Care and Feeding | The World Is On Fire. How Do We Tell the Kids?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While the What Next team takes the holiday, enjoy this episode from our colleagues at Care and Feeding, featuring a familiar voice. What Next will be back with a new episode tomorrow.
On this episode: Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen have been trying to stay on top of the news…but they’re getting bogged down and worried about it impacting their kids. Luckily What Next host Mary Harris’s literal job is keeping up on the news, and she’s got kids of her own. So, they all sit down to talk about how much to share with the kids, how to stay informed but still show up for the kids, ways to moderate your own anxiety, and so much more.
But first, they share their latest triumphs and fails. Mary comes in with a win during the college admission process; Lucy almost crashes a birthday party (but she DOESN’T…so it’s a win); Zak takes his daughter to roller derby; and Elizabeth says yes to a choral concert.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Video production by Micah Phillips.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Mary. |
| 0:02.1 | Today, I've got something a little special for you. |
| 0:04.8 | Consider it a crossover episode. |
| 0:06.9 | Lately, the news has been not so great. |
| 0:09.5 | You know it's a rough year when the first week is all about plucking a foreign leader out of his compound, |
| 0:15.0 | and then it ends with ice killing someone. |
| 0:18.5 | I specialize in dissecting the news for adults, but what can be really tricky |
| 0:22.9 | is knowing what to tell your kids. That's what I got into recently on Slate's parenting podcast, |
| 0:28.5 | Karen Feeding. Twice a week, Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newkamp, and Zach Rosen tackle parenting's |
| 0:33.7 | toughest trials and tribulations. And let me tell you, this one was a doozy. |
| 0:38.9 | So sit back and listen in. Here's Elizabeth. |
| 0:44.7 | It's time to dig into a really tricky topic. How do you stay on top of the news without |
| 0:49.8 | letting it bog you down? Mary, it's your job to stay on top of the news. So how would you say |
| 0:56.9 | you're taking it all in on a given day? Oh my God. I'm just like riding on the stream of news. |
| 1:05.3 | Like I don't feel like I have any control, which is sort of a lesson, right? But I feel like there's a |
| 1:10.2 | there's an interesting question we should ask at the top of this, which is like of a lesson, right? But I feel like there's a, there's an interesting |
| 1:11.0 | question we should ask at the top of this, which is like, are we, do you want to talk about |
| 1:15.8 | how you manage information for and with your child? Or do you want to talk about how you manage |
| 1:21.2 | information for and with yourself so that you can be a better parent? |
| 1:26.3 | Yeah, I think it's... |
| 1:27.7 | So this is a good question, |
| 1:30.5 | because the reason I wanted to have this conversation |
... |
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