In March, the Justice Department filed a major antitrust complaint against Apple accusing the tech giant of maintaining a monopoly over the smartphone market. This is just the latest action the government has taken against Big Tech in recent ye

Supporting the Needs of Refugees

Mar 5th, 2024 29m 25s

Border crossings coming into the United States are at some of their highest levels in recent history. Cities like Chicago and New York are struggling to provide services while the immigration system is running out of funding and faces a massive

MLK's Contested legacy

Feb 6th, 2024 25m 47s

Martin Luther King Jr. holds a special place in the American consciousness and is one of the few people to have a federal holiday celebrating his legacy. But what exactly is MLK’s legacy? From immigrants rights groups to gun rights activists to

The Year of Strikes

Jan 9th, 2024 30m 33s

From healthcare strikes to auto workers strikes to the Writers Guild and Hollywood actors strikes, 2023 was an eventful year for union activity. Professor Nathan Wilmers examined the implications of that activity and what it may mean for the fu

The Rise and Risks of AI

Dec 5th, 2023 31m 17s

Since the emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022, new artificial intelligence models have captured the attention and fascination of the world. Some Americans are still acquainting themselves with the tools while for others, these models are already

The Long History of Conservatorships

Nov 7th, 2023 26m 37s

While news over Britney Spears’s 13-year conservatorship turned what was a largely unfamiliar term into one most Americans now know, involuntary care over adults with certain types of disabilities or severe mental illness is nothing new in the

Ignoring Women's Pain

Oct 3rd, 2023 22m 35s

With abortion bans passing in states all over the country since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, women experiencing miscarriages have been turned away from hospitals because doctors deemed that they weren’t in enough clear danger to receive abortio

Segregation in our Schools

Sep 6th, 2023 30m 58s

According to a recent, federal report, while racial diversity is at an all time high in the K-12 public school system, racial inequality and segregation on school campuses persists, and continues to increase. Professor Erica Frankenberg broke d

Episode 250: Climate, Health Care, and the IRS

Aug 14th, 2023 41m 39s

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) was signed into law almost one year ago, but Americans are still learning how this giant legislative package impacts them. With provisions targeting different sectors of the economy, the IRA has focused

Unhoused and Underserved

Jun 6th, 2023 35m 19s

In an annual report, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that over half a million Americans were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2022. According to Professor Megan Welsh Carroll, racial discrimination, cri

Fifty Years of Mass Incarceration

May 2nd, 2023 26m 17s

2023 marks 50 years since the beginning of mass incarceration in 1973, when the U.S. prison population started increasing every single year for nearly four decades, according to Professor Nazgol Ghandnoosh. Ghandnoosh, who works for The Sentenc

The Flurry of Anti-Trans Legislation

Apr 4th, 2023 25m 40s

In states across the country, a flurry of new laws are being considered, and often passed, that specifically target transgender individuals – from bills that bar access to gender-affirming healthcare for youth to legislation that bans transgend

No Box to Check

Mar 7th, 2023 39m 36s

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans may at times feel as though they’re invisible. An estimated 3 million of them live in the U.S. yet have no box to mark their identities on government forms, such as the Census, and other surveys

Invisible Barriers in STEM Education

Feb 7th, 2023 36m 47s

In the American school system, math and science are considered essential building blocks of a good education. But for many students, those building blocks can topple over somewhere along the way. We spoke to Professor Lara Perez-Felkner, who la

Avoiding a Cyber Catastrophe

Jan 4th, 2023 27m 37s

Gone are the days of file cabinets, wall calendars and phone books, as advances in technology have made storing information easier than ever. But given a slew of high-profile data breaches in recent years – both at governmental agencies and pri

Prison Cell or Recovery Center?

Dec 6th, 2022 32m 41s

According to the CDC, more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021. And a record-breaking 627 of those deaths occurred in the state of Maine. Substance use disorder is seen as a public health emergency by the medical community – b

Midterm Trailblazers

Nov 1st, 2022 28m 37s

With the midterm elections around the corner, all eyes are on the record-breaking number of Black female candidates on the ballot. We spoke to professor of government Nadia E. Brown, who shared her research on what’s contributing to the rising

In Search of a Home

Oct 4th, 2022 28m 39s

With rent prices and mortgage rates continuing to skyrocket, finding and keeping stable housing is getting increasingly challenging for many Americans. But according to sociology professor Prentiss Dantzler, those challenges are amplified for

Falling Through the Social Safety Net

Sep 6th, 2022 30m 19s

Millions of Americans are poor, food insecure, housing cost-burdened, or medically uninsured. This is where the U.S. social safety net comes in – with programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance – to catch their fall. But h

Supporting the Needs of Refugees

Aug 2nd, 2022 29m 43s

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine have brought an increased number of refugees to America over the past year. Enter refugee resettlement agencies – organizations that provide food, shelter, and of course, job placement

The "Neutral" Umpires of the Supreme Court

Jun 29th, 2022 29m 50s

The US Supreme Court has a long history of firmly defending its philosophy of neutrality and did the same for the recent and historic overturn of Roe. Wade. But according to law professor Cedric Merlin Powell, the Court’s neutral stance on case

Who’s Really in a Student Debt Crisis?

Jun 7th, 2022 24m 26s

More and more Americans are facing massive student debt and daunting payment plans once the federal pause on loan payments runs out. But this burden is not spread evenly, and neither are the challenges of paying it off. In this episode, we spok

How White Millennials Really Think About Race

May 3rd, 2022 27m 16s

Millennials are often seen as a progressive-minded generation – as 80’s and 90’s kids, they grew up in a digital landscape that exposed them to a diversity of perspectives. But while expectations were high that this generation would be on the f

The Real Culprits of Climate Change

Apr 5th, 2022 39m 28s

Conversations around climate change often focus on the consumption habits of everyday people: the cars we drive, the food we eat, our electricity bills. But according to geography professor Matt Huber, the carbon footprints of consumers are not

Election Disinformation

Mar 1st, 2022 28m 27s

The 2020 presidential election brought disinformation – defined as false information with the intent to mislead – to the forefront of public conversation. Subsequent events, such as the January 6 riot, reveal the serious danger disinformation c