It's Been a Minute

Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations. But why? Well, let's be real. There are a lot of very legitimate reasons why young people are afraid of sex right now, many having to do with recent massive political and cultural changes.

Brittany gets into why Gen Z-ers are having less sex with Tobias Hess, contributing writer at Paper magazine and writer of the Gen Zero Substack, and Carter Sherman, reproductive health and justice reporter at The Guardian and author of The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Before, during, and after Zohran Mamdani became the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Republicans and Democrats were both leaning into decades old Islamophobic tropes to delegitimize his candidacy. Meanwhile, young progressives are reclaiming those tropes.

Why is Islamophobia politically salient today, and why are both sides of the aisle using it to achieve their own political goals? To answer this, Brittany is joined by Tazeen Ali, a professor of religion and politics at Washington University, and Nathan Lean, professor of religion at North Carolina State University.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

What do Trump, JK Rowling, and some feminists have in common? Based on history, more thank you might think.

In this episode, Brittany and KQED's Nastia Voynovskaya explore the roots of modern-day transphobia through the story of one music producer, Sandy Stone. Then Brittany is joined by journalist Imara Jones to get into how Trump and JK Rowling's rhetoric matches some of those early feminists.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Republicans have passed President Trump's One Big, Beautiful bill, but is it built on bad faith stereotypes?

The legislation guts funding for Medicaid, and for a long time Republicans have been attacking the program as sort of welfare for moochers. Who exactly are these moochers? And could it be you?

Brittany is joined by Joan Alker, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, and Jamila Michener, professor and author of Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism and Unequal Politics to understand how stereotypes about who deserves health insurance affect us all.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

This season of Love Island USA has the timeline on fire...but maybe not for the reasons y'all hoped. Is it mirroring our dating lives a little too close?

To get into the season, Brittany chats with co-owner of Defector Media, Kelsey McKinney and co-host of Scamfluencers, Sarah Hagi, about the glimpses of romance amidst Love Island's largely unromantic current season, and how the show may be an unfortunate reflection of current dating woes.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

In our 'Your Body, Whose Choice' series, we've focused a lot on the present and the future of reproductive health in this country. And now we'd like to share a look at the past from our sister show, NPR's Embedded.

Their new 3–part series, The Network, follows a Brazilian women who discovered a method to have safe abortions, regardless of the law. And, as abortion restrictions tighten in the United States, American women have taken note.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani pulled off an astonishing upset this week. In the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, he beat out the long-favored winner, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who conceded the race only hours after the polls closed. The two candidates were of the same party, but held very different positions within it: Cuomo is older, spent more than a decade as Governor and positioned himself as a law-and-order centrist. Mamdani is younger, newer to politics and a total progressive. This is a primary race in just one city, but it's been making national news and could shake up the Democratic party's strategy post-Trump re-election. Brittany sits down with Christian Paz, senior politics reporter at Vox, and Max Rivlin-Nadler, reporter and co-publisher at Hell Gate, a local news site for New York City. They discuss what this race says about where progressive energy is coming from - and why the Democrats might be having a Tea Party moment.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

There's one little statistic that seems to have gained a lot of attention recently: the birth rate. With pro-natalist ideas showing up in our culture and politics, Brittany wanted to know: why are people freaking out? Who's trying to solve the population equation, and how? Brittany is joined by Kelsey Piper, senior writer at Vox, and Gideon Lewis-Kraus, staff writer at The New Yorker, to get into how the birth rate touches every part of our culture - and why we might need to rethink our approach to this stat.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Adriana Smith's pregnancy became an ethical and legal quandary. After being declared brain dead, a Georgia hospital kept her on life support without her family's consent because of the state's abortion laws. Now that the baby has been delivered and Smith taken off life support, Brittany wonders: how has the conservative effort to see fetuses as people overshadowed the lives of the mothers who birth them?

This is... Your Body, Whose Choice?

And for the next few weeks, we're looking at the cultural, legal, and ideological frameworks shaping reproductive health in America...and what this means for the near and far future of our families, our personal agency, and our planet.

Today, UC Berkley law professor Khiara Bridges joins the show to break down everything you need to know about this case and what its implications for the rights of mothers across the country.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Many millennials either are already in their 40s or are staring them down. Are they having a midlife crisis?

As this generation enters midlife, their lives look really different from their parents' lives: Millennials are more educated and have a higher median net worth, but the generation is also more unequal than previous generations, has higher debt and has lower rates of homeownership and marriage. How does that all shape what millennial midlife crises are starting to look like?

Brittany finds out with Vox senior correspondent Alex Abad-Santos, who recently wrote an article about the millennial midlife crisis, and Sara Srygley, research associate at the Population Reference Bureau.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy