The Asylum Process; The U.S. Surgeon General on Mental Health, COVID and More; Hurricane Fiona; #BLTrees: A Year in the Life

Coming up on today's show:

• Many of the people who have arrived in New York City in search of asylum are from Venezuela and Colombia. Maryann Tharappel, special projects director of Immigrant and Refugee Services at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, explains the asylum seeking process and William Neuman, former New York Times reporter and Andes region bureau chief, now the author of Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela (St. Martin's Press, 2022), talks about the conditions in Venezuela that are leading many people to leave to seek asylum here in the United States.
• U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talks about why he is prioritizing the nation's mental health, especially among young people, plus talks about the latest news on the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Yarimar Bonilla, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro) and professor of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College, discusses the latest on Hurricane Fiona, including severe flooding and power outages in Puerto Rico, how the deadly storm is traveling through the Caribbean, plus listeners with personal ties to affected areas call in.
• We check in on our year-long project #BLTrees, following the seasons through the trees around us with Marielle Anzelone, urban botanist and ecologist and the founder of NYC Wildflower Week. This month, she and Brandi Cannon-Force, botanist and science educator, talk about the many trees that bear fruit — the kinds we eat, like apples, and the kinds we don't, like sweetgum balls.