying her body in a Baltimore park.  He was sentenced to a life term.

Syed’s lawyers had argued that his trial lawyer’s failure to investigate an alibi witness violated his right to competent legal representation.

"Two courts have said he deserves a new trial, and then Maryland's highest court reversed that. We think it's appalling," Brown told NPR. "We think this is a grave injustice. The way this has played out is sickening."

“We are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court but by no means is this the end of Adnan Syed,” defense attorney C. Justin Brown told The Associated Press. “There are other legal options and we are exploring each and every one of them.”

Syed's case attracted an international following when it was featured in NPR's 12-part podcast in 2014. His case seemed to have a breakthrough in 2016 when a Maryland court ordered a new trial, citing an alibi witness that was never explored by Syed's defense attorney. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals agreed with the lower court.

However, in 2018, the Maryland Court of Appeals denied Syed a new trial.
___________________________________________________________________

Ruby Ibarra's latest rap: An ode to her immigrant mother

SCREEN CAPTURE / YOUTUBE

Ruby Ibarra, right, performs "Someday" with the Balikbayans.

Filipino American rap artist Ruby Ibarra entered NPR's Tiny Desk contest with her creation "Someday," honoring the travails and sacrifices of her mother, who immigrated from the Philippines.

While she didn't win the contest (with over 6,000 entries) she impressed the judges enough that NPR wrote a separate article about her. She tells National Public Radio:

"It is my declaration that my mother and I will make it in this country. I think that when we talk about immigration, especially in mainstream media, much of that is often romanticized and simplified; the experience and struggles are overlooked and the formation of identity and sense of belonging are neglected.

"When my mom moved to California from the Philippines in 1991, she went from being an accountant to a fast food janitor/cashier. She left everything behind in her motherland in hopes to provide better opportunities for me and my younger sister. She learned quickly how to be on survival mode and realized that the American Dream was far more complex than the mainstream narrative. The song "Someday" captures these themes and most importantly, captures my mother's story, which is ultimately a similar story for many immigrants — trying to find a place to call home."

The San Francisco-based rapper tells NPR that her mother always remained a model of resilience for Ibarra and her sister. "She was the matriarch and the patriarch in our household," Ibarra says. "She was always my example of what it meant to be Pinay, a woman who pretty much did s*** on her own, carried everything on her own back."

The chorus, "Mama we goin' make it here someday" is meant to be a promise, says Ibarra.

"I want to reach a point someday where I can look at her in the face and say that we made it," Ibarra says. "I think that sense of belonging, that sense of hope, is a thread that's very common in a lot of immigrant stories."

On the verge of breaking out nationally, Ibarra says that she hopes through her music and message she is able to pass inspiration on to others who want to do the same. Although she speaks about her Filipino American experience, her message conveys the feelings, hopes and dreams of all people of color.

"I am what I talk about in my music. I am Pinay, I'm powerful, I'm fearless, I'm unfiltered," Ibarra says in the NPR interview. "And I like to hope that there's young women out there who feel the same way. Or even if they don't feel the same way, I hope to inspire young women out there to want to use their voice, to claim who they are and to embrace their identity."

I include the lyrics to "Someday" because my baby boomer ears can't catch all the nuances of contemporary rap. (Sorry!) 

I wrote this album ‘cause I want my life to change
Tired of being shortchanged, I'm tryna remain sane
Hopped off the plane, didn’t stop all the pain
My father’s still in debt and we've been struggling to pay
For a bedroom upon Meekland Ave., reachin for just meeting half
Hands tied against the odds, how the fuck you even that?
The people from the slums once, now livin’ the humdrum
Mama from the barrio so we dreamin’ we can stunt once
Mama, I know it’s gon’ be fine wherever we go
'Cause we know, you raised this girl to dream and be a hero
What’s an ego to an eagle? I free flow when I speak though
My pipe dreams through a peephole, my skin so Filipino
But often times my pride, inside, is fightin’ high tides
The day we broke the ocean was the day I learned to nosedive
Closed eyes, fingerprint ink with the most dye
Those times, mama never blinked, say the oath twice

[Chorus]
I said mama we gon’ make it there someday
I said mama we gon’ make it there someday
I said mama we gon’ make it there someday
I said mama we gon’ make it there someday
I said mama we gon’ make it here someday
I said mama we gon’ make it here someday
I said mama we gon’ make it here someday
I said mama we gon’ make it here someday


[Verse 2]
So what's a freestyle to me? I been doing as a 6-year-old
Thinkin’ on my own 2 feet, survival pick and go
Pick a role - you can be the swimmer or a sunken soul
I was a 6-year-old without a father figure role
No silver spoons or dinner rolls, so will you fold or will you go?
Pretend to sing like Figaro, my people still invisible
When you the spittin’ image of a person that you hate
Makes sense I'm spittin' images of dawn that never breaks
Nirvana never waits, I was a pawn of bitter fate
That spawned from inner hate, I never wanted to be great
I study my mother wonder how she holds this family
That minimum salary, stretched as much as it can be
She stressed but keeps that shit from me, I’m just tryna fit in, see
I crave for that acceptance like it validates my sanity
I wrestle with affirmations, settle for masking faces
After all, the stolen lands are always greener places

(Chorus)

[Verse 3]
At school, reduced lunches while my mama skip her lunchtime
9 to 5 minimum wage, she at the bus line
Here I am, filling a page, waiting to bust rhymes
‘Til I’m nearing the day I’m getting cosigned
Snare rolls and punchlines to payrolls and punch time
We take shows like crunch time, we braved those like front lines
My life on these lines ‘cause we never had lifelines
And these days I’m scared of what might go through my mind
I flow like Rizal and I’m writing like Hagedorn
Mixed with Gabriela Silang, now watch as the page mourns
Say my name, it tastes foreign
Type to make your face form in ways you never made
Born from another place, thorns couldn’t break away
Or am I just a breakaway?
From being centre stage from off the page or will I fade away?
I never been the type to say I’m scared of what I have to face
‘Cause all I ever knew is being me so all I ever need to say is…

(Chorus)

Click here to listen to NPR.

_____________________________________________________

Don't let looks deceive you, Sen. Mazie Hirono is one tough 'badass'

SCREEN CAPTURE / YOUTUBE

Hawaii's Sen. Mazie Hirono  urges her Republican colleagues to support the Affordable Care Act.

SENATOR MAZIE HIRONO, 70 may look like one of those Asian American elders you see at social gatherings with neatly coiffed hair and lively eyes looking over their spectacles, but don't let looks fool you. She's one tough woman.

An excellent article by NPR, titled "The Quiet Rage of Mazie Hirono" destroys the quiet, subservient Asian woman stereotype.

One newspaper columnist calls Hawaii's senator a "badass."

"I always was," Hirono said in an interview with NPR. "I just wasn't very noisy about it. I've been a fighter all my life. I just don't look like that."

That's probably why no one has dared step up to challenge Hirono in her re-election bid this November despite the fact she is fighting stage 4 cancer of the liver. Nothing slows her down.

Those dated stereotypes are still powerful and we all need to guard against the way they can warp an individual's view of other people. If one were to apply that stereotype to Hirono, they would be shocked at Hirono's behavior. They would also be grossly misinformed.

Since she was diagnosed with cancer a year ago she has been more visible and outspoken. The election of Donald Trump seems to have given her more energy as she battles Republicans on immigration, health care and trade.  She has she the "good girl" don't-rock-the-boat image she was saddled with, thrust upon her by the predominantly white, male Senate and Washington media.

She is the Senate's only immigrant and its first female Asian American. Until Kamala Harris and Tammy Duckworth were elected in 2016, she was the ONLY Asian American in the Senate.

She had kept a pretty low profile. But she is not afraid to put herself out front of an issue if she thinks it would help the issues she cares about.

"As I tell my staff," she told NPR, "people are getting screwed in this country every single second, minute, hour of the day. And, by our efforts, if we can decrease that number, we will be making a difference. We will be doing our jobs."

When it came to defending the American Care Act, her emotional appeal on the Senate floor put the senators in their place, though it didn't change the vote of most rigidly partisan Republicans.

Late in the night, she took the floor and said. “Here I am a United States senator, I am fighting kidney cancer and I’m just so grateful that I had health insurance so I could concentrate on the care that I needed rather than how the heck I was going to afford the care that was probably going to save my life.”

She spoke about how when she was first diagnosed, she heard from many of her colleagues across the aisle. “You showed me your care,” she said, fighting back tears. “You showed me your compassion. Where is that tonight?”

As the only first-generation immigrant in the Senate, she's not afraid to challenge Trump's immigration proposals. On more than one occasion, she has called Trump, "xenophobic" and a "liar." "To call the president a liar, that is not good, but it happens to be the truth," the soft-spoken Hawaii senator told Time recently.

She has also been criticized for doggedly asking federal judiciary nominees if they have ever been accused of sexual misconduct. She wants the nominees' answers on the record in case, in the future, they do act inappropriately, they can be charged for perjury.

READ the entire NPR article here.

To her those who criticize her for her pointed questions, Hirono responds, "F--- them!"

"If that's considered liberal, as opposed to what I call justice and fairness, as I am won't to say, f--- them!" Hirono said.

Actually, based on the Asian American grandmothers I've encountered, that's not an uncommon response. 

________________________________________________________________________________

'Serial' podcast subject, Adnan Syed, will get a new trial

Adnan Syed  has spent most of his life behind bars.

AFTER SPENDING almost 20 years in jail, Adnan Syed is getting a new trial.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled today (March 29) that the man who was the subject of a popular podcast, will have his murder conviction overturned because of poor counsel.]

Syed was found guilty in 2000 of the murder of his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, a Korean/American immigrant. Her strangled body was found off a trial in a city park. 

Seventeen-year old Syed, a son of immigrants from Pakistan, was given a life sentence in 2000.

HAE MIN LEE

The case was the subject of NPR's most popular podcast in 2014, the first season of hit Serial. The podcast narrator questioned some of the details of the Lee's homicide and the adequacy of Syed's attorney, the late Cristina Gutierrez.

Chief among the errors was that the defense lawyer for failing to pursue a classmate who witnessed Syed at the library at the time of the slaying. The testimony of Asia McClain, who knew both Lee and Syed at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, was never interviewed by Gutierrez nor was her information brought up during the trial.

Chief Judge Patrick L. Woodward ruled, "There is a reasonable probability that McClain's alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed's involvement [in] Hae's murder, and thus 'the result of the proceedings would have been different.'"

In a separate ruling but in the same proceedings, Woodward wrote:  "Syed's murder conviction must be vacated, and because Syed's convictions for kidnapping, robbery, and false imprisonment are predicated on his commission of Hae's murder, these convictions must be vacated as well. The instant case will be remanded for a new trial on all charges against Syed."

The family of Hae Min Lee criticized McClain who they say did not sit through every day of both trials like they did.

“It remains hard to see so many run to defend someone who committed a horrible crime, who destroyed our family, who refuses to accept responsibility, when so few are willing to speak up for Hae,” a family statement said.

Serial, which meticulously re-examined the murder in Baltimore and original 2000 trial, helped bring renewed attention to Syed’s case. The podcast helped propel the NPR show to become the most popular podcast ever, gaining a global audience.

“Serial was enormously helpful,” a lawyer for Syed, Justin Brown, said at a press conference after today's verdict was read. “[Syed] asked me to convey his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart to all those who have supported him and believed in him.”

The State of Maryland has opposed the overturning of Syed’s conviction and in 2017 it appealed a lower court’s decision to grant a new trial. Today’s ruling could mean that Syed will have another shot at freedom, or it might mean that prosecutors take the case to Maryland’s Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state.

(UPDATED: March 30, 9:30 a.m. to include statement from the Lee family.)

_________________________________________________________________

High number of Asian Americans say they've experienced discrimination

ASAM NEWS

A POLL of a representative sample of 500 Asian/Americans found a significant number in the community say they have personally experienced discrimination.

The survey conducted by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is part of a larger survey of African Americans, Latinos, Asian/Americans, Native Americans, whites, men, women and LGBTQ adults.

RELATED:

• Hate crimes rising against Asian Americans
• Bamboo ceiling in Silicon Valley
• Why Trump's tweets vs. African Americans should concern Asians

“Our poll shows that Asian/American families have the highest average income among the groups we’ve surveyed, and yet the poll still finds that Asian/Americans experience persistent discrimination in housing, jobs and at college,” said Robert Blendon to NPR.

"Over the course of our series, we are seeing again and again that income is not a shield from discrimination.” Blendon co-directed the survey and is a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard Chan School.

More than one out of four Asian/Americans say they have been personally discriminated against because they are Asian.

Twenty-seven percent have experienced discrimination when applying for jobs, 25% when being paid or applying for promotions, and also 25 percent when renting or buying a home.

Slightly more Asian/Americans, about one out of three, say they have experienced racial or ethnic slurs. 35% say they have been subjected to offensive comments about their race and ethnicity.

Sixty-one percent of Asian/Americans surveyed believe members of their community face discrimination. 

Younger Asian Americans are more likely to feel this than older Americans. 68% believe this discrimination is based on individual prejudice while 16% say both government policies and individuals are equally to blame. 14% blame institutional racism.

You can read the entire report here.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The day after July 4th: Extreme right freaks out on Independence Day

SOME WEIRD SHIT is happening in our nation these days. Two events celebrating the U.S.A.'s Independence Day demonstrates how far over the edge the ultra right has gone.

Unbelievably, this is America, 2017. Much of the blame to the United State's deterioration in civility and reasonableness can be attributed to the policies, rhetoric and tweets of Donald Trump, who did not win the popular vote and definitely did not hreceive a mandate from his electoral college victory of last year.

No. 1: 

To celebrate July 4th, National Public Radio (NPR) tweeted the Declaration of Independence - 140 characters at a time. 

NPR does this every year for the Fourth of July. The organization has read the historic document on the air for nearly 30 years to celebrate the holiday.

This was the first time the tradition was released on Twitter. It took 121 posts to tweet the entire 241-year-old document.

Trump supporters read the tweets and didn't recognize the source. They accused NPR of fomenting revolution, violence. 

Uh, yeah! It was the Declaration of Independence! Even though the Trumpsters thought it was attacking Donald Trump, it was really about King George.

After a few hours of people trolling their Twitter accounts, most of the protesting tweeters either apologized or shut down their accounts. 

Heaven help us! Please don't defund the Department of Education. Despite Education Elizabeth DeVos' proposals, our pubic schools need all the help they can get.

No. 2:

THE LATEST chilling commercial from the NRA should remove any doubt that the organization is aligned with the radical right.

The latest National Rifle Association commercial (below) downright frightening in its message, its tone and how some unbalanced individuals might interpret it.

The NRA has reached a new low in their message that divides the country into the "us" and "them" and call for (violent) action.

The "they" the female narrator angrily spits out, is anyone who doesn't agree with the ultra-conservatives views or with Trump and his administration policies. That would include the millions who took to the largely peaceful street marches for women, science, the truth, taxes,climate, immigrants and equality those who protested against the Muslim bans, Trumpcare, injustice and racism.



The NRA commercial really gets scary, however, when the narrator connects protesters and acts of violence to the growing anti-Trump mass movement. Law enforcement, she continues, have “no choice but to do their jobs and stop the madness,” while onscreen we see images of street violence.

In conclusion, the narrator calls for NRA members “to fight this violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth.”
It's time the millions of legitimate gun owners and NRA members who believe guns should be kept from the mentally ill or those on the no-fly list to stand up and denounce the divisive message and the unspoken message that some fear some nut cases will interpret as a call to arms. 

The narrator gets angrier as the commercial goes on and stops just short of saying, the protesters and those who doubt or question Trump and his mental and emotional status, should be shot, but, I'm afraid, that is the message some extremists will hear.

###

Study: Do white people trust Asians?

By Louis Chan

ASAM NEWS

I RAN across an episode of Freakonomics on NPR Radio which quoted an interesting study about trust.

Researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted an experiment intended to measure trust. It found that Whites were more likely to cheat Asians than members of their own racial group.

The study is from 2000, but given the current political divide in the country, one has to wonder if we would get the same results today.

Almost 200 Harvard undergraduates were asked to participate in an experiment. More than 35 percent of the study’s participants were Asian. The students are paired up. First they are given $15 and asked to pass the money on to the next person without knowing if they would get that money back. Each time the money is passed, the researchers double the amount that is received. Researchers found that Whites were more likely to take some or even all of the money before passing it to the other when that person was of another racial group.

Ninety-two percent of the cases where the recipient sent back nothing occurred when the recipients were of a different race, while only 59 percent of the pairings were racially diverse.

“A lot of the cheating was across racial and ethnic lines,” said Harvard researcher Ed Glaeser on NPR. “And this was primarily White on Asian, meaning the Whites were cheating the Asians. And I think there are lots of cases in the world in which we’ve seen racial fractionalization be related to less-than-perfectly functioning social relations.”

Researchers say that trust is built up through interaction. In other words, the more interaction you have with other people, the more trust is built up.

“People that go to university end up trusting much more than those who don’t, particularly when they go away residentially," said David Halpern of Britain’s Behavioral Insights Team.

“It doesn’t look like it’s explained by income alone. So there’s something about the experience of going off as a young person in an environment where you have lots of other young people from different backgrounds and so on, hopefully, and different ethnicities. You learn the habits of trust because you’re in an environment where you can trust other people; they are trustworthy. And you internalize these habits and you take them with you the rest of your life.”

However, they also found that its harder to build up trust in diverse societies than it is in homogeneous societies. Societies where people trust one another are healthier and wealthier. In the U.S. (and the U.K. and elsewhere), social trust has been falling for decades — in part because our populations are more diverse.

The Harvard study on trust was conducted in 2000 (before the Great Recession, before President Obama was elected, before the 2016 presidential campaign) If it were conducted today, do you think they’d get the same results?

You'd be surprised but the podcast ends on a hopeful note. In the past, with each wave of immigration, there was initial distrust, but eventually, says one of the researchers, the "others" became "us."

For more information about building trust and the impact of diversity on trust, listen to the podcast or read the transcript here. (Views From the Edge contributed to this report)

###