The Takeaway

Stephanie Foo’s memoir What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma tells her story of her childhood, where she suffered abuse and abandonment from her parents, and how those experiences led her to suffer from complex PTSD.  Complex PTSD differs from regular PTSD, as it is caused when someone is exposed to a traumatic event repeatedly, over the course of years.  Complex PTSD also doesn’t officially exist in the DSM-5, and so there is relatively little literature on the issue.  We speak with Stephanie Foo about her childhood trauma, her coming to terms with her Complex PTSD diagnoses, and how she’s worked to overcome it.

Jason Marsalis, he youngest family member of the famed Marsalis musical family joins us to discuss life as a musician during Covid, the death of his father and what the return of music means to him.

While various trackers put the United States near 1 million deaths due to Covid, the numbers are most likely much higher, according to the CDC. Fatalities around the world are close to 15 million. In spite of this staggering death toll, chief medical adviser to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci says we are no longer in a pandemic phase here in the U.S.. Access to vaccines, boosters, and antiviral medications have also shifted attitudes and behaviors. To discuss what we have learned these past two years and what we need to do to prepare for the next pandemic, we speak with Dr. Bhakti Hansoti, associate professor of emergency medicine and international health at Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Motherhood and its many meanings and expectations are created and experienced within the particular realities of our society and history. And to better understand some of our shared national history with mothering we sat down with Professor Michele Goodwin of the University of California-Irvine who is author of the book Policing the Womb:  Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. "Policing the Womb" by Prof. Michele Goodwin brings to life the chilling ways in which women have become the targets of secretive state surveillance of their pregnancies. (Cambridge University Press)     

According to a 2020 study by The Williams Insitute, an LGBT think tank at UCLA Law School, 19% of transgender adults are parents. Many are parents to biological children. But for transgender people who choose to adopt or foster, the process can be particularly challenging. Laws vary by state, and while 28 states prohibit adoption discrimination on the basis of gender identity, 19 states do not. Octavia Lewis is a transgender Health Coordinator at Montefiore Health System and she's navigated the foster and adoption systems in New York state. The Takeaway spoke with her about her constantly evolving relationship with motherhood.   

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, over half of the women who are in federal prisons and 80% of women in jails are mothers. The National Bail Out Collective is an organization fighting for pretrial reform to remove these mothers and caregivers from behind bars instead of allowing them to sit in jail cells while awaiting adjudication. The National Bail Out Collective also coordinates Mama’s Day Bailouts to bail out Black mothers and caregivers on Mother’s Day. We speak with Rodreshia Russaw, Executive Director of The Ordinary People Society and Qiana Johnson, Founder of Life After Release about their work to support incarcerated women and mothers and their participation in Mama’s Day Bailout. 

We discuss what motherhood looks like when mothers and children are separated by borders, and how these families challenge Western stereotypes about what good motherhood is. We speak with Gabrielle Oliveira, associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and the author of "Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and their Children in Mexico and in New York City."

Julius Jones was convicted in the 1999 killing of Paul Howell in Oklahoma and was sentenced to death. He proclaims that he is innocent and first saw Howell on T.V. when his death was reported on the news.  After new evidence and a long legal fight, on November 18th, the day that Jones was set to be executed, Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life without the possibility of parole less than four hours before he was set to be executed. We speak with Antoinette Jones, the sister of Julius Jones and Reverend Cece Jones-Davis, the campaign founder/director of Justice for Julius to discuss the latest in Julius’ case and their ongoing fight to prove his innocence.

But the truth is, that almost all of us, even the richest and most well-off, benefit from government services and programs. There are services that most of us can recognize as government programs: food stamps, welfare, Pell Grants, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security retirement benefits. Maybe you’ve used some of these. But there are also not so visible government programs that we might benefit from without realizing. These are usually hidden in the tax code or through subsidies through private organizations. These include the home-mortgage-interest deduction and tax exemptions you may get on employer-provided health and retirement benefits. You might have used some of these as well without even knowing it.  We speak with Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University, calls this the "submerged state." She is also the author of the book “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy.”

J.D. Vance won the Ohio Republican Senate primary after an endorsement from Donald Trump signaling that the Republican party may still be beholden to Trump and his loyal followers. While the battle over the Republican party plays out state to state, both Democrats and Republicans fight over state and congressional maps, which have been redrawn after the 2020 census. We look at primary elections across the country and how redistricting may impact the results with Amy Walter, Editor-in-Chief of The Cook Political Report.

This Thursday, Paramount+ is bringing viewers back onboard the USS Enterprise with the new series, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."  Actor Celia Rose Gooding stars in the series as Uhura. The role was originated by Nichelle Nichols in the original "Star Trek" television series when it premiered in 1966.  Gooding joined The Takeaway to discuss taking on the role of Uhura and how she sees it fitting into her burgeoning career in entertainment.  

On our special May the Fourth episode, we start the show talking to two NASA astronauts about their experiences in space. We speak with Chris Hadfield, who was an astronaut with NASA for 21 years, a colonel in the Canadian air force, and he is also an educator, a musician, and Chris was the first Canadian astronaut to walk in space in 2001 and is the only Canadian to command a space station. He retired from NASA in 2013, and since then, he helps run several space companies, and has become known around the world for his internet presence and videos that have made space science fun and accessible. He’s also an author of several books and his most recent novel, “The Apollo Murders” is a Cold War-era thriller. We also speak with Sunita Williams, an astronaut at NASA and the second female commander of the International Space Station. She’s also been training commercial space crews for private companies like SpaceX and Boeing. She spent 322 days in space aboard the International Space Station and performed 7 spacewalks, spending a total of 29 hours and 17 minutes strolling around in the cosmos.

May the forth be with you today, on this May 4th! Stormtroopers pose at world premiere of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" on Monday, Dec. 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (AP Photos)  Culture critic Maya Phillips has been a major Star Wars fan since she first saw the original trilogy on VHS as a kid. She even has a soft spot for some aspects of the prequels! But as she’s gotten older, some of her opinions on the franchise have soured, both when it comes to its politics and the recycling of ideas that has taken place since Disney acquired Star Wars. We speak with Phillips about her connection to Star Wars and whether the franchise can be saved.

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, but more than two years into the pandemic, many teachers are struggling to find the light in a darkened tunnel. According to the National Education Association, a nationwide teacher shortage and widespread burnout have a significant number of teachers considering leaving the profession entirely. Recent cases have also underscored the ways in which both liberal and conservative leaning educators feel constrained by their districts. We speak with Prudence Carter, Professor of Sociology at Brown University about what this moment represents for teachers nationwide. For this story, The Takeaway also spoke with Rachel Stonecipher, a former teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. After it was discovered that the school had removed "LGBTQ safe-space" stickers from classroom doors, Stonecipher and other teachers sent an email to administrators asking for an explanation. Shortly after, the Irving Independent School District placed Stonecipher on administrative leave.  Later, in April of 2022, the district declined to renew Stonecipher's contract, which she believes was, in part, done in response to her stand on the “safe-space" stickers.  The Takeaway reached out to the Irving Independent School District in response to this story and received a statement dated April 22 that reads in part: “[O]n April 18, 2022, the Irving ISD Board voted on both renewals and terminations...[t]hese Board votes impact contracts for the 2022-2023 school year. No teacher contracts were terminated with immediate effect.”   

The news is monumental in every sense: a historic legal development, an unprecedented violation of Court protocol, and a decision that will have stunning consequences for women all across the country.  The Politico reporting by Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward includes a link to the draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito back in February. It’s a draft opinion that decisively reverses Roe v. Wade and the legal precedent it set nearly 50 years ago.  We spoke with Prof. Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law and cohost of the legal podcast Strict Scrutiny and OB/GYN, abortion provider, and founder of Pegasus Health Justice Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi about their reaction to these recent developments and what this leaked opinion indicates for the future of reproductive rights.