The U.S. Department of Education has excluded nursing from its official definition of "professional degree" programs as part of student loan changes under a new bill. This reclassification, scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026, means graduate nursing students will have lower federal loan borrowing limits and could impact access to financial aid. Whoa, what? Advancing nursing degrees are not 'professional'? And, let's see if we get this right: this would make it harder - more expensive - to get an advanced nursing degree? Last we checked we already had a nursing shortage. Not to mention that the nursing workforce is aging and not being replaced by younger nurses, hence greater shortages. Oh, and did we mention the profession is almost 90% female? MaryAnn Vitiello, APRN, MSN, NP, nurse and nursing advocate, joins us today. You'll hear not only about the proposed bill, but also about who all these advanced practice nurses are (Nurse Anesthetists? Nurse Practitioners?,) how they came about, and what their growth has meant for health care in America. For anyone who might need health care - and isn't that everyone? - this is for you.

Resources: Full list of degrees not classed as ‘professional’ by Trump admin - Newsweek, Nursing Excluded as 'Professional' Degree By Department of Education | Nurse.Org

Gen Z - our youngest active generation, ages 13-28 - shows a gender divide unseen in any past generation. Polls and voting records in the US and around the globe reveal young men to be far more conservative than any other generation alive today, and young women to be more liberal. Six in ten Gen Z men say men are being asked to do too much to support equality and almost a third say that a man who stays home to care for his children is 'less of a man."

Moreover, many Gen Z men place marriage and children high on their list of life priorities - higher than women of any political persuasion. And our media habits only amplify these divisions - men and women hew toward different podcasts, social media, and books. What's going on here? And how will we come together?

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If you are one of the 1.3 million active duty military personnel in the US or one of the over 750,000 National Guard and Reserves called into active duty and you are sexually assaulted - or worse - you fall under a military justice system, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Your active commanding officers may well be determining your case. in 2024, there were 8195 reports of sexual assault in the miliary - affecting roughly equal numbers of men and women. In October 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled back whistle-blower protections for assault charges in the military. Why are we stepping back from reforms of the last 25 years? Can US military culture be made safer for service men and women? Join Nancy Parrish, Founder and Director of Protect Our Defenders (PoD), a national organization dedicated to ending sexual assault in the military, for a timely discussion of the military and it's policies surrounding sexual assault. (PoD provides pro bono legal assistance to affected individuals as well as advocacy on policy changes).

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• Veterans See Costs and Risks in Hegseth’s Military Rewind to 1990 - The New York Times
• Protect Our Defenders
• Hegseth’s Rollback of Whistleblower Protections Is Reckless and Dangerous to Mission Readiness
• SAPR.mil
• Lawmakers press for continued funds, staff to combat military sexual assault

Menopause - a naturally occurring stage of life for all women - has been misunderstood, hushed up, and often poorly treated for generations. Yet in recent years, a sea change has taken place. Women know more, speak up more, and their doctors - often female - are able to respond with more options. Where are we today? Join us for a conversation with Dr Kelly-Ann Shedd-Hartman about this topic every woman should know more about.

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Electricians, construction workers, plumbers, power plant technicians, heavy equipment operators: all these and more make up the 'skilled trades.' Such jobs typically offer some of the best pay for workers without a college degree. These skilled trades make up almost 30% of our economy - and have historically been all male. Today, women hold only 4% of these jobs. (Take that, Rosie the Riveter.) Why? Sue Hoffman is our guest to plumb (!) this topic. Sue has spent a lifetime working to expand workforces for women. She brings a wealth of experience, including as a consultant, the head of Women in Nontraditional Careers Initiative in Philadelphia, and as a tradeswoman herself. Listen in to learn about some of the biggest impediments to getting more women into more skilled trades. And, spoiler alert, it's not hiring discrimination.

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It can be hard to step back and 'see' our gendered world - all the different behaviors, work and family roles, clothes, speaking styles, body language, hair styles that to us mean 'male' or 'female.' This gendered world is all we've ever known, after all.

All those seemingly small gendered manifestations yield big consequences however: men are 4 times more likely to commit suicide, women accumulate about half as many assets over a lifetime, men experience more physical violence and a dearth of satisfying social relationships, women provide the vast bulk of unpaid care for children, other adults, and the home - the list could go on.

Yet these differences are not innate. They are not just a function of our hormones or our different reproductive functions. In fact, they reflect thousands of years of socializing norms and the creation of systems and institutions that govern our lives.

We think it's time for a fresh look at how we got here - gendered world and all.

Resources: A Gendered World makes a Gendered Brain | Gina Rippon | TEDxCardiff, Anglea Saini: The Patriarchs, How to talk to kids about gender equality and stereotypes | UN Women – Headquarters, National Women's History Museum, Invisible Women | Caroline Criado Perez, Gender stereotypes begin at age 10 | Hub, Gender and media - GSDRC, Geena Davis Institute, "Historical Perspectives on Violence Against Women" by Vivian C. Fox

How do YOU view the government? Does it have a role in ensuring protections or enforcing rights? Does it handicap our lives with wasteful inefficiencies and rules? Does it help you - or do you think it only helps others? Whatever you think, you probably have good reasons for those beliefs. Which we get! In this episode, we peek into why and how we develop our attitudes about the government - and how listening to one another might just help us all thrive more.

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Out of 50 states in the US, women hold 13 governorships, 28% of Congress, and have never been elected President. The US is 53rd in the world in political gender parity. This is 2025, so really, why is this? And does it even matter - do we really need equal representation in elected offices? In this episode, we look at the social forces at work (who is a leader?) as well as some pragmatic impediments. And yes, it does matter. Bonus: we talk about our deep-seated expectations of who should be in charge.

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