Day: June 21, 2023

Georgianna McKenny’s award-winning podcast begins, fittingly, with a blaring alarm.
It’s an alarm clock, waking her 17-year-old cousin, Mariah, as she navigates a morning, back in January, when living in Jackson, Miss., meant waking up without access to clean water.
No showers, no drinkable water out of the tap, and, for a few days, no school.
McKenny is the newly-announced high-school winner of NPR’s fifth-annual Student Podcast Challenge. In a year with more than 3,300 entries – from middle- and high-schoolers in 48 states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico – McKenny and her winning entry tell the story of the toll Jackson’s water crisis has taken on the city’s students.
“I don’t listen to podcasts” Georgianna McKenny attends school two and a half hours northeast of Jackson, in Columbus – at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a prestigious, public boarding school for academically talented high-schoolers from all over the state.
In the school’s sun-fill..

School shootings, social media, beauty standards and fast-changing fashion trends – say that five times fast.
Adolescence has always been tough, but the acceleration of modern forces makes it more stressful than ever. In the words of two San Francisco best friends – the middle school winners of this year’s NPR Student Podcast Challenge – welcome to Middle School Now.
In a classroom at Presidio Middle School, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge, 13-year-olds Erika Young and Norah Weiner sat down to tell us about their podcast. It is one of two Grand Prize winners chosen by our judges from more than 3,300 submissions from 48 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
The two friends just finished the seventh grade, but haven’t been separated yet — they have seen each other every day since school let out. Norah shows up to our interview wearing boots that she borrowed from Erika for the special occasion. Their giddy laughter fills the empty school, their energy fueled..

Back when my daughter was a toddler, I would make a joke about my phone: “It’s a drug for her,” I’d say to my husband. “You can’t even show it to her without causing a tantrum.”
She had the same reaction to cupcakes and ice cream at birthday parties. And as she grew older, another craving set in: cartoons on my computer.
Every night, when it was time to turn off the screen and get ready for bed, I would hear an endless stream of “But Mamas.” “But Mama, just five more minutes. But Mama, after this one show … but Mama … but Mama … but Mama.”
Given these intense reactions to screens and sweets, I assumed that my daughter loves them. Like, really loves them. I assumed that they brought her immense joy and pleasure. And thus, I felt really guilty about taking these pleasures away from her. (To be honest, I feel the same way about my own “addictions,” like checking social media and email more than a hundred times a day. I do that because they give me pleasure, right?)
But what if those a..