Next Question with Katie Couric

Social Psychologist and NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness lays it out emphatically: kids are being very negatively affected by ubiquitous phone use. The research on what phones and their attendant apps are doing to our kids is devastating, and these spikes in depression, anxiety, and even self-harm correlate pretty exactly with the rise of internet-connected smartphone use.

The good news is that the answer to possibly reversing this trend is simple, if not easy. In this urgent conversation, Haidt lays out exactly what parents need to know to help protect and prepare their kids as they navigate this complex technological era.

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Like many influencers these days, Jay Shetty is much discussed, but not necessarily much understood. He seems like he’s everywhere–officiating JLo and Ben Affleck’s wedding, dispensing wise sound bites on TV, and connecting daily to nearly 50 million people across a variety of social media and other platforms. Shetty rejects the title “guru,” which some have used to describe him, but it’s easy to see that he’s a guiding light for many. Shetty strives to create spaces where true vulnerability and openness is possible, and he brought a sense of peace and calm to this wide-ranging interview which traces his path from “failed” monk to household name. Together, Katie and Jay explore the power of unconditional love, and how to take self-care from buzzy jargon to practical tactics for bringing more peace into our lives. 

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Kris Jenner has vision. From an early age, she knew she wanted a family–she even predicted she’d have six kids! From her origins working in retail stores owned by her mother and grandmother, Kris has built something with true staying power along with her accomplished kids–and now their own kids, her grandchildren! One of the joys of matriarchy is being able to sit back a bit and survey what you’ve built. In this personal and heartfelt interview, Jenner dishes about her love of celebration (she’s already started Christmas shopping!), grandkid dates, and realizing that what you promise one grandkid… you promise to them all. More tips for grandparents–including a new one by the name of Katie Couric!--in this delightful conversation with Kris Jenner.

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Next Question is back for season nine, and the times, they are a changin’! Katie has big personal news to share in the season kick off with Kris Jenner–plus advice, memories, and humor from the Momager in Chief herself. Then it’s full steam ahead with Jay Shetty on balancing being and doing, valuable insights from Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton for this major election year, and internationally renowned soprano Renee Fleming takes us inside music and the mind with her new book. All that and more from Next Question Season 9!

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One of Next Question’s more personal episodes, this conversation features a very special plus one: Katie’s daughter, Carrie Monahan! Katie and Carrie, along with their guest, author Emmeline Clein, have all grappled with disordered eating at certain points in their lives. The research bears out that this is a nearly universal experience for American women, and that was a central inspiration for Clein’s new book, Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm. 

 

So many of us know on a deep level how easy it is to be beguiled by the pressure to be thinner, that thin means “perfect”--and how hard it is to get out of that mindset because, as Clein explains, "society as a whole is 'colluding with anorectic reasoning.'" But something powerful happens when lived experience is borne out in research, data, and other types of “proof”: it becomes impossible to continue to blame the victims for what is a much more complex and insidious societal sin. That is a driving message of Clein’s book, and this episode.

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This episode of Next Question was produced in partnership with Capital One, and recorded live at the Capital One Cafe in Herald Square in New York City. In it, Katie and a panel of caregivers explore the vast spectrum of challenges facing caregivers — those of us who find ourselves taking care of a loved one when they can no longer take care of themselves.

As our panelists Chris Punsalan, Adrienne Glusman, and Capital One’s own Celia Edwards Karam share from personal experience, it can be a terrifying, overwhelming task — from the sudden windfall of money decisions and the struggle to sort out a workable financial plan at a time of immense uncertainty, to the psychological burden of simultaneously caring for a loved one while mentally preparing to lose them. But there are also moments of grace, connection, and priceless time together that will stay with our panelists for a lifetime.

This conversation is both a practical guide and, we hope, a source of real inspiration and comfort for navigating an enormously challenging phase — one that most of us will face at some point in our lives.

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Kara Swisher, Official Next Question plus one and dogged chronicler of the good, bad, and the ugly of the tech world (and the “adult toddlers” that so often populate it), has really seen it all. She made tech her beat at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal before most journalists took any notice of the fledgling “nerdy” industry. From there, Kara fearlessly reported on a new generation of tech entrepreneurs who would change the world as we know it. Her journalism breaks news and starts conversations, and her bubble-bursting, down-to-earth approach to those who often get handled with kid gloves is perhaps one of her most enduring traits.

 

Some call her approach “mean,” and the title of her much-anticipated memoir, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, plays on this reputation as a reporter who minces no words and is not afraid to ask the hard questions. Kara chronicles the history of how tech came to dominate our lives, and with more potentially life changing tech on the horizon with things like AI, she certainly has some dire warnings. But Kara also has plenty of optimism to share, along with hot takes on everything from Gavin Newsom’s suits to where she derives her confidence (and the bone she has to pick with the question “How are you so confident?”). Nothing is off limits in this funny, insightful, profound conversation. 

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Allie Phillips, a young Tennessee woman who runs a daycare from home and has a young daughter, Adalie, was delighted to learn she was pregnant with a second daughter, Miley, in 2022. The same year, Tennessee enacted an abortion ban after the fall of Roe v Wade. Allie had no reason to believe this would affect her–but unfortunately it did.

 

Miley was deemed “incompatible with life” at around 19 weeks, and Allie was faced with the decision many women must grapple with now that Roe has fallen: to leave the state to receive abortion care, or to continue her pregnancy as her daughter deteriorated, threatening Allie’s life and fertility. She chose the former, and documented the difficult, time-sensitive process to her nearly 300,000 TikTok followers. 

 

She shared her story to put a face to the consequences of the overturn of Roe, and a little while after she returned to Tennessee, she decided to get involved politically. Her state representative was no help– Allie learned he hadn’t considered cases like hers in banning abortion because he thought, shockingly, that only first pregnancies could have complications. She’s now running for that very seat in the statehouse, and joins Next Question today to make her inspiring case for change.

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In this special episode of Next Question, Katie sat down for a rare one-on-one interview in DC with Vice President Kamala Harris in her ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And there was a lot to talk about.

 

2024 is here at last, and it’s a monumentally important election year–one that looks more likely every day to be another Biden-Trump re-match. The political news has been heavily skewed toward the Republican side of the race, given the drama of selecting their nominee. Less has been heard from the incumbent administration.

 

But the campaign is heating up for the Democrats too. From abortion rights to the crisis in Israel and Gaza, shifting voter coalitions and where Biden-Harris need to really make their message sing, such as with Gen Z, this wide ranging conversation gets to the heart of what’s at stake this election year, and what the Biden-Harris administration is doing to make their case to voters.

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Since long before Roe v Wade enshrined a federal right to choose in 1973, abortion has been one of the most contentious issues in American life. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe with their decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, marking  a new peak in the political energy and emotion surrounding abortion. Katie’s guest today, New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor (who won a Pulitzer for her Me Too reporting), has been behind some of the most exhaustively sourced and in-depth reporting on just how Dobbs unfolded. 

 

As Jodi tells us, in many ways, SCOTUS’ Dobb’s decision was shocking. The case started as a long-shot ban on abortions after 15-weeks in Mississippi. But a series of events made it one of the most monumental in American history: an even more controversial case from Texas coming along at the same time, Justice Ginsberg’s death, and an unprecedented leak of the decision in Dobbs that some feel affected Justices’ ability to deliberate fully. It’s easy to imagine this going differently if even one of those things changed.

 

Roe’s reversal could be interpreted as the triumphant fruition of 50 years of conservative efforts or as an issue that could swing voters to liberal candidates; there’s evidence for both. Entering an election year, the transparency Jodi brings to one of our most hallowed institutions–one that may face serious tests this year–is unmissable.

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