Ticket to a new life

Nuala McGovern speaks with truck drivers and farmers in the United States as they share their thoughts on how their lives and livelihoods have been under the past four years of the Trump presidency. Wisconsin is known as America’s Dairyland. It’s an important state in this election, where the vote could go either way, and where more than one in ten of the electorate are farmers. Three farmers in Wisconsin explain how trade deals by the US have impacted what happens on their farms and how that affects their votes this time. And three truckers -Michael in Arizona, Pat in Indianapolis and Sunny in California - describe what they have seen driving across the country over the past four years.

24 Okt 202024min

By the middle of the 20th century, the English town of Grimsby was the biggest fishing port in the world. When the catch was good “fishermen could live like rock stars”, says Kurt Christensen who first went to sea aged 15. He was instantly addicted to a tough and dangerous life on the waves. But from the 1970s onwards, the industry went into decline. Today it contributes just a tenth of one percent to Britain’s GDP – less than Harrods, London best known department store. So how can such a tiny industry cause so much political havoc and threaten to scupper a post Brexit deal with Europe? Fishing communities have often blamed EU membership - and the foreign boats that have arrived as a result - for a steep fall in catches over the last half century. Many coastal towns voted overwhelmingly for Britain to leave the European Union. Now, Grimsby’s recently-elected Conservative MP – the first non-socialist the town has sent to Westminster in nearly 100 years - has spoken of a modern fleet and fresh opportunities. For Assignment, Lucy Ash travels to Grimsby to hear how fishing towns like this, ignored for decades by London’s political elite, now hope finally to turn a corner. She explores the huge place fishing plays in the British psyche and asks if the cold, stormy seas around Britain really can make coastal communities rich once again. Producer Mike Gallagher(Image: A trader examines a haddock at the daily Grimsby Fish Market auction. Credit: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)

22 Okt 202026min

Thirteen years ago, journalist Ibby Caputo underwent a bone marrow transplant in the US to treat an aggressive form of leukaemia. Because she is of Northern European descent, she believes she had a greater chance of survival, after finding a donor who was "a perfect match." Her friend, Terika Haughton, who was Jamaican, died of transplant-related causes in 2017. Terika did not have a perfect match, and after she died, Ibby explores how much that lack of a perfect match may have played a part in her death. Through these contrasting stories, Ibby explores race and ethnic disparities in healthcare.

20 Okt 202028min

TikTok has become one of the political stories in the run up to the US elections, exposing America's distrust of China. But its users and influencers could help decide who takes the White House. Journalist Sophia Smith Galer enters the hype houses of TikTok to find out how influential it really is.

18 Okt 202052min

As an election approaches in America, we return to a unique experiment which took the temperature of the USA after the surprise election of Donald Trump. In 2016 the BBC World Service, in association with American Public Media, focused on areas which the media had neglected – but made all the difference. We asked for smartphone voice recordings from key areas in the middle of America about their lives now, about why they voted the way they did, and their hopes for the future. Now, in 2020, we return to those contributors to see how their lives changed in the last four years. What do they want to happen now?

17 Okt 202051min

Our conversations reflect the impact Covid-19 has had on the US economy and on people’s jobs and wellbeing. We hear from a cook in northern California and a PBX switchboard operator in Massachusetts, who both lost their jobs and are struggling to make ends meet and pay the bills. They talk about how they feel forgotten, how the social system isn’t working for them, and how the main presidential candidates are not talking to them. And we hear from three flight attendants, who all lost their jobs after an economic relief plan in Congress stalled. One of them, Breaunna Ross, posted a video of her emotional farewell to passengers on her final flight, which has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube.

17 Okt 202025min

A death-defying migrant's story... Said Reza Adib was a TV journalist in Afghanistan. In 2016, about to break a story about the sexual abuse of children by Afghan men in authority, he received a threat to his life. Reza fled across the border to Iran. But journalism was in his blood, and in Iran he began to investigate sensitive stories related to the war in Syria. When Iranian authorities confiscated his laptop, he knew his life was again in danger. That same day, with his wife and two small children, he began a perilous journey to safety in Finland – an odyssey that would last four years. The family would survive shooting on the Turkish border, a voyage across the Aegean Sea on an overcrowded makeshift vessel with fake lifejackets, and then the nightmare of refugee camps in Greece. It was here that Chloe Hadjimatheou met Reza, and for Assignment she tells the story of a remarkable journalist who’s continued to ply his trade - in spite of the odds stacked against him. Producer: Linda Pressly(Image: Said Reza Adib. Credit: Sayed Ahmadzia Ebrahimi)

15 Okt 202027min

Stella Sabin, who has dyslexia herself, looks at the impact of the condition in adult life, and asks what difference does it make to know the name of what you are experiencing? Dyslexic people are disproportionally represented in low paying jobs and in the US and the UK 50% of the prison population are dyslexic. She visits the intelligence and security organisation GCHQ who are positively recruiting dyslexic thinkers, who are able to find unusual and imaginative solutions to complex problems…like cracking codes.

13 Okt 202028min