Bonus: Bridgerton actor’s interview on Dear Daughter

Hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico is becoming an unlikely launchpad for a blockchain boom. Whilst many thousands of Puerto Ricans are leaving the island after the devastation of hurricane Maria, a small group of wealthy ‘crypto-preneurs’, are moving to this US territory. They harbour hopes to reboot paradise using blockchain technology, the revolutionary idea which helped create digital currencies like bitcoin, and bring prosperity back to this financially struggling island

24 Juli 201835min

Sixty years ago, a man wandered into a surf shop on the beach in Southern California with a homemade wooden board with four roller-skate wheels attached. An insignificant beginning for a culture that would eventually influence communities all around the world.

23 Juli 201849min

The US is the home of the perfect Hollywood smile, but in one of the world’s richest countries tens of millions of people struggle to pay for a dentist. Natalia Guerrero goes on a dental voyage of discovery across America to investigate the relationship between cavities and cash.

19 Juli 201849min

There’s an unlikely election campaign underway in the American state of Kansas where several teenagers have joined the race to be Governor. Kansas is the only place in the US with no lower age limit on running for the state’s top job and the youngsters say they want to energise other young people and boost youth involvement in politics. They come from Republican, Democratic and Independent backgrounds but their views, in a very conservative state, range far and wide across the ideological spectrum. On taxes, spending, environmental laws and even gun control, the teenagers often break with party orthodoxy and look for compromise. All this at a time when school children are leading the grass-roots movement against guns, taking on their political elders for the first time in decades. For Assignment, Claire Bolderson travels to Kansas to meet the aspiring politicians, too young to vote even for themselves, to assess the shifting sands of youth politics. Producer: Michael Gallagher(Image: 17 year old Tyler Ruzich believes he can become Governor of Kansas. Credit: BBC)

19 Juli 201826min

Luis Fajardo examines a controversial plan to create privatised cities in the impoverished Central American country of Honduras. Nearly a decade ago a US star economist, Paul Romer, proposed “charter cities” as a model for developing countries to escape poverty and violence; new cities with Western-style institutions and laws, to be built and managed by foreigners in semi-autonomous enclaves carved out of the country.

18 Juli 201827min

Young Taiwanese entrepreneurs working in a start-up hub are offered attractive sweeteners. But this isn’t in California or even Taipei, it’s on the outskirts of Shanghai. The People’s Republic of China is setting its sights on Taiwan’s youth by encouraging them to relocate to the ‘mainland’.

17 Juli 201827min

Over the last twenty years or so hundreds of mansions have appeared in the Kharian region of the Punjab. Each mansion represents a successful migration to the West – some to the UK but mostly to Norway. For three or four weeks a year the mansions are holiday homes to the returning migrants and their Norwegian born children. This is often a time when differences and rifts in extended families emerge and a time when young people must assess their futures.

15 Juli 201850min

The miraculous rescue of the 12 boys and their young football coach, trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, has been followed around the world. It was a global operation with divers from several different counties. Its chances of success or failure were finely balanced. In the end there was jubilation, tinged with some sadness. The BBC minute team take you back to each day of the past three weeks and reflect on how the drama unfolded.

13 Juli 201823min