It's Been a Minute

Have you or someone you love been confused by the push to 'Make America Healthy Again'?

Then you, my friend, are in dire need of our new series: The Road to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). For the next few weeks, we're delving into some of the origins, conspiracy theories, and power grabs that have led us to this moment, and what it could mean for our health.

After visiting the families of measles victims in Texas, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated on X, "The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine." But his history promoting the anti-vaccination cause alongside questionable alternative medicines has public health officials, parents, and even the MAHA constituency on edge.

For the second episode in our Road to MAHA series, NPR's senior science and health editor Maria Godoy and NBC News senior reporter, Brandy Zadrozny, walk us through how anti-vaccine rhetoric has led to this moment in public health.

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Global markets got a case of the jitters this week in the wake of President Trump's global tariff policy. Everyone from hedge fund managers to online content creators have been starting to question the stability of America's economic trajectory. We're now seeing increased fear that a recession is just around the corner.

Brittany is joined by co-host of NPR's Indicator podcast, Wailin Wong, and co-host of NPR's Planet Money podcast, Jeff Guo. Together, they discuss how this moment connects to the economic anxiety of 2008 and why the definition of a recession is a bit harder to pin down than you might expect.

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Andrea Long Chu was once one of Brittany's favorite Sex and the City bloggers, and she's now a Pulitzer-winning critic. Andrea lends her critical eye to everything from the TV show Yellowstone to the work of Sally Rooney to pro-Palestinian protests and free speech. And she does it with wit, style, and fearlessness. Brittany chats with Andrea about her new book, Authority - a collection of some of Andrea's best work, along with two new essays. They discuss why art is a "fossil record" of desire, what kind of authority critics have, and why we might need to rethink what criticism should do for us.

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Have you or someone you love been confused by the push to 'Make America Healthy Again'?

Side effects may include:
- Being inundated by uncredentialed wellness influencers and crunchy mommy bloggers selling supplements
- Feeling perplexed by how RFK Jr. went from an 'environmental champion' to an anti-vax conspiracy theorist
- Or maybe seeing the names Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz more and more in your feeds?

Then you, my friend, are in dire need of our new series - The ROAD to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). For the next few of weeks, we're delving into some of the origins, conspiracy theories, and power grabs that have led us to this moment, and what it could mean for our health.

This week, we take on the crunchy conservative - but not without some help! Brittany sits down with co-host of the Conspirituality podcast, Derek Beres, and biomedical scientist, Dr. Andrea Love, to uncover how crunchy went from more liberal hippie tree huggers to more conservative conspiracy theorists.

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Baby names tell a story - about a family's unique history, about a specific moment in time, and even about politics. A survey tracking the top 500 names in states that went red or blue in the 2020 election recently went viral, highlighting popular names like Oakleigh and Stetson in red states, and Santino and Liana in blue states. Brittany is joined by Neda Ulaby, NPR Culture Correspondent, and Naftali Bendavid, Senior National Political Correspondent for the Washington Post to reflect on what popular baby names in red and blue states say about our current political moment.

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At the beginning of the year, Brittany spoke to ELLE Fashion Features Director and author, Véronique Hyland, about the growing trend of underconsumption content online. No-Buy January, buying secondhand, and mending old clothes seemed to be taking hold amongst some of the most popular influencers - even though the guiding principle of underconsumption is something we've been doing for a long time.

Then, Trump started implementing tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada - and now even the European Union. That made Brittany think: how would fast fashion be affected by this? And would underconsumption move from a hashtag to a lifestyle? To find out, The Indicator's Wailin Wong joins the show to break down how tariffs will affect Americans who love to shop... when the prices drop.

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America is a deeply spiritual nation. Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual in some way. But – at the same time – we're getting less religious. So for people who are spiritual-but-not-religious – what's replacing organized religion? What do they believe – and where does that show up in their day-to-day lives? In Brittany's series called Losing My Religion, It's Been a Minute is going to find out.

In her final episode of the series, Brittany is investigating so-called manifestation. It's this popular belief that if you want something badly enough, it'll come to you. You might know this idea by other names, like The Law of Attraction, or The Secret. Manifestation spiked in 2020, according to Google Trends, and it's still riding that wave online. Brittany calls on Tara Isabella Burton, an author and journalist, and New York Magazine's Rebecca Jennings to get to the bottom of this trend: the appeal of manifestation, its symbiotic relationship with the internet, and why it might make us less aware of our humanity.

Want to get to know Brittany? Follow her at @bmluse on socials.

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It's hard out there for single women who date men. You've maybe heard friends complaining about the dating pool, or perhaps you yourself are navigating its murky waters. According to economics reporter Rachel Wolfe at The Wall Street Journal, American women are giving up on marriage, with only 34% of single women looking for romance, versus 54% of single men.

Brittany is joined by Rachel, alongside Minda Honey, author of her memoir, The Heartbreak Years. Together they talk about the key reasons why women are less and less interested in the prospect of dating, let alone getting married.

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There are a lot of big subjects that our culture has trouble talking about: wealth, death, addiction, religion. But one of the toughest has to be sexual assault and rape. For how common sexual violence is – it affects over half of women and almost one in three men – it can be extremely painful and even stigmatizing to discuss. But in Jamie Hood's new book Trauma Plot, which contextualizes rape in her own life and in our culture, Jamie looks for new ways to speak the "unspeakable." It tells her story in experimental fragments and finds a unique way to discuss one of the most common violences we face. Brittany sits down with Jamie to discuss Trauma Plot, the contours of rape narratives in our culture, and how we can move beyond them to tell stories about sexual violence in new ways.

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America is a deeply spiritual nation. Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual in some way. But – at the same time – we're getting less religious. So for people who are spiritual-but-not-religious – what's replacing organized religion? What do they believe – and where does that show up in their day-to-day lives? In our new series called Losing My Religion, It's Been a Minute is going to find out.

This week, we're getting into psychedelics. That's an umbrella that includes the drugs LSD, magic mushrooms, peyote, and often ketamine and MDMA too, among others. And some of these drugs have a history of spiritual practice spanning millennia. But there's a new group that's really taking on the psychedelic mantle: tech bros and CEOS. Brittany is joined by Maxim Tvorun-Dunn, PhD candidate at the University of Tokyo, and Emma Goldberg, business reporter at the New York Times, to discuss what it means that these drugs are getting championed – and sometimes financially backed – by the tech elite, and how might that affect our culture's relationship to psychedelics as spiritual tools.

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