MindShift Podcast

Flag football has seen a recent rise in popularity. The California Interscholastic Federation added girls flag football as a varsity sport to high schools across the state just three years ago. It's often seen as a less violent alternative to tackle football however flag football, like most sports, still carries some risk of injury. And research is lacking when it comes to injuries faced by female athletes and how best to treat them. For the athletes at Oakland Technical High School, girls flag football is more than a sport with some injury risk, it's an opportunity to find belonging.

KQED is distributing a new podcast called Life, Automated from our partners at the Ryan Institute on Complexity that explores what it means to live, work, and make decisions in a rapidly automating world.

In this episode , MIT education researcher Justin Reich walks host and science writer Dr. Jess Love through different technical innovations of the last century to show what actually changed in classrooms, and what didn’t.

As confidence in higher education shifts and economic pressures intensify, young people are navigating increasingly complex decisions about life after high school. In this episode, college students share their financial realities and experts examine the tension between cultural expectations around college and emerging conversations about economic mobility, dignity of work, and long-term stability.

As skepticism about the cost of college grows, Career and Technical Education (CTE) is gaining renewed attention. But is CTE a shortcut around higher education or a bridge into it?

In this episode, we follow a group of high school students earning a phlebotomy certification and hear researchers and school leaders unpack how modern CTE programs are evolving beyond outdated stigma toward stackable credentials, college alignment, and career mobility.

When a middle schooler started bringing home his worst grades ever, his parents were stunned. His teachers said he understood the material. The problem? He couldn’t stay off his school-issued iPad. In classrooms across the country, districts have banned phones, but the screens haven’t disappeared. They’ve just shifted to Chromebooks and tablets that students are required to use all day long. And for some families and educators, those devices are raising uncomfortable questions.

On this episode of MindShift, we dig into the promises of education technology and whether they’ve actually paid off. This episode features voices ranging from parents and ed-tech researchers to school leaders redesigning students' reliance on tech.