The Takeaway

In the six months since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban took control of the country’s government, food insecurity has grown more severe for the Afghan population. The UN says that the international community needs to provide billions of dollars to prevent a famine in 2022, but so far the funding has fallen short.

The Takeaway speaks with Ali Latifi, a reporter who has written for Insider and Vice, about the current situation and what can be done to remedy it.

Click here to read Ali's latest reporting.

Since 2011, Syria has been engaged in a devastating civil war. More than three hundred fifty thousand people have been killed during the conflict. The war has forced more than six million people to flee the country.

These Syrians in forced exile have had to endure overcrowded refugee camps, treacherous journeys by sea, and painful family separations. 

Academy Award winning director Megan Mylan is known for her films "Lost Boys of Sudan" and "Smile Pinki." Her latest documentary, "Simple as Water," follows several families of Syrian refugees. 

The Takeaway spoke with Mylan to find out more about how she created such a compassionate depiction of people whose stories are frequently sensationalized.

"Simple as Water" is available to stream now on HBO Max.

Joining our hosts to discuss the history of U.S. Health Insurance and how it compares to other countries is Julia Lynch, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jamila Michener, associate professor in the department of Government at Cornell University about the connections between health inequities and our insurance system.

We also take a look at the creation of the Affordable Care Act with one of its architects Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who currently serves as Vice Provost of Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Suderman, features editor at Reason, joins us to discuss the current state of healthcare and health insurance and how both parties could make changes to their approaches on both.

Finally, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal discusses expanding health insurance for Americans with her Medicare for All Plan and how it will restore dignity to every American through adequate health insurance coverage. 

For the past 45 years, Leonard Peltier has been behind bars for a crime he says he didn’t commit.  The Native American activist was accused of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, and he’s been denied parole several times since. 

Over the years, his imprisonment has been denounced by people like Pope Francis, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and more. Many people expected former President Bill Clinton to grant him clemency, but he didn’t — and neither have any subsequent presidents. The U.S. attorney who helped put Peltier in prison has even pleaded with President Joe Biden to grant him clemency.

Now, Peltier is begging for help amid the COVID pandemic. According to reporting from the Huffington Post, he says quote “fear and stress” associated with his prison’s COVID lockdowns are taking a toll on everyone, including himself. At 77 years old, Peltier has serious health problems including an abdominal aortic aneurysm and diabetes. 

For more on Peltier and his activism, The Takeaway spoke to Kent Blansett, the Langston Hughes Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies and History at the University of Kansas and a Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Shawnee, and Potawatomi descendant. 

Last week, Academy Award winning actor Regina King lost her only child to death by suicide. The tragic loss of a loved one to suicide is a pain far too many have endured. We speak with Dr. Michael Lindsey, Executive Director, NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research about rising suicide rates among young people of color. Dr. Lindsey served as Chair of the Emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health which presented its research to Congress on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus to call attention to the crisis of increasing numbers of suicide deaths amongst Black youth in the United States. The study, Ring the Alarm: The Crisis of Black Youth Suicide in America, addressed issues surrounding awareness, accessibility to mental health services, prevention, and policy.

Next month, New York City officials will vote on whether to give painter Faith Ringgold permission to move her painting “For the Women’s House” from Rikers Island to the Brooklyn Museum. When Ringgold visited the painting in 2019, she found that it was not being well maintained, and wasn’t even in view for most people being held at Rikers.

The Takeaway speaks with Nicole Fleetwood, inaugural James Weldon Johnson professor of media, culture, and communications at New York University and 2021 MacArthur Fellow, and Russell Craig, a painter based in New York City, about how art is made and displayed in prisons and jails in the U.S.

Starting on January 7th, about 200 of those detained at one jail facility at Rikers Island went on a partial hunger strike in hopes to draw attention to the poor conditions at the jail, and also a lack of basic services.

You’ve probably heard of the infamous Rikers Island, which is the main jail complex for New York City. And because it’s a jail complex, most people there, about eighty percent of the near 6,000 detainees, are waiting for trial and haven’t been convicted of a crime. And although the jail has long been characterized by dysfunction, brutal conditions, and violence, detainees and advocates say that Rikers is in its worst crisis since the 1990’s. Along with poor conditions at the jail complex, rising Covid, and issues with correctional officers not showing up for work, violence is also increasing in the jail with reports of detainees hosting fights for entertainment with little intervention from guards. Last year, 16 people died in custody at Rikers — and at least five died by suicide – making 2021 the deadliest year since 2013.

The Takeaway spoke with Jan Ransom, a Metro investigative reporter with the New York Times, who has been following what’s happening at Rikers.

This week, David Ortiz was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, while Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds did not make the cut. This means that Clemens and Bonds will no longer be on the main voting ballot going forward and their chances of ever making it into the hall of fame are slim. Many baseball fans and writers have voiced their anger over somewhat arbitrarily denying these greats entry into the hall over their use of performance enhancing drugs while allowing many other players who either used steroids or otherwise bent the rules.

In other sports news, the Super Bowl is just weeks away, and while much of the current attention is on the big name musicians playing the halftime show, the NFL is still failing to hire and keep Black coaches, cementing its status as a league that profits off of Black athletes without investing in Black leaders at the highest levels. We speak with Burn It All Down co-host Amira Rose Davis about these stories and everything else happening in the sports world as we head towards February.

COVID-19 infections due to the omicron variant are slowing nationwide. But some states are still seeing high rates of hospitalizations. 

Arizona is just one of the states feeling the effects of omicron right now. There, hospitalizations are up 26 percent over the past two weeks, with a daily average of 3,428 people in hospitals. In Arizona and elsewhere, the omicron wave has overwhelmed hospitals and burned out healthcare workers that were already strained due to the delta variant. 

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with one of the healthcare workers living through this surge. Frank LoVecchio is an emergency physician and public health doctor at University of Arizona and Arizona State University.