Make Me Smart

Samantha Fields, a senior Marketplace reporter covering health care, discusses the fallout from a proposed HHS rule targeting gender-affirming care for minors. She outlines what such care includes. She describes hospitals preemptively closing programs, state-level restrictions, tracking challenges, providers’ moral injury, alternative uninsured care models, and families relocating for treatment.

Aymann Ismail, journalist and author who writes about politics, religion, and parenting, talks about choosing Islamic school to keep his children connected to Arabic and Egyptian roots. He discusses the financial trade-offs, household budgeting choices, and how school provides community and cultural continuity. Conversations touch on safety, identity, and tough parenting money decisions.

Jason Parham, senior writer at Wired who covers internet culture, sex, and dating, discusses AI’s role in modern romance. He talks about AI features on major apps, risks to authenticity and intimacy, the rise of virtual relationships and friendship apps. He’s cautiously optimistic that AI can help if it nudges people toward real-world connection.

Maggie Smith, poet, educator, and host of The Slowdown, talks about reading and writing as restorative rituals. She covers balancing poetry as work and self-care. She discusses coping with doomscrolling, art as activism, threats to arts funding, and shares a poem about small kindnesses. Listeners’ writing and hiking rituals and music as mood medicine are also explored.

Sarah Hagi, culture writer and co-host of Scamfluencers, offers sharp takes on workplace boundaries and scams. She flags signs a boss may be a scammer, tackles how to handle a former client misusing your photo, and gives firm advice on saying no to a coworker who asks for your house key. Short, practical, and a little bit sassy.

Brian Nienaber, a Republican pollster focused on economic and family messaging; Celinda Lake, a progressive strategist who studies voter attitudes; and Nat Kendall-Taylor, a communications researcher on how frames shape thinking about children and families. They discuss economic anxiety, cynicism about government, competing mindsets that shape opinions, and which family policies attract bipartisan support.

Nancy Marshall-Genzer, Marketplace correspondent covering the Fed and economic policy, walks through Kevin Warsh’s Fed history and political hurdles. She discusses how Warsh thinks about rates and AI, the optics of confirming a Trump ally, delays to key economic data, and why Fed independence matters for everyday interest rates.

Jackie Wong, figure skating journalist and host of Rocker Skating, gives a concise primer on Olympic figure skating. She explains the different disciplines and what makes a live skate memorable. She highlights technical innovations and top skaters to watch in Milan. She also discusses Russian neutral entrants and the high costs athletes face off the ice.

Elizabeth Trovall, a Marketplace reporter who covers immigration and Haitian migrants, discusses Temporary Protected Status and its end. She explains how TPS began and the legal fights over ending it. She shares reporting from a Florida care facility about workers facing loss of work authorization. She outlines potential effects on caregiving jobs, remittances, and how people may respond.

Paola Tamma, Financial Times correspondent in Brussels who covers the EU economy and transatlantic relations. She explains Europe's stunned response to Trump’s Greenland and tariff threats. Short takes cover the shift from appeasement to firmer postures, limits on EU retaliation, the 'trade bazooka' option, security trade-offs, and efforts to diversify trade ties away from the U.S.