The Takeaway

Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replays are out, which means the music that dominated 2022 is on everybody’s minds. From Harry Styles to Beyonce to Bad Bunny, this year was massive for pop music in particular.

We decided to take a quick look at these wrap ups with Reanna Cruz, producer for Vulture’s Switched on Pop podcast. 

In February, one week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American Basketball star Britney Griner was arrested after Russian customs officials said they found vape cartridges that contained a small amount of cannabis oil in her luggage.

Now, the WNBA star and Olympic Gold Medalist is in one of Russia's IK-2 penal colonies, a labor camp that has been described as inhumane, where people are forced to work 16-hour days and beaten regularly. The specifics of Griner’s conditions are still unknown. 

 Dave Zirin, sports editor for The National and author of The Kaepernick Effect, spoke with us about why we can't forget Brittney Griner's arrest and Russia's hostage diplomacy. 

This month, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban gender-affirming care for many transgender youth. The ban prevents minors who were not already receiving care from beginning treatment such as hormones or puberty blockers. It’s the first such rule from a state medical board, but it may not be the last.

The rule flies in the face of scientifically-backed guidelines established over years by The World Professional Association for Transgender Health and recommendations from accredited medical groups such as the American Medical Association. Physicians who study or provide gender-affirming healthcare have noted the ban is based on flawed research and misinterpretation, and influenced by disinformation narratives pushed by the right-wing. And this disinformation has seeped into all facets of the public discourse about transgender care and identity.

We speak with Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an adolescent medicine physician and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, who testified against the Florida ban at a recent public meeting; and Alberto Cairo, the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami in Florida, and whose son has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Tuvalu is facing the climate crisis in a brand-new way. Their government has accepted that the island’s land mass is in a critical state due to climate change and rising sea levels and are making plans for the future.

In order to protect the cultural memory and legacy of Tuvalu, their government has announced that they will be digitizing the island in the Metaverse as a means of maintaining their sovereignty, even if the physical land of the island becomes uninhabitable.

To understand the reasons behind this move, Minister Simon Kofe, Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs, joins The Takeaway.

A little more than a week ago a gunman entered Club Q- an LGBTQ  nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He opened fire, killing five people and injuring almost two dozen others. The shock, grief, and horror from this violence extended far beyond the city. Across the nation, local communities organized vigils of remembrance for the lives taken too soon. Hundreds gathered in distant Palm Springs to say the names of those murdered in Club Q.

For so many, the attack on Club Q recalls the brutal mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others. More than 6 years later, the shock, the confusion and loss is still almost unfathomable.

In this country, LGBTQ people are nearly four times more likely to experience violence than non-LGBTQ people. And 2021 was the deadliest year for transgender and gender nonconforming people since the Human Rights Campaign began keeping count in 2013. And then there is the legislative violence. An NPR analysis shows that over the past two years, “state lawmakers introduced at least 306 bills targeting trans people –  more than in any previous period.” 

But for all the grief and vulnerability, there is something else: a discernible shift in openness and a public landscape that looks and feels different in ways that are tangible.  

In 1973, when an arsonist set a deadly fire set to the staircase of the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans, 32 people who were trapped inside were killed. At the time It was the largest massacre of queer people in U.S. history. Media did not respond with outrage. The community did not respond with public vigils. No one was ever charged in the attack. Churches refused to bury the victims’ bodies. And some victim’s bodies went unclaimed by families who were too ashamed to be associated with their gay loved ones.

This time, when a gunman stormed into ClubQ, he was ultimately taken down by patrons in the club, including cis-gender male veteran Richard Fierro. Richard was enjoying a drag show with his wife, his daughter and friends. He and others put themselves in harm's way to protect those in Club Q. For decades Colorado Springs has been the unofficial seat of Christian conservatives in America; home to the influential Focus on the Family, major megachurches, and a center for evangelical Christians. These are some of the groups that have targeted the LGBTQ community with policies of exclusion.  Now as the yet another queer community faces violence, it is not faced alone, as many stand in open embrace, solidarity and willingly shared vulnerability.

For more on this we spoke with Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, a Colorado-based LGBTQ advocacy organization.

We talk to Misty Copeland about her new book, "The Wind At My Back: Resilience, Grace, and Other Gifts from My Mentor Raven Wilkinson." She shares the story of meeting her mentor, Raven Wilkinson.

Copeland tells us about her story, the struggles she’s faced in the ballet world, and how Raven’s story inspired her to represent her community through dance.

For the past two weeks, 48,000 University of California graduate student employees, post-docs and researchers have been on strike. Their efforts have effectively shut down research and teaching across the 10 UC campuses. It’s the largest higher education strike in U.S. history, and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

The academic workers are negotiating what they say are necessary improvements to their contracts, including childcare benefits, expanded paid family leave, protections for international workers, and most pressingly, wage increases to lift these workers — who form the backbone of the UC's world-class research output and undergraduate education — out of poverty.

We speak with Nanette Asimov, higher education reporter at the San Fransisco Chronicle, about the strike and negotiations, and we hear from a rank-and-file union member about the solidarity on display across the 10 UC campuses.

The foster care system is supposed to provide temporary housing and assistance to children whose families may be in a time of crisis. And while it is a system that is often overburdened and under-resourced, something more troubling seems to be happening in Minnesota where indigenous children are overrepresented in the foster system at a rate of 15 times that of their population.

Over the course of eight months, Jessica Washington, a reporter with the Fuller Project spoke with Native families, lawyers, and other experts to understand why Minnesota has the highest disproportionality of Indigenous children in the child welfare system in the country. The Takeaway speaks with Washington about her investigation. We also hear from one of Washington's sources, Teresa Nord, who is a Navajo and Hopi Indian descendant, and who has personal experience with the child welfare system in Minnesota. 

Of the 52,000 farms in North Carolina, one farm stands out as doing more than growing produce and raising livestock. 

GrowingChange, a non-profit organization that converts decommissioned rural prisons into farms and education centers where local, at-risk young people learn about animal husbandry and sustainable agriculture.

Noran Sanford, Executive Director and Founder of GrowingChange, and youth leader Jaheim McRae join us to talk about the history of GrowingChange, its impact in North Carolina, and their plans for the future.

New York Times Bestselling author, Brit Bennett, brought the newest American Girl Doll, “Claudie Wells” to life.

Claudie is the franchises’ fourth Black girl doll, growing up in 1920s Harlem during the creative boom of Harlem Renaissance. She spoke with The Takeaway about the making of Claudie, and the responsibility to balance historical accuracy with the playfulness of American Girl Dolls.