Fewer international students are coming to the U.S.

Here & Now Anytime

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4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There has been a 19% drop in the number of international students arriving in the U.S. compared to last year, according to government data. Education journalist Kavitha Cardoza talks about the impact of the Trump administration on international students.

Then, Esther Phillips was a hugely popular teenage R&B singer who, in 1962, recorded the top-10 hit "Release Me." That success would lead to the album "The Country Side of Esther Phillips." But the record fell into obscurity. Journalist Michael Hall talks about Phillips’ legacy.

And, this Sunday marks 50 years since the original iconic Hail Mary football play. Hall of Fame receiver Drew Pearson relives the moment.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.2	MathWorks accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com.
0:17.0	WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Merry Christmas. It's Thursday, December 25th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.
0:46.1	I'm Chris Bentley. Hope you're having a nice holiday. No lump of coal from this Daily News podcast.
0:53.3	Just a fresh episode, as always. Today on the show,
0:57.7	the real history of football's most infamous last-ditch effort, the Hail Mary Pass,
1:04.1	from the first guy to ever catch one. Also,
1:07.6	Today I passed you on. A trailblazing musician from Texas is finally getting her due decades after her death in 1984.
1:20.0	Esther Phillips was an R&B singer, but she put out a killer country record in the 1960s, including this take on Hank Williams, I Can't Help It.
1:29.0	She could do it all.
1:30.8	Esther never had a net. She was just a great, great singer.
1:34.9	So why have so few people heard of Esther Phillips?
1:38.1	That story and some awesome tunes coming up in a few minutes.
1:44.1	And you know your look so satisfied.
1:49.4	But first, people from around the world still flock to American universities for higher
1:56.0	education, but not as much as they used to.
1:59.7	Data from the International Trade Administration, a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce,
2:04.5	show the number of international students dropped off a cliff in August of this year, compared with last year.
2:11.2	That figure is down 19%.
2:13.7	It's the biggest drop-off outside of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2:20.1	Longtime education journalist Kavita Cardoza has been looking into this.
2:24.1	She now teaches at the University of Richmond.
	...

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