Next Question with Katie Couric – Details, episodes & analysis

This episode is presented by Midi Health, a virtual care clinic dedicated to providing expert menopause and perimenopause care to women in midlife.

Twenty-four years ago, Katie Couric aired her first colonoscopy on the ‘Today Show.' It was an up-close and personal experience that helped demystify a still-taboo health procedure. 

A study would later find that colonoscopies increased by 20 percent as a result of Katie airing her personal business on national television. It was called “The Couric Effect.” And it turns out, the Couric Effect is still rolling. “Using you as a model,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar tells Katie, “I’ve tried to really talk about this.” On this episode, Katie and the Minnesota Democrat talk about the Senator’s recent disclosure of her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and how it could have gone another way. “I should have gone in a year earlier.”

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Katie (a total Deborah) is joined by KCM producer Adriana Fazio (Katie’s Ava) to chat with the creative team behind the acclaimed show "Hacks"—Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs. The trio opens up about how their own path to comedy writing, including their love for classic TV like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and time spent waiting tables, inspired the characters of Deborah and Ava. From casting newcomer, Hanna Einbinder, opposite national treasure, Jean Smart, to the process of developing plotlines and story arcs, this episode offers a deep dive into the creative process behind an original show that has become a fan favorite. 

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In January of this year, Katie sat down with Vice President Kamala Harris for a rare one-on-one interview in her ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At the time, a Trump-Biden rematch seemed inevitable. But then, in the weeks following his poor performance in the first presidential debate in late June, President Biden’s future as his party’s candidate was suddenly anything but certain. After increasing calls for him to drop out of the race, he announced he would end his campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris to run in his place on July 21st. Now, as this long election year enters a brand new chapter, it’s the perfect moment to have a closer listen to Katie’s expansive, in-depth conversation with the likely Democratic presidential nominee. It gets to the heart of what’s at stake in this race, and offers one of the clearest pictures we have of what a future Harris administration could look like.

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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.

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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!)

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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]

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Two years after COVID came to this country and shut it — and the world — down, Americans are eager to move on from this historic and devastating pandemic. The United States alone has lost close to one million people and nearly 80-million Americans have been infected with the virus. While we’re all understandably sick of COVID-19, some of us are still just sick. Experts say long COVID is an alarming “parallel pandemic” and one that is not getting the attention or urgency it needs. By some estimates, as many as half of people infected with COVID-19 will face lingering symptoms. And yet, long COVID is still so unknown. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric — part 1 of a two-part series — Katie attempts to understand long COVID — what it is, what it can do to the body, who is affected, and how it is upending lives.

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]
• Diana Berrent, Survivor Corps

More information on long COVID

• The CARE for Long COVID Act
• The COVID-19 Long Haulers 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]

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