The Takeaway

The aftermath of a mass shooting for families includes the unimaginable tasks of saying goodbye and grieving over their loved ones. But what if you couldn’t say goodbye? That is the case for Eli Torres, the father of 10-year-old Uvalde shooting victim Eliahna Cruz Torres. He is currently serving time in Kentucky at the McCreary United States Penitentiary due to a drug trafficking and conspiracy conviction. He was denied a compassionate release to attend his daughter’s memorial this past Thursday. We’ll speak with Kentucky State Representative Attica Scott about her efforts and letter to President Biden to intervene on behalf of Eliahna’s father.

Service dogs can help veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by providing calming support with everyday tasks. A law signed in August 2021 allowed the Department of Veteran Affairs to launch a new program in which veterans with PTSD help train service dogs for other veterans. We speak with Rick Yount, the Executive Director of Warrior Canine Connection, a nonprofit that teaches veterans how to train service dogs for other veterans, about how involving veterans in dog training can help them heal. 

Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have developed a popular app for birders called eBird.  The app allows birders to track and and follow bird sightings, with some birders then traveling to locations of a recent sighting to hopefully catch a glimpse for themself. But the app also eBird also serves an important function for researchers.  As eBird recently logged its 1 billionth bird sighting, it is crowdsourcing massive amounts of data which provides valuable information for researchers who can then better understand the movement of bird populations and what they can tell us about climate change.

We speak with Amanda Rodewald, professor and senior director for Center of Avian Population Studies at Cornell University, about eBird, and what birds can teach us about climate change.

Additional reading: "A Once in-a Lifetime Bird" by Kevin Nguyen for The Verge.

If you ever dreamed of exploring Antarctica, you might consider applying for the highly sought after role of postmaster for the southernmost post office in the world. From November through March, post office employees live without running water or flushing toilets and are also expected to observe, count, and clean up after a colony of Gentoo penguins in Port Lockroy, Antarctica. We learn more about the challenges and rewards of living amongst penguins in Antarctica with Vicky Inglis, former postmaster and current field operation coordinator for the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust.

The United States is entering its fourth month of an infant formula shortage, and disturbing new numbers released Friday show the situation hasn’t gotten any better. According to Datasembly, more than 70 percent of infant formula is out-of-stock across the country, affecting millions of families. That’s up from 43 percent just a few weeks ago—and in many states, the percentage is even higher.

In February, Abbott Nutrition, the largest manufacturer of infant formula in the country, shut down one of its largest plants in Sturgis, Michigan and recalled its products due to contamination problems. And this exacerbated pandemic supply chain issues. The plant was shut down after four babies were reported having rare bacterial infections last fall. Two of the infants died. The babies had reportedly consumed formula from the Abbott plant, but after an investigation, the FDA found no conclusive evidence that the strains came from that plant.

Last Wednesday, while testifying to a House of Representatives Oversight Panel, the head of the FDA Dr. Robert Califf, detailed the “egregiously unsanitary” conditions of Abbott Nutritions’ plant in Michigan.

On Tuesday, Abbott announced that it will begin reopening its Michigan plant by June 4, with some formula expected to start rolling out by the end of June, although full production of the plant will take longer. 

In the meantime, President Biden’s Operation Fly Formula has announced its fourth additional shipment of infant formula from overseas, in an effort to offer caregivers some relief during this continuing shortage.

But for now, the desperate searching for infant nutrition continues for so many. We spoke to Sarah Cosley who lives in Dubuque, Iowa, and started a Facebook group called the Infant Formula Shortage Support Group to connect with other parents struggling to find baby formula. 

We also speak with Carla Cevasco, an assistant professor of American Studies at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, and author of “Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast,” about the history of infant formula and the reasons why some people cannot or choose not to breastfeed. 

June is the annual celebration of Black Music Month.

We spoke with Ebro Darden, Apple Music’s global editorial head of Hip-Hop and R&B and host of The Ebro Show on Apple Music 1, about their efforts to highlight Black Music and Black music’s lasting and continuing impact on our collective, cultural landscape.  

On June 3, 'Fire Island' will be released on Hulu. The film is a queer rom-com that's loosely based on 'Pride and Prejudice' directed by Andrew Ahn, and written by and starring Joel Kim Booster, and also co-starring Bowen Yang. We speak with Andrew Ahn about bringing this love story to the screen.

The Women’s House of Detention was a prison that housed primarily poor, or Black, or queer people, and people living at multiple intersections of those identities. It stood in Greenwich Village, New York City from 1932 to 1974 and had an indelible impact on the modern and intersecting movements for queer liberation, Black liberation and abolition. We speak with Hugh Ryan, author of “The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison,” a new book about the prison and its place in the history and present of the movement for LGBTQ rights.

In light of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the role and effectiveness of armed police officers—sometimes referred to as SROs (or school resource officers)—on school campuses has again entered the national conversation. But research shows that having armed police officers in schools do not make schools safer, and in fact, can have deleterious effects. The presence of SROs in schools correlates with increased criminalization of school discipline incidents, and disproportionately affects students of color.

We hear from Marc Schindler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C. about the what happens when you put SROs in schools. 

Then, we speak with Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough, sheriff for Forsyth County in North Carolina, about why he thinks SROs are the answer to addressing school safety.

The day after the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white supremacist targeted Black residents in a majority-Black neighborhood, Kelly Diane Galloway decided to organize a vigil to bring her grieving community together. We speak with Kelly about how the residents of Buffalo are supporting each other and why creating joy is a form of resistance.