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Heidi Shin

The World

Heidi Shin is a public radio + podcast producer based in Boston, who is especially interested in the stories of immigrant communities and the inevitable connections between stories from abroad and our lives here in the US.

Heidi Shin is a public radio + podcast producer based in Boston, who is especially interested in the stories of immigrant communities and the inevitable connections between stories from abroad and our lives here in the US.Among many adventures, she’s been diving with elderly mermaids on Jeju Island, trailed a group of Catholic nuns that reunites families separated at the US Mexico border, and interviewed a North Korean film director with his leading lady.  Her work has appeared in National Geographic, The Washington Post, California Sunday Magazine, Snap Judgment, 70 Million, the BBC, and PRX The World.  She also co-created and produced WGBH/The Ground Truth Project's "The New American Songbook," a podcast about immigrant musicians whose awards include an ONA, a Webby, and an Edward R. Murrow Award.  Heidi also teaches at the PRX Podcast Garage and Harvard University’s Sound Lab and organizes Boston’s Sonic Soiree.

International students in the US face many challenges as they adjust to new cultural norms.

Chaplains open doors for international students on campus

Sacred Nation

When international students arrive to study in the US, life can be harder than expected. Some universities have found that religious chaplains can help students make the transition. While mental health is stigmatized in some countries, spiritual care is not. As a result, student chaplains have become de facto front-line mental health care providers. 

The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center has amplified its social emotional learning curriculum for preschoolers facing pandemic-related challenges.

Chinatown preschool helps families name pandemic-related feelings

Education
A man in a yellow shirt helps fix the bike of an elder leaning over bike wearing casual clothes and cap

Oakland’s Chinatown finds solutions to hate crimes

Community
Maddox and his brother in their apartment in Lowell, MA.

This 9-year-old brings hope to his grandmother, a genocide survivor, by dancing

Arts
Students from the Daum School on a field trip with their teacher. Their faces are blurred to protect their privacy. Many North Korean refugees have trouble adjusting to life in fast-paced South Korea, especially at school.

North Korean students learn to deal with trauma at this Seoul school

Conflict
A pregnant woman in the obstetrics and gynecology ward at Severance Hospital in Seoul

In South Korea, parents are increasingly saying, ‘we hope for a girl’

Development

South Korean so preferred having boys that the country had to implement a law requiring doctors to refrain from revealing a baby’s gender until late in the second trimester, so as to avoid sex-selective abortions.

Border

A day in the life of immigration limbo

Justice

Day after anxious day, a mother who escaped gang violence with her children in El Salvador waits in Boston to know whether she and her family can stay in the US legally or not.

Jefferson Krua fled Liberia as a refugee at age 5, and eventually settled in Boston, MA. Recently, he's moved back to Liberia to help with re-building the country's infrastructure.

A young Liberian refugee, educated in America, chooses to move back ‘home’

Culture

Mercy Krua is a Liberian refugee who lives in Boston. Her son, Jefferson Krua, was also a Liberian refugee. But he decided to move back to Liberia and make his life there. In part, he says, because no matter how much money he could make in the US, he would always be a black man in America.

Class instructor Chioma Woko preparing braised cabbage.

Forget the latest diet fad — here’s a class that teaches how to eat better with traditional African dishes

Culture

Leonard Tshitenge grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo eating food from the region. But, now living in the US, the dishes he remembers aren’t served anywhere. So he and his wife, who is from Nigeria, decided to teach Americans how to eat like they did back home.

Cambodian women meditating in the Metta Center's meditation lounge, sitting cross-legged with palms pressed together

Why a US health clinic suggests Cambodian treatments for everyday maladies

Health

At a clinic in Massachusetts that specializes in treating Cambodians, much thought has gone into creating a facility that doesn’t evoke memories of torture or other negative experiences.