The Takeaway

WNBA star Brittney Griner has been detained by Russian authorities for more than two and a half months now. News on Griner’s situation has trickled out slowly from the U.S. State Department. And while the pace of these updates has frustrated many of Griner’s fans, last week an announcement was made that could be critical in her case. The State Department announced that they are now classifying her as “wrongfully detained.” This means that Griner’s case will now be handled by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, who will work towards her release. 

The Takeaway speaks with Dani Gilbert, assistant professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, about what to expect in Griner's case going forward.

Humor can serve as an effective tool in exposing the hypocrisy and absurdity in politics. Lizz Winstead, political satirist, co-founder of The Daily Show, and co-founder of Abortion Access Front, discusses how Abortion AF uses humor to educate and fight restrictive abortion laws in this country.

Noga Arikha, philosopher and science humanist, explored the intersection of neurology and psychiatry in her book “The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind." In her book, Arikha described the patients she observed in a neuropsychiatry unit of Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital for 18 months. She joins us to discuss her findings and thoughts about memory, self-awareness, and identity.

Climate scientists and activists were cautiously optimistic when Joe Biden promised to ban new permits for oil and gas drilling on federal land during his 2020 campaign. But two years in, the Biden administration is under strong pressure to respond to rising gas prices due to the war in Ukraine. In mid-April, the Department of the Interior announced it would resume leasing federal lands to gas and oil companies for drilling—mere days after a United Nations report warned that the climate crisis is more dire than ever, and governments haven't been doing enough to stop global temperatures from rising. Zoya Teirstein, a climate policy reporter for Grist, explains why this move won't actually do much to lower gas prices for Americans in the short term, and why the Biden administration’s climate agenda is moving too slowly to prevent irreparable environmental harm.

Lake Mary Jane is on the outskirts of greater Orlando, and it, along with one human co-plaintiff, is suing for its right to exist.  The legal argument is rooted in the “Rights of Nature” movement, which centers on the idea that objects of the natural environment and ecosystems should be entitled to the rights of personhood in order to be preserved and to protect against pollution.

We speak with Chuck O’Neal, an environmental activist and the co-plaintiff in the case, as well as Steven Meyers, the lawyer representing Lake Mary Jane.

Right now, the American Southwest is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record — the past 22 years are considered the worst dry-spell in 12,000 years. 

Since much of the West is experiencing this megadrought, and many Californians face water restrictions, conserving water is important step. But while conservation may mitigate water shortage, it is not a permanent solution to the problem of limited sources of water, especially in Southern California. 

That means we’re going to have to get inventive here. One solution to creating a new source of drinking water could be to use recycled wastewater — recycling the water from our sinks and showers, and even toilets, to use as drinking water. And although this might seem like an unsavory solution to our water woes, this process is already being used around the world, and even in Orange County, California, which has the world’s largest wastewater recycling facility.

So could could recycling wastewater be the future of our drinking water?

For more, we speak with Dr. Daniel McCurry, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California.

As we approach 1 million Covid-19 deaths in the U.S., The Takeaway considers how Covid has changed the way our world sounds. In cities like New York, the early days of the pandemic were marked by sounds like unrelenting ambulance sirens, celebratory pot clanging to honor health care workers, and eerie silence in once-crowded places. Radio hosts Brian Lehrer, host of The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC in New York, and Austin Cross, host of mid-day All Things Considered on KPCC in Los Angeles, joined to talk about the sounds that made an impact during the pandemic.

Stephanie Foo’s memoir What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma tells her story of her childhood, where she suffered abuse and abandonment from her parents, and how those experiences led her to suffer from complex PTSD.  Complex PTSD differs from regular PTSD, as it is caused when someone is exposed to a traumatic event repeatedly, over the course of years.  Complex PTSD also doesn’t officially exist in the DSM-5, and so there is relatively little literature on the issue. 

We speak with Stephanie Foo about her childhood trauma, her coming to terms with her Complex PTSD diagnoses, and how she’s worked to overcome it.

Jason Marsalis, he youngest family member of the famed Marsalis musical family joins us to discuss life as a musician during Covid, the death of his father and what the return of music means to him.

While various trackers put the United States near 1 million deaths due to Covid, the numbers are most likely much higher, according to the CDC. Fatalities around the world are close to 15 million. In spite of this staggering death toll, chief medical adviser to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci says we are no longer in a pandemic phase here in the U.S.. Access to vaccines, boosters, and antiviral medications have also shifted attitudes and behaviors. To discuss what we have learned these past two years and what we need to do to prepare for the next pandemic, we speak with Dr. Bhakti Hansoti, associate professor of emergency medicine and international health at Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health.