The Takeaway

According to an economist at Indeed, more than a million people have come out of retirement to reenter the workforce. We speak with Dr. Beth Truesdale, an expert on the aging workforce at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, to understand this trend. Dr. Truesdale speaks to the reasons behind unretirement and why retirement works for some and not for others in this country.

For Memorial Day, we speak with Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, an organization dedicated to advocating for the needs of Black veterans. Brookshire can speak about the disparities in how Black veterans are treated compared to their white counterparts, and is also very open about his own mental health struggles following the end of his active duty service.

This weekend, hundreds of military families gathered in Arlington, VA, for a unique program designed to provide support for relatives of the fallen. Bonnie Carroll founded Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) after the death of her husband, Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll. Since its founding, they have helped more than 100,000 surviving relatives of military service members with comprehensive assistance, including financial support, counseling services, helping navigate government agencies, and much more.  One of their signature programs is the Good Grief Camp, where children find support and community with one another, and get assigned an active duty military service member as a mentor. We share some of their stories here.

Lidiya Yankovskaya is the conductor and artistic director of the Chicago Opera Theatre; one of the few women to hold that title at a major arts organization. She's also a former refugee. Raised in Russia, with summers in Ukraine, her family fled St. Petersburg in the post-Soviet Reconstruction era due to anti-semitism there and came to the United States. She founded the Refugee Orchestra Project in the wake of the Syrian conflict to raise awareness about the contributions refugees make. This Memorial Day Weekend, the orchestra will play a special benefit concert in Boston to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees.The performance will feature all refugee soloists, performing music by refugee composers, with an orchestra made up primarily of refugee musicians or recent descendants of refugees.  We speak with Yankovskaya and one of composer Milad Yousufi about the project. 

We take a look at the latest primary election results from this past week. We’re joined by Maya King, politics reporter for The New York Times, and Stephen Fowler, state and local politics reporter for Georgia Public Radio.

The United States has a long history of military presence in Somalia dating back to the early 90s. More recently, as his time in office was ending, President Trump withdrew troops from the country. But last week, President Biden reversed that decision and announced that the U.S. would be sending 500 troops into the country in a security effort against Al-Shabab, an islamic insurgent group active in the country. Meanwhile, the country's struggles with unrest have been compounded by natural disasters and a food crises.   We speak with Omar Mahmood, senior analyst for Somalia for the International Crisis Group, to explore why the U.S. is going back to Somalia, and what it means for the country.

19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday. Though their lives were all tragically cut short, all of them were loved by their families and friends in unique ways. We take a moment to remember the victims. 

In the wake of the tragedies in Uvalde and Buffalo’s East Side, there is a need for mental health care for families, for survivors, and for the community as a whole.  Yet tragedies like these also highlight inequities in mental health care access for communities of color, where the data shows that people of color are less likely to access mental health treatment than white folks.   To explore the importance of culturally competent mental healthcare and the need for expanded mental health care access in communities of color, we speak with Luis Zayas, dean of the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin.    

In 2016, the American Medical Association declared that gun violence in the U.S. is a public health crisis. Not just the mass shootings which make national headlines, but the daily violence that constitute the overwhelming majority of gun deaths- suicide, intimate partner violence, murder, police killings and even accidental shootings. The ripple effects impacts all of us, even if we are not directly experiencing the violence ourselves. It's compounding another national crisis, that of adolescent mental health.  The CDC estimated that in 2020, the proportion of emergency room visits by adolescents seeking mental health care increased by 31 percent. But because of a lack of residential program beds, young patients are left to become “boarders” in emergency departments—kept in small, bare rooms or even in hospital hallways. We speak with Dr. Megan Ranney, Academic Dean at the School of Public Health and a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University, about how we got here and how a public health perspective on gun violence can help us find solutions.  

We learn more about Uvalde and the people who live there. We spoke with Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, about the devastating school shooting that took place at Robb Elementary on Tuesday, May 24. 

On Tuesday, an 18 year old gunman shot and killed at least 21 people, including 19 children and 2 adults, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Uvalde is a majority Latino-town slightly over an hour outside of San Antonio. The shooting is the deadliest to occur at an elementary school since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. We spoke to professor of sociology and psychiatry Jonathan Metzl to discuss the toll that school shootings take on the mental health of children nationwide.

On Tuesday a gunman killed at least 19 children, 1 teacher, and at least 1 other adult in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. These precious children were killed while simply attending school are now among the thousands of young people injured or killed by guns during the past year. In fact, analysis of CDC data recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that in 2020 firearms became the leading cause of death for young Americans. In December, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a public health advisory on the youth mental health crisis that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The rate of death by self-inflicted gunshot wound has risen faster among adolescents and teens than any other group.  We speak to Dr. Michael Lindsey, Executive Director at the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University, to better understand death by suicide and its connection of the mental health of young people. A school shooting like this is an enraging act of violence which can lead young people who are already struggling, to feel even more vulnerable, distraught, or hopeless. We spoke to three young people who have faced mental health challenges and have all become advocates for their own well-being and that of their peers, before the mass shooting in Uvalde, and we think that this event makes it even more crucial to keep thinking about the emotional well-being and mental health of young people.  We heard from Diana Chao, founder and executive director of Letters to Strangers, Juan Acosta, mental health advocate, and Charlie Lucas, co-founder of the notOK app.  

Loneliness and social isolation are growing public health concerns among older Americans. Loneliness is not only detrimental to mental health, but also contributes to physical  health risks including strokes, worsened diabetes and frailty. We spoke with Dr. Carla Perissinotto about the causes of loneliness for older adults, what we get wrong about it, and what interventions can address the crisis of loneliness. We also hear from Wanda Dobson, a 69-year old woman in New York City and employee with the Brooklyn Public Library's Services for Older Adults program, on her own experience with loss, loneliness and healing.

A Strange Loop already won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020 following its off-Broadway run; now, the Broadway show is up for 11 Tony Awards–the most-nominated production of the year. We speak with playwright and composer Michael R. Jackson about his groundbreaking musical, which poignantly tackles themes of queerness, race, religion and AIDS with humor and heart. The original Broadway cast recording comes out June 10.     

Social media and dating apps have fundamentally changed the culture of sex, and this impacts how young adults are shaping their personal relationships today. In her new book, The Current Collegiate Hookup Culture, online dating researcher Aditi Paul talks about the “new” culture of sex on college campuses.