Next Question with Katie Couric

You know Renée Fleming as one of the most famous and beloved sopranos in history. You may not know that Renée struggled mightily with stage fright for most of her career. Her experiences sparked a passionate interest in brain science, and she found a kindred spirit in Dr Francis Collins, former NIH director and fellow musician. This unlikely duo is working together to bring attention and much need...

Patric Gagne is a sociopath–as are 5% of the population generally. Growing up, she reports she “mostly felt nothing.” When she was diagnosed in her early adulthood, she finally understood why she experienced life so differently than those around her. She got her PhD in Psychology and wrote her memoir, Sociopath to demystify disorders like psychopathy and sociopathy.    Gagne doesn’t hold back, sha...

Katie sat down with eminent journalist Frank Bruni in this spirited live conversation hosted by Temple Emanu-el’s Streicker Cultural Center earlier this month. While their jumping off point was Frank’s new book, The Age of Grievance , Katie and Frank covered a lot of ground: the current climate on college campuses, political violence, and the corrosive nature of cancel culture. Frank centers today...

How do you bring your personal values to your public life? This question has animated Jim VandeHei’s and Mike Allen’s long career together; first at Politico and then as they went on to launch Axios. It’s not an easy feat to pull off. Jim’s new book, Just the Good Stuff: No-BS Secrets to Success (No Matter What Life Throws at You) explains how they did it–and all the mistakes, triumphs, and unexpe...

You’ve probably heard the name Sophie Trudeau, best known as the glamorous wife of Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. But Sophie is a whole lot more than that. In her new book, Closer Together: Knowing Ourselves, Loving Each Other , she candidly shares a lot about her life and struggles. But Sophie has also incorporated the best science and interviewed the leading researchers about how...

Social Psychologist and NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness lays it out emphatically: kids are being very negatively affected by ubiquitous phone use. The research on what phones and their attendant apps are doing to our kids is devastating, and these spikes in depression, anxiety, and even sel...

Like many influencers these days, Jay Shetty is much discussed, but not necessarily much understood. He seems like he’s everywhere–officiating JLo and Ben Affleck’s wedding, dispensing wise sound bites on TV, and connecting daily to nearly 50 million people across a variety of social media and other platforms. Shetty rejects the title “guru,” which some have used to describe him, but it’s easy to...

Kris Jenner has vision. From an early age, she knew she wanted a family–she even predicted she’d have six kids! From her origins working in retail stores owned by her mother and grandmother, Kris has built something with true staying power along with her accomplished kids–and now their own kids, her grandchildren! One of the joys of matriarchy is being able to sit back a bit and survey what you’ve...

Next Question is back for season nine, and the times, they are a changin’! Katie has big personal news to share in the season kick off with Kris Jenner–plus advice, memories, and humor from the Momager in Chief herself. Then it’s full steam ahead with Jay Shetty on balancing being and doing, valuable insights from Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton for this major election year, and internationally ren...

One of Next Question’s more personal episodes, this conversation features a very special plus one: Katie’s daughter, Carrie Monahan! Katie and Carrie, along with their guest, author Emmeline Clein, have all grappled with disordered eating at certain points in their lives. The research bears out that this is a nearly universal experience for American women, and that was a central inspiration for Cl...

This episode of Next Question was produced in partnership with Capital One, and recorded live at the Capital One Cafe in Herald Square in New York City. In it, Katie and a panel of caregivers explore the vast spectrum of challenges facing caregivers — those of us who find ourselves taking care of a loved one when they can no longer take care of themselves. As our panelists Chris Punsalan, Adrienne...

Kara Swisher, Official Next Question plus one and dogged chronicler of the good, bad, and the ugly of the tech world (and the “adult toddlers” that so often populate it), has really seen it all. She made tech her beat at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal before most journalists took any notice of the fledgling “nerdy” industry. From there, Kara fearlessly reported on a new generation...

Allie Phillips, a young Tennessee woman who runs a daycare from home and has a young daughter, Adalie, was delighted to learn she was pregnant with a second daughter, Miley, in 2022. The same year, Tennessee enacted an abortion ban after the fall of Roe v Wade. Allie had no reason to believe this would affect her–but unfortunately it did.   Miley was deemed “incompatible with life” at around 19 we...

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 ha...

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...

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 al...

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 b...

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...

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 a...

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 analys...

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...

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 Mornin...

Over the course of their careers, Katie Couric and Kara Swisher have weathered (and thrived amongst) massive sea changes in the news industry–from network TV to streaming; the rise of mobile viewing; Twitter as the global newsroom water cooler; and now AI, polarization, and a serious crisis of truth. This makes Kara the perfect plus one for a discussion with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. Kevin...

Adam Kinzinger and Mary Trump don’t have a lot in common on the surface:but in a moment where politics are dividing more people than ever before, Kinzinger and Trump find they have more and more in common. January 6th was a watershed moment for them both: Kinzinger’s departure from the current GOP was basically assured with his participation in the Congressional hearings on the matter, and a worst...

Smart people know things; wise people know people. For Next Question guest today, David Brooks, knowing people has been a lifelong endeavor. Katie Couric and her + 1 today, Kelly Corrigan, dig deep into David’s new book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, which is all about how we connect–empathy, curiosity, vulnerability–and how we can build these skills...