Table of Diversity Weekly Preview: Podcast Favorites!

One of my favorite podcasts is The Daily, a podcast by The New York Times. The Daily's official description is "this is how the news should sound. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week, hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise and powered by New York Times journalism."

This encapsulates the many reasons why I love listening to this podcast. Each episode of The Daily dives into a topic that is headlining the news and breaks it down using various perspectives. Each episode is short and sweet but gives you enough to make an informed decision or prompt you to keep learning. Outside of the five episodes each week, they also release an episode on Sundays that takes a closer look at a topic. There's a balance of serious stories that you need to know and light-hearted stories that will hold your attention. You really can't go wrong with this podcast.

Each podcast includes some background reading just in case you want to explore more on the topic. And, this isn't a podcast that encourages groupthink! The guests, perspectives, and background reading supply you with ways to challenge the pervasive thought and approach the topic with a wide range of perspectives. One of the ways The Daily inspired our weekly newsletter is by purposefully seeking and including different perspectives!

There are thousands of episodes of The Daily! I haven't even cracked the surface yet, but I find myself listening to a couple episodes at a time- listening to things that interest me and things that I'm clueless about.

Here are a couple of my favorite episodes:

• The Fight Over Phonics. "About 50 years ago, the educator Lucy Calkins pioneered a technique called balanced literacy, which de-emphasized the use of phonics to teach reading. It was widely adopted in the United States, including in New York, the country's largest public school system. But doubts about the approach persisted, and now it seems that using balanced literacy has given a generation of American students the wrong tools. Dana Goldstein, who overs family policy and demographics for The Times, discusses the story of balanced literacy and how Professor Calkins is trying to fix the problems that the technique created."

• Football's Young Victims. "A recently released study from researchers at Boston University examined the brains of 152 contact-sport athletes who died before turning 30. They found that more than 40 percent of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head. Most of those athletes played football, and most played no higher than the high school or college level. John Branch, domestic correspondent for The New York Times, spoke to the families of five of these athletes."

• The Woman Who Fought the Texas Abortion Ban. "A major case in Texas this week drew attention to the question of who can get exempted from an abortion ban. Most states that have banned the procedure allow for rare exceptions, but while that might seem clear on paper, in practice, it's far more ambiguous. Kate Cox, the woman at the center of the case in Texas; and Kate Zernike, a national correspondent of The New York Times, talk about the legal process and its surprising effect."

• Voices from Gaza. "As the conflict continues, Israel has blocked food, water and electricity from entering Gaza and has bombarded the area with airstrikes that have killed more than 2,600 Palestinians. Late last week, Israel ordered people in the north of Gaza, nearly half the enclave's population, to evacuate to the south ahead of an expected Israeli ground invasion. Many in Gaza now fear that this mass expulsion will become permanent. Last week we told the story of a father of four whose kibbutz was attacked by Hamas. Today, we hear from the Gaza residents Abdullah Hasaneen and Wafa Elsa about what they've experienced so far and what they expect will come next. Guest: Abdullah Hasaneen, from the town Rafah in southern Gaza. Wafa Elsa, a Palestinian-American and one of those who have fled from the north of Gaza over the past few days."

• Amazon's Most Beloved Features May Turn Out to Be Illegal. "The U.S. government has filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, pointing to a set of familiar features that have made, the internet retail giant so beloved by consumers. Karen Weise, a technology correspondent for The Times, explains why those features may actually be illegal."

• Passenger Planes Nearly Collide Far More Than You Know. "A Times investigation found that U.S. passenger planes come dangerously close to crashing into each other far more frequently than the public knows. Sydney Ember, an economics reporter for The Times, explains why an aviation system known for its safety is producing such a steady stream of close calls."

• How Clarence Thomas Came to Reject Affirmative Action. "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the second Black justice to sit on the court after Thurgood Marshall, has spent years opposing affirmative action. When the high court struck down the policy last month, Justice Thomas was one of the most influential figures behind the ruling. Abbie VanSickle, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, explains the impact affirmative action has had on Justice Thomas's life and how he helped to bring about its demise."

• A New Child Labor Crisis in America. "Slaughterhouses, constructions sites, factories. A Times investigation has found that migrant children have been thrust into jobs in some of the most demanding workplaces in the United States. How did this crisis in child labor develop? And now that it has been exposed, what is being done to tackle the problem?"

• The Sunday Read: 'The Safe Space That Became a Viral Nighmare'. "In September 2021, a group of female minority students at Arizona State University confronted two white male students who were studying in the library's multicultural center. The women were upset with what they saw as blatant antagonism: One of the men sported a 'Didn't Vote for Biden' shirt, the other had a 'Police Lives Matter' laptop sticker. The women felt they had chosen the multicultural center in order to rile them. A heated row between both parties erupted, a video of which quickly went viral, threatening to upend the lives of all involved. For The New York Times, Sarah Viren, a journalist and essayist, explored the incident in the context of 'the widening gyre of the culture wars.' The row at Arizona State was, she explained, 'a symbolic fight,' one that raised questions of 'wokeism' and 'free speech,' the perils of viral videos, and the purpose of 'safe spaces.' 'It was a brief drama that was also a metaphor,' Ms. Viren wrote, 'But watching and rewatching that drama unfold from my computer, I kept asking myself: a metaphor for what?"

• The Pastors Being Driven Out by Trumps. "Evangelicals make up about a quarter of the population in the United States and are part of the nation's largest religious group. But lately the movement is in crisis. The biggest issue is church attendance. Many churches closed at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and struggled to reopen while congregations thinned. But a smaller audience isn't the only problem: Pastors are quitting, or at least considering doing so."

• Inside the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis. "In decades past, the public health risks teenagers in the United States faced were different. They were externalized risks that were happening in the physical world. Now, a new set of risks has emerged. In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. And suicide rates, which had been stable from 2000 to 2007 among this group, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018. We explore why this mental health crisis has become so widespread, and why many people have been unprepared to handle it."

• Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts? Five years ago, after decades of resistance, the Boy Scouts of America made a momentous change, allowing girls to participate. Since then, tens of thousands have joined. Today, we revisit a story, first aired in 2017, about 10-year-old twins deciding which group to join, and find out what's happened to them since."

• Pregnant at 16. "With the end of Roe v. Wade, Louisiana has become one of the most difficult places in the United States to get an abortion. The barriers are expected to disproportionately affect Black women, the largest group to get abortions in the state. Today, we speak to Tara Wicker and Lakeesha Harris, two women in Louisiana whose lives led them to very different positions in the fight over abortion access."

• The History and Meaning of Juneteenth. "After 155 years, Juneteenth, a celebration of the emancipation of enslaved Americans, is being acknowledged as a holiday by corporations and state governments across the country. Today, we consider why, throughout its history, Juneteenth has gained prominence at moments of pain in the struggle for black liberation in America. We also ask: What does freedom mean now?"

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