Next Question with Katie Couric

In this special episode of Next Question, Katie sat down for a rare one-on-one interview in DC with Vice President Kamala Harris in her ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And there was a lot to talk about.

2024 is here at last, and it’s a monumentally important election year–one that looks more likely every day to be another Biden-Trump re-match. The political news has been heavily skewed toward the Republican side of the race, given the drama of selecting their nominee. Less has been heard from the incumbent administration.

But the campaign is heating up for the Democrats too. From abortion rights to the crisis in Israel and Gaza, shifting voter coalitions and where Biden-Harris need to really make their message sing, such as with Gen Z, this wide ranging conversation gets to the heart of what’s at stake this election year, and what the Biden-Harris administration is doing to make their case to voters.

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Since long before Roe v Wade enshrined a federal right to choose in 1973, abortion has been one of the most contentious issues in American life. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe with their decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, marking a new peak in the political energy and emotion surrounding abortion. Katie’s guest today, New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor (who won a Pulitzer for her Me Too reporting), has been behind some of the most exhaustively sourced and in-depth reporting on just how Dobbs unfolded.

As Jodi tells us, in many ways, SCOTUS’ Dobb’s decision was shocking. The case started as a long-shot ban on abortions after 15-weeks in Mississippi. But a series of events made it one of the most monumental in American history: an even more controversial case from Texas coming along at the same time, Justice Ginsberg’s death, and an unprecedented leak of the decision in Dobbs that some feel affected Justices’ ability to deliberate fully. It’s easy to imagine this going differently if even one of those things changed.

Roe’s reversal could be interpreted as the triumphant fruition of 50 years of conservative efforts or as an issue that could swing voters to liberal candidates; there’s evidence for both. Entering an election year, the transparency Jodi brings to one of our most hallowed institutions–one that may face serious tests this year–is unmissable.

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On a recent episode of Brooke Shields’ podcast Now What?, Katie and Brooke took a walk down memory lane and came back with some thoughtful insights to kick off 2024.

Brooke and Katie share a long history with the limelight, and they reflect in this intimate conversation on the trials and tribulations of going through life’s ups and downs in the public eye. That’s come with its challenges, but also the privilege of a long relationship with their audiences. Both blazed trails and opened doors in their respective industries. But some of the most enduring work has been with causes close to their hearts.

We all have so much to give to the world; allow this conversation to inspire you this January to find your passion, and share it.

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Ava DuVernay’s newest film, Origin, breaks a lot of molds. The book on which it’s based, Caste, grapples with some of the deepest inequalities in our world today, and was famously deemed unadaptable into a film. Not to mention DuVernay came to the adaptation as the industry entered one of its biggest slumps in recent memory.

Not one to be dissuaded, DuVernay found a way to adapt this seminal book and to fund it outside of the typical studio-or-streamer model for making a movie. The result is a sweeping mosaic of personal stories, including Isabelle Wilkerson’s own, that chronicle how lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. The adaptation speaks for itself: there were many tears in the audience of this Q&A, taped live at Art Basel in Miami, one of the partners in a revolutionary new funding model that made the project possible.

This incredible movie and the innovation that underpins its production have a lot to teach about new ways to approach some of the most intractable problems of our time.

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Hey Everyone! We hope you're enjoying this new season of Next Question with Katie Couric. We're taking a short break over the holidays but we'll be back January 4th with more episodes and great guests!

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Melissa Etheridge has written two memoirs now–her new one is Talking to My Angels. For many people, writing more than one memoir might seem excessive, but Etheridge has lived a lot. She’s reflective on just how much she’s learned between 40, when she wrote her first memoir, and about 60 where she’s writing from now, especially how a definitive spiritual experience (thanks to what she calls a hero dose of cannabis) really separated her life into “before” and “after.”

On the other side, Melissa finds herself happier and more centered than ever. She’s articulate and sure about how she found that peace, and seems to have an amazing capacity to learn from and process the not-so-peaceful events in her life.

And of course music is the thrumming throughline underpinning everything from her career to her memories of childhood, to what drives her now after so many challenges that could have broken many. But Melissa seems to ground herself even deeper in times of trial, and has a lot to teach anyone about resilience, grit, and grace.

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The new film May December stars Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton, was directed by Todd Haynes, and written for the screen by Samy Burch’s–her first screenplay! Julianne Moore’s Gracie began her relationship with the much-younger Joe (Charles Melton) when he was a young teen, and paid the price for this hard-to-understand liaison. Elizabeth, played by Portman, is an actress who arrives at their home to do research for her role portraying Gracie in an upcoming biopic. Critics are calling it a “booby trap” of a movie, because it’s so hard to decide just who to root for.

In this wide-ranging interview, Katie Couric sits down with the cast to delve into how the actors approached these complicated characters, where Haynes drew inspiration from as he directed (there’s a very interesting story to the music in this film), and what excited them about the fresh take Burch brought to her screenplay. This isn’t a movie that invites easy answers, but it’s clear the team had great fun bringing us this story, and we hope you enjoy the peek behind the curtain!

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A recent bombshell report in the New York Times reveals that Israel knew about Hamas’s attack plan for October 7th, 2023, codenamed “Jericho Wall,” more than a year before it happened. On this episode of Next Question, the journalists who broke the story, Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman, detail how this intelligence failure came about, including the dismissal of a female Israeli intelligence analyst’s urgent warnings that Hamas had devised a “plan to start a war” as “imaginary.”

We now know that Hamas’s intentions as laid out in the Jericho Wall document were deadly serious, and Bergman and Goldman note that the attack followed the plan with “shocking precision.” They give insightful analysis of how a threat like Jericho Wall could be dismissed and what this grave misstep means for not only this conflict, but also for Israel's broader idea of itself in the world and for the trust in its powerful intelligence service at home and abroad.

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Today is the anniversary of Open AI’s launch of Chat GPT, a tool which brought AI out of the realm of sci-fi and right to our fingertips. AI seems to have crept into every facet of our lives in that one year, and it’s hard to know if that’s a good or bad thing–especially in light of the chaos wrought by Open AI’s recent firing and rehiring of their co-founder Sam Altman.

Sometimes it feels like the battle lines are drawn–you can be for or against AI–and the stakes are high. So in this episode of Next Question, Katie is joined by her plus one, Vivian Schiller, in conversation with data scientists and AI ambassadors Chris Wiggins and Vilas Dhar, to sort through some of the noise.

The panel covers a lot of ground, but remains grounded in real-world examples (and there are several acronyms defined!), to rationally consider what AI can and should do for us now, what risks we should keep an eye on, and who needs to be involved in the conversation shaping AI’s next chapter.

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Have you achieved the American Dream? Actually–how do you even define the American Dream? Sometimes it can feel like that phrase is meaningless and politicized but that idea is such a cornerstone of what makes us the United States. It’s foundational, but it can sometimes feel like it’s falling apart.

Enter David Leonhardt’s new book–he’s a columnist at the New York Times and heads their The Morning newsletter. In the book, Ours Was the Shining Future, he sets out to quantify the American Dream and tell a story of how it’s changed over the last few decades. And for those who might feel intimidated by economics, Leonhardt’s book might just be the perfect entry point: the personal narratives of the people who shaped our history bring this book from the theoretical to the concrete.

This insightful, comprehensive, human book provides a perfect jumping off point to examine the long, imperfect story of our ongoing project as Americans, striving to realize the promises of democracy and capitalism–and all the successes and failures along the way so far. We can learn from the past, and David, armed with data but also with compassion and optimism, is an excellent guide.

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