The stories journalists tell can stretch from the personal to the public. Francesca Mari is no different, giving us narratives and an understanding of personal health crises, the challenge of housing, and the kinds of shelter offered by both families and physical structures.

Francesca Mari is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine focused on housing and equity.  She is also an assistant professor at Brown University.  Her cover stories for The New York Times Magazine explore the pandemic real estate boom, the rise of private equity landlords, and how the U.S. housing market became so dysfunctional and why it didn’t—and doesn’t—have to be this way. In addition, she has written features on homeless house sitters, con men, and other abuses of power for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The Cut, and others.

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Disinformation has a long history in the United States—often taking the form of storytelling. Best-selling author Annalee Newitz explains how stories have been weaponized—historically and today—and charts a path to a more peaceful future for all Americans.

Newitz writes fiction and nonfiction about the intersection of science, technology and culture. Their first novel, “Autonomous,” won the Lambda Literary Award and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards. Newitz’ book, “Scatter, Adapt, and Remember” was nominated for the LA Times Book Award. They are currently a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. Previously, they were the founding editor of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo and as the tech culture editor at Ars Technica. They have also written for publications including Wired, Popular Science, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and more. Newitz is the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast, “Our Opinions Are Correct.  They were the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, worked as a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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We know healthcare means hospitals and stethoscopes, and x-rays, and bloodwork, and prescriptions. But Dr. Dean-David Schillinger says stories are the key to healthcare—both our willingness to tell them; and our caregiver’s ability to listen and understand them.

Schillinger is a primary care physician, scientist, author, and public health advocate. He has served as chief of the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, and chief of the Diabetes Prevention and Control Program for the California Department of Public Health.  He is an internationally recognized expert in health communication and has been widely recognized for his work related to improving the health of marginalized populations.  Schillinger is credited with a number of discoveries in primary care and health communication and is considered a pioneer of the field of health literacy. He is the inaugural recipient of the Andrew B. Bindman Professorship in Primary Care and Health Policy at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

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It’s easy to think that people and animals are incapable of coexistence. But Ruth Ganesh warns that mindset is dangerous to biodiversity, to the existence of some of planet earth’s most remarkable creatures, and even to humanity.

Ganesh is a creative conservationist and philanthropist with a particular interest in environmental issues. She has spent the last 15 years conceiving and producing large scale public art exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, NYC and Mumbai. Ganesh serves as the co-founder of the CoExistence Collective and principal trustee of Elephant Family, a non-government organization based in the United Kingdom dedicated to protecting Asian elephants from extinction in the wild.  The Great Elephant Migration is a global fundraising project of the CoExistence Collective that aims to to amplify indigenous knowledge and promote shared spaces between wildlife and humans.  The Migration features one hundred life-size elephant sculptures created a community of 200 indigenous artisans in the Nilgiri Hills of South India.  The sculptures are made from lantana camara, an invasive weed that encroaches on wildlife habitat and each one is modeled after a real elephant the artisans live alongside in India.  The elephant herd is currently in Newport, Rhode Island and will continue to visit sites across North America, including Miami Beach, Fla., The Blackfeet Nation in Montana, and Los Angeles, Calif. as they raise money and awareness to better protect migratory animals like the elephants.

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Tyranny comes in many forms. But Leah Umansky uses her art—poetry—to remind us that whether the tyrant is personal, societal, or political—resistance is possible.  

Leah Umansky is a poet, writer, artist and writing coach. She has been an educator for over 15 years and teaches 8th and 10th grade English at a private school in New York. She is also the author of three collections of poetry: “OF TYRANT,” “The Barbarous Century,” “Domestic Uncertainties,” and two chapbooks, “Straight Away the Emptied World” and the Mad-Men inspired “Don Dreams and I Dream.” She is also the creator of “STAY BRAVE,” a monthly newsletter for women-identifying creatives on bravery in the creative life. Her writing has been widely published in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY, Guernica and American Poetry Review.  She has also been the host and curator of the NYC-based poetry series. “COUPLET,” since 2011 and is a graduate of the MFA Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. 

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Over the last 25 years, while the United States fought costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the People’s Republic of China has been expanding its influence, its economic relationships, and even the reach of it’s military.  Michael Sobolik offers a sober look at the challenge China poses to the West and offers a strategy to guide America’s response.   

Sobolik is an expert in the American and Chinese grand strategy, regional economic and security trends, America’s alliance architecture in Asia and human rights. He served as a Legislative Assistant in the United States Senate, drafting legislation on China, Russia, India, Taiwan, North Korea, Cambodia, and strategic systems and missile defense from 2014 to 2019. He has been serving as a Senior Fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) since 2019. Sobolik hosts “Great Power Podcast,” AFPC’s show about great power competition and U.S.-China relations. He is also the author of “Countering China's Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance,” which explains China’s growing threat to the global stage. 

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Immigration has long-been a contentious issue in American politics. But legendary journalist Ray Suarez says immigrants keep coming to the United States, overcoming obstacles, working for better opportunities for themselves and their families, and all the while buying into the idea of America that binds us all together.

Suarez is a journalist and author who co-hosts “World Affairs,” produced by the World Affairs Council and distributed to public radio.  He also covers Washington for the English-language all-news network Euronews.  Since launching Brooklyn Boy Productions in 2019, he has created content for public radio and television, The Washington Post, The Independent London, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pew Research, Knowable, “America in One Room,” Hispanics in Philanthropy, Slate, The Nation, Hearst TV, AlterNet, CityPaper, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the American Communities Project, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, among others.  Suarez spent 14 years as a correspondent and anchor at public television’s nightly newscast, The PBS NewsHour, where be became chief national correspondent. During his years at The NewsHour, Suarez covered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, four presidential elections, reported from the floor of seven party political conventions, moderated two presidential primary candidates’ debates, among hundreds of others.

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The last 25 years have produced plenty of conflict and a seasoned community of journalists who have moved towards the sound of fighting.  Sean Carberry documents the personal costs of those reporters, producers, photographers, and videographers who, in documenting the worst of humanity, have paid a price with their physical and emotional health.

Carberry spent years as a journalist reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous and mysterious locations, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.  He then worked for the government producing oversight reports on military operations in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.  He aims to keep his work non-partisan and non-political as he breaks down complicated foreign policy challenges.  He recently reported for National Public Radio where he served as correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan and currently serves as managing editor at National Defense.  Carberry is also the author of a powerful new memoir, “Passport Stamps, Searching the World for a War to Call Home.”

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The myth is that anyone who works hard, saves their money, and makes good decisions, can develop wealth in the United States. But Louise Story and Ebony Reed document the long and painful history of the structures, policies and practices that have resulted in a profound wealth gap between Black and White Americans.  

Louise Story is a professor at Yale University and media expert who spent more than a decade working at The New York Times. As an investigative reporter, she worked on multiple billion-dollar plus financial settlements, government reforms and legal convictions. She was a finalist for the 2010 Emmy Awards and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. Most recently, Story was the Chief News Strategist and Chief Product & Technology Officer at The Wall Street Journal. She co-authored a book with Ebony Reed titled “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Reed also teaches at Yale and is a seasoned journalist, editorial leader and news strategist. She has reported on public school systems, police agencies and city governments. At the Wall Street Journal, Reed was the New Audiences and Community Chief, overseeing four teams of journalists, engineers, designers and audience experts. She joined The Marshall Project in January 2022 as its Chief Strategy Officer.  

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In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration held a hearing to review a drug previously approved for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. The hearing was fraught with concerns over the drug’s safety competing with cancer patients who felt they were alive because of the drug. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres was on the panel receiving testimony, and weighing what he heard against the long history of the FDA to make sure drugs are safe AND effective.

Mikkael Sekeres is a professor of medicine and chief of the division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He earned a master’s and medical degree in clinical epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine before completing his postgraduate training at Harvard University. He has served as Director of the Leukemia Program and Vice-chair for Clinical Research at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center. Sekeres’ new book, “Drugs and the FDA,” is set in the context of the FDA's 2011 trial for the drug Avastin. There, he examines the ways the FDA became the sole authority on medicine in the United States and the process of approving drugs.

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