The Takeaway

We continue our SHElection! midterm coverage in partnership with the Center for American Women and Politics, with a focus on some unique races this cycle - contests where both candidates are women. This time, we’re looking at the heated race for Governor of Arizona where either candidates Secretary of State Katie Hobbs or Trump-backed Republican Kari Lake will become the 5th woman governor of Arizona.

We hear from Stacey Barchenger, a states politics reporter for the Arizona Republic and Gina Woodall, principal lecturer at the school of politics and global studies at Arizona State University. 

In "Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us," New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv ventures into what she calls "the psychic hinterlands" — the gap between an individual's clinical mental health diagnosis and their lived experience.

She joined us to discuss Naomi, a young mother whose story bears a striking parallel to the inspiration behind Toni Morrison's "Beloved;" Laura, a Harvard student whose life couldn't be more different, and in other ways is a consistent through line; and Rachel herself, whose lifelong interactions with the field of psychiatry have caused her to question how a diagnosis can shape our experiences of the world, and of ourselves.

What if your child care provider had to close down? That’s the very real prospect facing child care providers as they lose employees to larger corporate companies that can afford to pay them more. 

We talk to independent journalist Bryce Covert who reported on this in her piece, “I Can’t Compete: Child Care Providers are Losing Staff to McDonald’s and Target,” as well as Khulood Jamil, a child care provider and owner of Khulood’s Child Care in Pleasant Hill, California.

A financial trading company is trying to open up a new financial market to allow investors to bet on the outcomes of the upcoming midterm elections. But federal regulators have to approve it first, and in the past they've raised concerns that markets could influence the outcomes of the races themselves. What are the odds?

We're joined by Koleman Strumpf, Professor and Burchfield Presidential Chair of Political Economy at Wake Forest University, to learn if this is a gamble the country is willing to take.

Only one HBCU made the grade in U.S. News and World Report's overall rankings of top colleges and universities this week. But with metrics like SAT scores and high school class standings, some college leaders and education officials question the validity of the lists, despite their direct impact on how schools are managed and perceived. 

We hear from Dr. Helene Gayle, president at Spelman College, which was ranked 51st in national liberal arts colleges and landed the top spot on their list of HBCUs. She discusses how schools could be measured more equitably, including social mobility and student progress within college, and explains why such rankings are still useful for education administrators like herself. 

In the final episode of our School Principles series, we explore abolitionist education: a teaching approach centered on abolishing oppressive educational structures, while loving, protecting, remembering, and healing children of color and their communities. And we ask, what is the purpose of education?

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Illlinois Chicago, joins us to explore all these questions. 

One of the Fall’s highly anticipated films is The Woman King starring Viola Davis. It’s the story of the Dahomey empire and their elite fighting force, the Agojie, made up entirely of women.

We talk with director Gina Prince-Bythewood and producer Cathy Schulman about what it took to get this movie made, the inclusion of difficult subjects, and what it means to have a film that centers Black women.

We talk about the historical and scientific knowledge gap of women’s bodies and people with vaginas, including trans men, intersex people, and nonbinary people, with Rachel E. Gross, a science journalist and author of the book “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage.”

During the pandemic, the federal government granted schools lunch waivers which allowed them to provide free school lunch to every student, regardless of income. This meant families could access “to-go” lunch pick-ups or meal deliveries by bus. These waivers continued in 2021, but Republicans blocked further extension for the start of this school year. 

As we continue our back-to-school, School Principles, series we speak with:

Jennifer Gaddis, associate professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, about seeing school lunch and nutrition as part of education, the history of school lunch, and how school lunch policy should change.

Then, we hear from Monifa Bandele, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at MomsRising, about how the history and legacy of The Black Panthers' own free school meal program, and the importance of equitable food access in schools for all kids.

Then we hear from a current New York City high schooler, Savannah, who has done work with Teen Justice For Food and shares her own experience with school lunch, and how it could be improved. And we hear from listeners, who reflect on their memories of school lunch and share how it differs from the lunch at their children's schools.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive last week, reclaiming some of the land it had lost to Russia earlier in the war.  Meanwhile, Russian forces are reportedly fleeing rather than fighting, and Russian oligarchs dying under mysterious circumstances. 

Much of Ukraine’s recent focus has been in the region of Kharkiv, and the Associated Press has reported that parts of the Ukrainian front have even reached the border of Russia.

Ukraine has been backed by a large influx of military aid and weapons from the West.  Just this week the U.S. approved an additional $2.7 billion dollars of aid and weapons, bringing the total amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine to approximately $13 billion dollars. 

So, is Russia losing the war?

We speak with Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College and editor of Orbis, a journal of world affairs by the Foreign Policy Research Institute.