Next Question with Katie Couric

Something major happened this week: A leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court indicated the court will strike down Roe versus Wade. The landmark 1973 decision ruled that the Constitution protects a pregnant person’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. While that protection has been chipped away almost relentlessly for decades, resulting in abortion access that is very much dependent on your zip code, the overturning of Roe could be the most consequential opinion in decades. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie talks with abortion law expert Mary Ziegler about the leak, the draft’s damning language, and the impact of the conservative court on rights beyond abortion. Katie also takes the opportunity to tease an upcoming, in-depth and intimate series on abortion — something she has been working on for months in anticipation of the official ruling expected in late June. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You probably know Molly Shannon best from her iconic Saturday Night Live characters - quirky Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher, proud (and limber!) 50-year old Sally O’Malley, and Delicious Dish co-host Terri Rialto. There’s so much more to her story though. From losing her mom and sister in a tragic car accident at the age of 4 and growing up with her adventurous, fun-loving dad to coming into her own as a comedian and actor and becoming a mother herself, her life is proof positive that humor and joy can comingle with pain and sorrow. She shares it all in her new memoir, “Hello, Molly!” and in this week’s episode of Next Question. It’s a candid, heartfelt – and yes – very funny conversation you don’t want to miss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There have been some scary headlines going around about the climbing rates of alcohol use, particularly among women, during the pandemic. One study found that heavy drinking among women increased 41 percent! What’s behind these numbers and how do women find the help they need? On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie invites her friend and award winning broadcast journalist Elizabeth Vargas to co-host and help find some understanding about why women are drinking more than ever, why women drink, and what recovery looks like.. Elizabeth knows about this first hand and wrote about her issues around alcohol, addiction and anxiety in her memoir, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction. Elizabeth and Katie talk to two women — Khadi Oluwatoyin and Emily Paulson who hit their own rock bottoms and not only found their way out, but also made recovery spaces for people like them — Black Girls Sober Club and the Sober Mome Squad, respectively. Katie and Elizabeth also talk to long-time clinical social worker and interventionist, Dr. Louise Stanger, on how to help someone you love who may be suffering through addiction. If you or anyone you love is struggling with alcohol use, you can call the national drug and alcohol treatment hotline at 1-800-622-HELP (4357). Find out more about the people and organizations mentioned: Sober Black Girls Club Sober Mom Squad Alcoholics Anonymous Dr. Louise Stanger, Certified Interventionist Women, Alcohol and COVID-19, by Dr. Dawn Sugarman See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve binged much TV this pandemic, you might have happened upon a new reality TV show on Netflix called “My Unorthodox Life.” The show is centered around Julia Haart, a high-powered CEO and fashion designer with a penchant for short skirts and sky-high heels. In between design meetings and runway shows, Julia is also seen managing her growing — and grown up — kids, in a straight-talking, cool-mom kind of way. Their lives appear glitzy, fashionable, busy, and champaign-filled. But it’s a far cry from the world Julia left in 2013. Until she was 40 years old, Julia lived in an extreme ultra Orthodox Jewish community in upstate New York. If you’ve ever watched the show and wondered how this all happened, Julia is finally sharing her full story in her memoir, Brazen, which is out now. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie finds out how Julia went from a communist Russian childhood, to married off at 19 and living under the strict rules of her Orthodox community, to jet-setting, designing shoes and dresses for celebrities and, up until a few months ago, being the head of Elite World Group, one of the largest global modeling agencies. It’s a journey you really have to hear for yourself.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Katie shares an intimate conversation with Mackenzie Fierceton, the 24-year-old subject of a lengthy, riveting and much-shared profile in the New Yorker written by Rachel Aviv. Mackenzie grew up as a star student in a St. Louis suburb where she lived with her mother, a prominent local radiologist. Behind the facade of her seemingly privileged life though, Mackenzie was allegedly being abused by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. After one particularly violent episode, she ended up in the hospital for 22 days and was placed in foster care. Mackenzie eventually won a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford…and that’s when her story took yet another turn. After facing accusations that her depiction of her past was inaccurate, Mackenzie lost her Rhodes scholarship and is now in the midst of a legal battle with Penn. Beyond the specifics of Mackenzie’s harrowing story though, her experience raises a lot of questions about the thorny politics of higher education, our assumptions about race and class regarding abuse, and so much more. A word of caution to our listeners –  Katie’s conversation with Mackenzie touches on themes of physical and sexual abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this bonus episode, I’m excited to share my conversation with New York Times journalist and The Daily co-host, Sabrina Tavernise. Sabrina recently spent three weeks in Ukraine and has delivered a series of dispatches offering a searing glimpse of what life is like there right now on the frontlines. Her time in the region actually extends all the way back to the 1990s when she first made her way to Russia as a freelance journalist and then as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times based in Moscow. So much of the coverage of the war in Ukraine concentrates on the day to day, but I really wanted to take advantage of Sabrina’s rich perspective and sophisticated understanding of the region. So, for this conversation, we dug deep and covered everything from what life was like in Russia just after the wall came down and Putin’s rise to power to how Russians today perceive this war and how things might play out in the months ahead. I hope you enjoy our talk as much as I did….(oh, and if you hear barking, Sabrina’s dog Clementine also made an appearance!)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adam Scott is a familiar face, having starred in some truly bingeable TV, including “Parks and Rec,” the cult-fave “Party Down,” “Big Little Lies,” and now the psychological thriller, “Severance” from Apple TV. Adam is one of those actors you feel like you know. But going into this conversation, Katie realized she didn’t really know anything about him. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie and Adam talk about his cuss-loving hippie mom, his fondness for forts, and his youthful, almost delusional, drive to become an actor. They dive into the uncanny timeliness of “Severance” and also go back to Adam’s youth and his Harrison Ford ah ha moment. No doubt, you’ll come away loving Adam Scott just as much as you thought you did.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We may be in the golden age of true crime television. Our latest obsession? The Silicon scammer. The bad entrepreneur. The failing founder. From “Super Pumped” (about Uber founder Travis Kalanick), to “We Crashed” (about WeWork founder Adam Neumann), to “The Dropout” (about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes), it seems audiences can’t get enough of the heart-pounding rise and gut-punching fall of these brilliant, young, white, mostly male moguls. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie explores what it was like to become one of the more enigmatic tech billionaires, Elizabeth Holmes. “I got to go to work everyday and play this enigma and then go home to my family,” says Amanda Seyfried who stars as Holmes in the Hulu series, “The Dropout,” based on the podcast of the same name. Amanda and Katie talk about nailing the look, reaching the depths of Elizabeth’s voice, and how Amanda found ways to identify with the now-convicted, former Theranos founder.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Reshma Saujani started Girls Who Code in 2012, she was on a mission to close the gender gap in technology. Now, she’s on a new mission: to bridge the support gap for women and bring more moms back to the workforce. “Women are in crisis. And I think we realized that no one is coming to save us,” Reshma says. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Reshma Soujani talks about her new book, “Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work and Why It’s Different Than You Think.” They talk about the origin story of the book, the state of women’s professional progress, the impact the pandemic has had on their careers, mental health, and lives, and why there’s no time like the present to redesign the workplace. “Never waste a good crisis,” Reshma says. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In part 2 of Next Question’s deep dive into long COVID, Katie tries to get some answers. Why is the healthcare system so routinely dismissing the experiences of long COVID sufferers? Why is it so difficult to get care? What does the long COVID community need? And what is the government doing about it? On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie unpacks the systemic issues that are impeding patients’ care and conveys the urgent needs of the long COVID community to elected officials.  More about the groups and resources mentioned in this episode: Survivor Corps Body Politic Mount Sinai Post COVID Care Center More about some of the guests mentioned in this episode: Yale Prof. Dr.  Akiko Iwasaki (Twitter) Yale Prof. Dr. Harlan Krumholz (Twitter) Chimére L. Smith Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason, Aphro Chic ABOUT - AphroChic | Modern Soulful Style Diana Berrent, Survivor Corps More information on long COVID: The CARES for Long COVID Act Yale researchers unlock secrets through study of long-term effects of COVID [Yale Daily News] Is long COVID worsening the labor shortage [The Brookings Institute] Science and tech spotlight: Long COVID [The Government Accountability Office] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.