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No one should have to endure sexual harassment, or tolerate its prevalence. No one should have to live in a world that is deaf and blind to how pervasive it is. The #MeToo social media movement breaks the silence. The hashtag is a rallying cry for anyone harassed or assaulted to help demonstrate how enormous the problem is. Yet the viral reach of #MeToo is problematic for some survivors. If #MeToo has made you feel troubled, sad, upset or angry, you’re not alone. And today I’d like to talk...

Second Platoon did not hide its dark mood as its soldiers waded across the Korengal River in the bright light of afternoon. It was early in April 2009 and early in the Pentagon’s resumption in earnest of the Afghan war. The platoon’s mission was to ascend a mountain slope and try to ambush the Taliban at night. They were about 30 men in all, riflemen and machine-gunners reinforced with scouts, a mix of original platoon members and replacements who filled gaps left by the wounded and the...

Employer expectations of work email monitoring during nonwork hours are detrimental to the health and well-being of not only employees but their family members as well. William Becker, a Virginia Tech associate professor of management in the Pamplin College of Business, co-authored a new study, "Killing me softly: electronic communications monitoring and employee and significant-other well-being," showing that such expectations result in anxiety, which adversely affects the health of...

An estimated 12.8 percent of adolescents in the U.S. experience at least one episode of major depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. According to previous studies , many of those teens' mental health is linked to depression in their parents. But new research suggests there's a flipside to that parental effect: When teens are treated for depression, their parents' mental health improves, too. We tend to think of depression as affecting individuals. But Myrna...

Being a new mom is incredibly tough— particularly in the US, where women may lack access to paid leave, parenting support programs, and affordable childcare and health-care services. But research suggests that we need to start offering a lot more support and care to men making the transition to parenthood, too. The past decade or so has seen increasing awareness of how important fathers are to their children’s development. With that understanding has come a renewed focus on new dads’ mental...

Yordi , 20, is wan after a harrowing escape from horrors in his home country, Honduras. It is mid-July. He sits in a corporate ICE detention facility in rural Folkston, Georgia, staring into a computer screen that connects him to his 29-year-old brother Suamhirs Piraino-Guzman, thousands of miles away in Seattle. Tears well in Yordi’s eyes as Suamhirs explains how Atlanta’s immigration court works. Almost no one is released pending an asylum claim – even in a case like Yordi’s. Immigration...

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice emailed a press release that started with a tweet from the Philadelphia Mayor’s deputy chief of staff. In the next sentence of its press release, it linked out its news : A man currently in prison on a child rape conviction had pleaded guilty to illegal reentry. The implication of the federal department’s scantily-worded email: Philadelphia was to blame for this man’s crime, because the city didn’t hold the defendant indefinitely in its local jail for...

Julian Adler, co-author of Start Here, and Judge Victoria Pratt discuss alternatives to jail, including community service, social services and even personal essays. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Judge Victoria Pratt is known for having done her best to avoid sending people to jail by offering alternatives such as community service, social services and even writing a personal essay. She served as chief judge of Newark's municipal court and presided over...

American society has long been split across the fault lines of class and race. William Julius Wilson famously observed that poor African Americans who comprise the “truly disadvantaged” remain substantially isolated from the rest of society and the American economy. But not only are Americans divided by race, we are divided by how we travel about the city for everyday activities like shopping, visiting friends and family, working, or going out to eat. Race is the defining element of this...

At a Montana school, a fifth-grader threatened to strike his teacher with a chair. In many schools, the child would be suspended, expelled, or arrested, leading to missed school, further alienation, and possibly a criminal record. But that’s not what happens here. But this student is in one of Montana’s 10 Wraparound program schools. So instead, the student and his teacher at this school that serves mostly Native American kids, met with Stephanie Iron Shooter, director of the Montana Office...

Who hasn’t been affected by the divisive nature of our political discourse these days? Friends, neighbors, and family of different political persuasions won’t talk to each other about controversial issues for fear of causing offense or being shunned. Meanwhile, the national dialogue increasingly takes place within social media silos, leaving us feeling disconnected from our fellow citizens. What’s to be done about this? According to Joan Blades, co-founder of Living Room Conversations , you...

Last month, we spoke to two of the grannies who are part of Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden , a group of hundreds of grandmothers protesting family separation and immigration policies. They have organized a caravan from New York to the US/Mexico border, with rallies planned at stops along the way. Michelle Clifton , a 74-year-old granny on the trip, has been documenting the journey for us, sending us dispatches from the road. [To listen to this story by The Takeaway, go to...