The Metro

Romance books have been growing in popularity over the last few years. Now bookstores are following suit.

Carolyn Haering opened Mon Coeur, a romance bookstore, in Canton, Michigan just last year. The name means “my heart” in French. Haering says she started the store because she believes the genre allows her to escape into a fun and typically happy story.

Haering joined The Metro to talk about her store and recommend books about love.

The U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran. The supreme leader is dead, a region is destabilizing, and Congress never voted on any of it. President Trump says Iranians are getting their freedom. But who actually speaks for 92 million people — and what happens when the United States decides it already knows the answer?

Saeed Khan, associate professor of Near Eastern Studies at Wayne State University, joins Robyn Vincent to discuss the history that the U.S. tends to ignore and the costs of reducing Iran to a single story.

Since late last year, “Heated Rivalry”—a series about two male hockey players who fall in love— has taken the country by storm. Now the novel turned HBO series represents the cultural moment we are in now: Romance books exploded in popularity after the pandemic and LGBTQ+ romance stories are becoming more prevalent.

To encapsulate the moment, we want to spotlight the queer love stories that came before it. Erin Bell, the director of the Writing Center at the University of Detroit Mercy who studies women’s writing and literature joined to help us pull back the layers of non-traditional love stories. 

Detroit has a housing problem. But in this city, compared with others across the country, the issue isn’t about a lack of housing — it’s the fact that too many existing homes need critical repairs.

Tens of thousands of Detroiters live in substandard housing. The stock often has leaky roofs, electrical problems — things that, if they’re not functioning, make a home unlivable. The city has spent tens of millions of dollars on home repairs. But that number is not nearly enough to meet the need, which totals over $1 billion.

What is the scale and scope of the home repair needs? And, how did we get here? Briana Rice is a civic life reporter at Outlier Media. She’s among the reporters who worked on Outlier’s “Beyond Repair” series. It explores Detroit’s home repair crisis.

People voted for President Donald Trump, in part, because he promised to shake things up.

Change is happening in many spaces, including those related to public health. In Michigan, and across the country, fewer people are getting vaccinated, more people are sick, and fewer individuals have health insurance. Life is also different for people who lead local public institutions. 

Kate Guzman is the Oakland County Health Officer. She spoke with The Metro's Robyn Vincent about the current measles outbreaks, the rise in flu cases, and what she's doing to try to keep people healthy during President Trump’s second term in office. 

In 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Within a few years, outsiders were calling it "the new Brooklyn." But the poverty rate barely moved.

Wayne State sociologist Nicole Trujillo-Pagán's new book argues the people who defined the city's problems understood it least — and profited most. Trujillo-Pagán joined host Robyn Vincent to discuss the forces and people who controlled the narrative and the consequences for residents.

For over 20 years, Khary Mason worked in the Detroit Police department and eventually became a detective for the city’s homicide unit. Looking back six years after leaving the department, he considers those training years a form of indoctrination and sees the work of “protecting and serving” communities as a means of controlling them.

He illustrates these reflections in his new exhibition “Friendly Fire: Scenes of Service, Searching for Safety." It is on display now at Irwin House Detroit through March. Mason joined the program to discuss his journey into service and why he chose to get out. 

This month, the Michigan Department of Corrections hit a milestone. Since 2020, they've distributed 30,000 government-issued IDs to incarcerated people. That matters because without an ID, you can't get a job, sign a lease, open a bank account — you can't even prove you’re you.

One in five people who leave Michigan prisons end up going back. The state says that's the lowest it's ever been. But what does a second chance actually look like when you walk out the door with so little?

Rick Speck knows this firsthand. He came home in 2014 after 15 years in prison. He didn't have an ID. Now, he's deputy director of Nation Outside — a Michigan reentry nonprofit run by formerly incarcerated people. He spoke with Robyn Vincent about his experiences, and what our state and culture would look like if we believed more deeply in second chances.

When someone is in distress, who should respond to the call for help? Police officers or social workers? The question of who should take the lead on distress calls has become all the more pressing. It was thrust into public discourse again last month when Ypsilanti residents witnessed a SWAT team have a 30-hour standoff with someone who they say was experiencing a mental health crisis.

Hillary Nusbaum is a co-responder supervisor for the Oakland Community Health Network. Producer Sam Corey spoke with her about what a co-responder does and when they should be called to take action on a 911 call.

A major new study from the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Duke draws a direct line between the engineering of ultra-processed foods and the engineering of cigarettes — both designed to hijack the brain's reward system, maximize craving and make it nearly impossible to stop. The study comes as San Francisco sues 10 of the nation's biggest food manufacturers, RFK Jr. calls these products "poison," and researchers warn that ultra-processed foods now account for over half of the American diet.

The issue feels especially dire In Detroit, where 69% of households face food insecurity and unhealthy options outnumber healthy ones. Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist and addiction scientist at the University of Michigan and creator of the Yale Food Addiction Scale, is the lead author of the study. She joins Robyn Vincent on The Metro.