OFFSHORE

More migrants from the Marshall Islands now live in Springdale, Arkansas, than any other place in the world. It's a surprising choice for them, moving en masse to a small Midwest town that is about as different from their island homeland as you can get. London Lewis was born in the Marshall Islands, but he doesn't have the resources to make that trip any time soon. So if he’s going to have a chance of finding someone who knows his family, he has to start here. In 1986, as part of a treaty between the U.S.and three Micronesian nations, Marshallese were given the right to travel to this country with little if any immigration restrictions. But nobody anticipated the wave of migration that would follow. Or that the treaty would contribute to an adoption explosion from the islands. Now, the migration has taken root in this quiet corner of Arkansas -- where local judges say as many as nine out of 10 adoptions are of Marshallese children.

London, says he had a happy childhood, growing up in a big house in a town just past the Everglades. But he’s spent a lot of time searching for a connection to a culture thousands of miles from where he was raised. And while he did a lot of research in college on American military history in the Marshall Islands, he wants a sense of what’s missing from Western textbooks.

International adoptions were a rarity in the Marshall Islands until the mid-'90s. Then came an adoption boom of such intensity that the remote island nation suddenly had one of the highest per-capita adoption rates in the world. In just a few years, hundreds of children were adopted from the far-flung atolls -- so many that it seemed like an entire generation was disappearing. Now, two decades later, some of these children are beginning to search for answers about who they are and where they come from. Some, like 25-year-old London Lewis, have never known a single person from their native country.

A young man on a quest to find his birth family. An adoption market that rocked an island nation. A culture in danger of disappearing — and the desperate fight to save it. Join Offshore for an unforgettable eight-episode season this spring. www.offshorepodcast.org

Hawaii’s false nuclear alarm scare sends Offshore reporters on a trip back in time to 1962, when Hawaii had a very different kind of brush with nuclear weapons. Just a few months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hawaii witnessed a nuclear explosion so massive that darkness briefly turned to daylight. Instead of inspiring fear, the detonation sparked celebrations.

More than 100 people are suing Guam’s Catholic Church, saying they were sexually abused by priests in cases that go back decades. Sex abuse within the Catholic church is a well-known issue on the mainland, but this is the first time Guam has had to come to grips with it. And it’s a huge deal. Not just because of the abuse, but because the outpouring of accusations that directly confront the church is a sign of huge societal changes in Guam. An island where, after centuries of colonization, many people view Catholicism as an inextricable part of Chamorro culture. This is a story about the abuse cases, but it’s also a story about the evolving role of the Catholic Church on Guam. And a reporter who’s struggled for years to explain where she comes from and what it means to be Chamorro, finding answers in some very unexpected places.

A trip to a neighborhood bar in California leads Offshore to some unexpected places, as reporter Paola Mardo dives into the history of America’s fascination with all things Tiki. Offshore looks at the history of tiki bars, why they’re popping up all over the country and even the world today, and finds out more about the immigrants who served up the first tiki cocktails.

When we started out our journey to Mauna Kea for Offshore, we were looking at this story as a clash of science versus culture. What we’ve discovered is a whole lot more complex than that. But where does that leave things? Is there room on Mauna Kea for both the observatories and Native Hawaiian practitioners? Does one side have to push the other out, or is there room to coexist? And if what we’re seeing across the country at places like Oak Flat and Standing Rock is a clash between western values and indigenous values, is there a way for us to find a better balance in the future?

Why are Native Hawaiians facing charges for protests in South Dakota? Why are Apache from Arizona coming to sing their sacred songs to Mauna Kea? Offshore visits the Standing Rock Sioux and spends time with an Apache leader in Arizona to get a better understanding of why Native Hawaiians fighting the Thirty Meter Telescope say they are part of something much bigger. A growing movement that is uniting indigenous people across the globe to fight for the future of not just sacred places, but the planet at large.

Even when astronomers and Native Hawaiians sit down to build bridges, miscommunication abounds. Why are scientists so reluctant to talk about their own spirituality, and what will it take for the people opposing the Thirty Meter Telescope to feel they are truly being heard? Plus, Offshore discovers a decades-old secret that might help us understand the huge divisions between the astronomy community and the Native Hawaiians who want to block telescope development.

Are we alone in the universe? When did the first stars in the galaxy form? Civil Beat trails astronomers at work on Mauna Kea and spends time with the head of the Thirty Meter Telescope’s governing board to get a better understanding of what astronomers are doing on Mauna Kea — and why they feel a giant new telescope is important for mankind.

To understand why Hawaiian activists have dedicated their lives to blocking telescope development on Mauna Kea, Offshore visits the mountain with a cultural practitioner, joins in on an overnight solstice hike, and spends time with a Native Hawaiian woman who used to work at one of the telescopes and now opposes them.

The battle for Mauna Kea — the first of several standoffs between construction crews and Native Hawaiians — took place in April of 2015, just a few dozen yards from where astronomers gathered in 1964 to celebrate the start of development on the mountain. But before we introduce you to people on both sides of this fight, before we show you the battle lines that have been drawn and all that is at stake, we have to introduce you to Mauna Kea. A mountain that changes people in often unexpected ways.

The story of Mauna Kea is a story about science and culture, yes. But it’s also about land and power. About who gets to say what's sacred and what's not. About the way Hawaiians, scientists, and humans in general, search for meaning. It's also about our changing understanding of the universe. And competing visions for the future of our country — and our planet. The story of Mauna Kea is also a story that is playing out in many other areas of the country. At Standing Rock where the Sioux tribe is fighting development. In Arizona, where the Apache Indians already fought a telescope battle of their own and now are trying to stop a mining company that wants to operate on their land. Their mountains — their Mauna Keas — have changed people too.

The Offshore team heads to the Big Island to gather material for Season Two, and author Lois-Ann Yamanaka gives us a humorous glimpse at working class life in Hawaii.