Liz Kelly Nelson | Vox

How to help your teen think critically in a confusing world

2022-07-12T11:11:31-04:00

Adolescents are navigating a lot. There’s all the normal tween stuff like puberty and figuring out who you are on so many levels — the stuff we all went through. There’s more, though: Our middle and high schoolers spent much of the last few years participating in school remotely, isolated behind their computer screens. Although returning to classrooms has been a huge leap forward, they are reckoning with learning loss, missed years of normal socialization, and now mixed messaging on how to handle the new Covid reality. Add in the relentless and scary news of school shootings, war in Ukraine, families dealing with inflation, and, well, it’s tough. This generation is coming of age in a polarized, confusing, and downright scary world.

This moment in time is shaping our youth in ways seen and unseen. A recent series from the New York Times chronicled why all of the above has led this generation to be one of the most isolated in decades. The result is adolescents dealing with unprecedented mental health challenges — leading to alarming rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide.

I’m Liz. I run the audio team here at Vox (shout out to our amazing podcasts) and I’m the mother of a just-turned-12-year-old son who, like most of his peers, is navigating these things, too. My son, like most of his friends, is at risk — of dire outcomes like depression, self-harm, and suicide, but also of outcomes that are more insidious: apathy, numbness, unkindness, and disconnection. It can be so hard to get a tween to open up when this is the very age they quite naturally start pulling away from parents and authority figures. And as a parent, it’s hard to know where typical pre-teen attitude ends and real concern over mental health should kick in.

I’ve spent the last few years synthesizing knowledge from multiple sources to try to help him. And, more importantly, to connect with him — which can be hard at the best of times, but almost impossible when your kid is feeling the mental health effects of a world outside their control.

Now, I’m going to take that synthesis and share it with you in a new weekly newsletter: Extra Curricula. Each Thursday, I’ll share a small curation of content — videos, podcasts, articles, documentaries, TV shows, books — to help you think about how to approach parenting and educating, and content you can share directly with your adolescent human(s). Sometimes there will be a theme or an interview. Other times, the content will be driven by the joy of knowledge. And now and then, we might ask you to share what inspired your kid or students lately or what’s been working for you to break through adolescent defenses and truly connect.

What I’ve done with my kid is working, for now. Here’s how I began seeing a difference:

We started digging into the wealth of videos available on Vox’s YouTube channel. Every night we watch one or two short videos about a range of topics: an explainer about cluster bombs in the Ukraine War (his choice), the history of the iconic Cesca chair (my choice). And something is happening. We actually talk about the world and how he’s starting to synthesize his outlook on life.

The breakthrough here isn’t just that we had a much more informed way to talk about the war or design, or that he was getting a taste of critical thinking and finding joy in knowledge, but that we had something to talk about that my son was into discussing. I discovered that he’s figuring things out, but I’m also super glad that we’re talking so he can test-drive his forming worldview on me. He has a lot of thoughts and ideas that he just wasn’t going to offer when asked point-blank how he feels about a thing, along with a lot of questions this new connection has allowed us to explore together. What he was willing to do was consider well-produced, factual information and react to it in conversation.

Anyhow, I hope you’ll subscribe and join us on this summer journey of discovery and connection.

One disclaimer: I am not a psychologist or an educator. I’m a parent who is relying on decades of journalism training to make sense of how to successfully raise a human being. We’ll try this for the summer and see how it goes. If you have feedback or questions, you can reach me at liz@vox.com.

Exploring the future of work

2021-12-20T12:29:45-05:00

Last month we finished a massive collaboration across our podcasts that examined a topic that so many listeners told us was important to them: the dramatic, pandemic-induced shifts in the American workplace and whether these changes are permanent.

It’s not a stretch to say that the series exists because of our listeners. Back in early September, our daily news podcast, Today, Explained, released just one episode asking a simple question: Should we all be working a four-day workweek?

The response was overwhelming. We got voicemails, tweets, and lots of feedback. The episode quickly became our most listened to so far this year.

Which got us thinking: What other questions do you have about the future of work? So we asked.

By early October, listeners had sent us enough good questions to explore for an entire series. We heard from listeners who quit their jobs and started completely new careers. People were going back to school, starting new businesses, and moving due to the flexibility remote work offered. Another listener told us he thought Covid gave workers the upper hand. At his job working at a sports stadium, workers were able to raise their hourly wage from $16.69 to $24.30.

To whittle down ideas for each episode, we looked at stories on our website and in our videos for inspiration and to see where audio could enhance a story. This kind of collaboration between text and audio teams is pretty rare in newsrooms but something we regularly do at Vox. We also asked producers to submit ideas and cross-referenced those with the ones we got from our audience. We narrowed everything down to four themes that came up again and again and that we felt reflected the diversity of the topic across demographics, geography, and industries.

The series launched in late October, with the first of four new Today, Explained episodes exploring everything from who holds the power in the gig economy to the Great Resignation. Recode Daily took on the uncomfortable question of how much our bosses are watching us digitally and whether they have the right to monitor our online movements. The Weeds, our longest-running show focused on policy, explored how the changing labor market is reshaping our cities. And, in Vox Conversations, host Sean Illing talked to Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel about their upcoming book Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.

Our engineer, Efim Shapiro, also made a completely original introduction to start each episode with a fun scan of work songs. It’s yet another great example of how our team’s creativity really comes from strong collaboration.

Last but definitely not least, we collaborated with our readers. Some of the testimonials heard in the episodes are from our listeners, who called and wrote in to share their experiences in this brave new work world.

In 2022, we’ll be continuing to track the shift in work culture and we still want to hear what our audience is experiencing or has questions about. Don’t hesitate to send your thoughts to todayexplained@vox.com.

Olivia Nuzzi and Sam Sanders talk about the final days of the Trump White House

2021-01-14T17:20:18-05:00

New York magazine Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi has been covering Donald Trump’s White House since 2016. In the inaugural episode of Vox Conversations, Nuzzi talks to guest host Sam Sanders, host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute, about her experience reporting on an unprecedented administration.

“The people who became rabid Trump supporters,” Nuzzi says. “It’s not as though they just acquired their capacity to believe the things he had them believe or that he encouraged them to believe or that he promoted on June 16, 2015. They had that capacity before that.

“Maybe they believed in birtherism. Maybe it predates that. Maybe it predates the Tea Party, the racist response to Obama’s election. Maybe it dates back to Newt Gingrich, maybe it dates back to Barry Goldwater. But he did not create those people who descended on the Capitol, you know, he activated them. And I don’t think — maybe they will run off and lie dormant for a while, but I doubt it. I don’t think that they go away.”

Olivia and Sam also talk about what it’s like covering an administration that made anonymous sourcing even more of the norm, the Trump administration’s unclear policy agenda, and where we go from here. Listen to the entire conversation here:

In the tradition of Ezra Klein’s conversational and intimate interviews, Vox Conversations brings you new weekly discussions between the brightest minds and the deepest thinkers; conversations that will cause listeners to question old assumptions and think about the world and our role in it in a new light. It’s also your go-to spot for five years’ worth of Ezra’s conversations with guests from Barack Obama to Isabel Wilkerson.

If you have thoughts about the show or suggestions for future guests or guest-hosts, email us at voxconversations@vox.com.

Talking to kids about coronavirus

2020-05-19T17:22:06-04:00

The novel coronavirus pandemic is affecting every aspect of our lives, and kids are experiencing the same fears, doubts, and feelings of powerlessness we all do but with fewer tools and life experiences to process information and cope with emotions. And they have questions. Ask any parent or teacher and you’ll likely hear about the very particular questions children have, and how we adults are struggling to answer them.

“Today, Explained to Kids,” a special episode of our daily explainer podcast Today, Explained, gives kids back some of that power in the best way we know how: by explaining scary things and dispelling fears with facts. Fun facts.

The episode takes kids to a secret island where they get answers to two of their biggest questions about coronavirus: how it spreads and why they can’t go to school right now. Kids and grown-ups will learn five to six takeaways about each question from some very cool special guests, including Corona, the traveling virus, and a curious fellow who lives in a cave full of questions.

Listen to the episode with your young people, or just because, and then come back here to download four fun learning exercises you can do with kids (or, again, by yourself) that build on what we learned in the episode.

Grown-ups: Also read this Q&A with early childhood education specialist Rachel Giannini, who talks about the importance of having an honest conversation with your kids about the pandemic.

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Introducing Reset, a new podcast about how tech is changing our lives

2019-10-15T07:54:16-04:00

Every story is a tech story.

That’s why today, we’re launching Reset, Recode by Vox’s newest podcast that explores why — and how — tech is changing everything. For all of us.

From how we elect a president to the ways we raise our children, tech is often the hidden hand guiding our options and, increasingly, our choices. We live in a world where algorithms drive our interests and opportunities, off-the-grid biohackers are reengineering the human body, and a robot could be your next boss.

Reset, hosted by Arielle Duhaime-Ross, tells the tech stories behind the stories. We’ll take you inside Silicon Valley startups and tech’s most influential spaces. We’ll talk to lawmakers working to keep up with tech policy and regulation.

But we’ll also go to unexpected places, like labs where scientists are reinventing our food supply or inside an 8-year-old’s bedroom to hear how kids are quickly becoming some of the most adventurous — and at-risk — adopters of smart devices. And all in service of explaining how technology is evolving what it means to live in this world.

We’ll probe into what this all means for the increasing polarization of our society across a range of demographics, from wealth to race and beyond. We’ll ask hard questions about the received truths of tech and business and the drive to evolve and succeed: How will automation change job prospects for American workers, and how might tech companies be forced to cushion the blow? What does the race to stand up streaming verticals really mean for Friday night binge-watching? And we’ll touch on the sometimes unintended consequences of an industry that is moving at light speed.

As Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein and Recode editor-at-large Kara Swisher wrote back in May when Recode and Vox joined forces, “If we’re going to understand the changing world around us, the old coverage silos no longer make sense.”

“Mark Zuckerberg is writing op-eds begging for regulation. President Donald Trump is summoning Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to Washington to ask why he’s losing followers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren launched her presidential campaign by calling on antitrust regulators to crack Amazon and Apple apart. The Mueller report detailed how Russia used social media platforms and malware to sow chaos in 2016. Journalism has been transformed by social platforms that are absorbing their advertisers and reshaping their audiences. Vicious attacks against Muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues found their beginnings in the dark alleyways of the internet.”

That thinking will inform every episode of Reset.

Reset will come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. The weekday shows will focus a little more on the news, while the Sunday show will be more of a deep dive into one subject.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Like our daily news show Today, Explained, which recently hit its 400-episode mark, Reset is produced in association with Stitcher.