It's Been a Minute

We're taking a trip back to the 90s and exploring the lives of single Black women and how their stories still show up in media 30 years later. 

This episode comes from NPR's Books We've Loved podcast series. Brittany joined hosts Andrew Limbong and B.A. Parker to revisit Terry McMillan's classic novel, Waiting to Exhale. The three get into how the book was a blueprint for Sex & The City and how it depicts the complexity of Black women's lives - and echoes the lives of Black women today.

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What are we missing something in the conversation around obesity and GLP-1s?

Oprah Winfrey’s new book, Enough, co-authored by endocrinologist Dr. Ania Jastreboff is one of many new narratives attempting to reframe how we think about obesity and diet culture. But host Brittany Luse thinks we’re just scratching the surface. 

She’s joined by Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, Chair of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College and co-host of the podcast This Day, and Dr. Mara Gordon, family physician and NPR's Real Talk with a Doc columnist to unpack fatphobia, the GLP-1 craze, and what it really means to be ‘healthy.’

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There's a new sound of protest going viral on TikTok. What is being said, and how much impact could it have?

We're just two weeks into January, but this year has already been eventful. There's Trump's incursion into Venezuela, and last week’s ICE shooting in Minneapolis, which led to protests all across the country over the weekend. And these protests on the street are connected to some of the music we’re hearing online: artists like Jensen McRae and Jesse Welles are responding to current events with their own musical takes on the news with bitesize songs on TikTok. But why is folk protest music having revival, and who is listening? 

Brittany sits down with NPR Music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento to get into why this folk-y protest music hasn’t been popular in decades – and why it’s going viral now. You can read Isabella's story here.

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Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minnesotan mother, is just one of several victims of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence in recent months. But her death marks a turning point in the discourse around state violence.

How will her name and story be used by politicians and protestors? And how does her story line up with other moments of government violence throughout American history?

Brittany is joined by Abené Clayton, the lead reporter for the Guns and Lies in America series at The Guardian. Brittany and Abené unpack the importance of this moment, how Good's death compares to other deaths at the hands of the federal government, and how the narrative around her death is already messier than it should be.

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Ozempic and other GLP-1s have changed how we think of our bodies. Now, some are searching for other quick fixes for their body - far beyond weight loss.

In some Silicon Valley circles, 'Chinese peptides' are taking so-called biohacking to the next level. These unregulated injectables promise to help people who struggle with sleep, losing weight, or even making eye contact. One person even said they were searching for the "Ozempic for autism." Sound ethically dubious? Brittany thought so, too.

To get into it all, Brittany is joined by independent journalist Jasmine Sun, who writes about Silicon Valley culture; and, Karen Maschke, editor-in-chief of Ethics and Human Research. Jasmine and Karen break down the peptide subculture of Silicon Valley and what it means to be human in rapidly self-optimizing world.

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