NPR host Marielle Segarra visited Missouri State University in the Ozarks Public Radio's studios for our annual public affairs conference this week. Segarra is a former reporter for marketplace and host of the award-winning NPR podcast and radio program Life Kit. There, Segarra shares practical, trustworthy and non-judgmental guidance to help listeners navigate everyday challenges. She gave us some of her time to talk about her work and how it ties in with the topic of public affairs.
Chris Drew: I wanted to start by talking about Life Kit, because I think reporters or people who are in the media in general hope that their work is helping people or doing good. But Life Kit, that's like the core mission. So, I imagine there's, I don't know, an extra sense of responsibility there. So yeah, what's that like, that responsibility?
Marielle Segarra: Yeah. I think about this a lot. Before Life Kit, I was a reporter at Marketplace and there we were explaining the economy, which explanatory journalism is really important too and felt like a strong mission to me, but then making the transition to doing service journalism, it feels like it's so aligned with who I am as a person.
Often as a journalist, you're you are covering something and you're making people aware of it, but then people don't always know what to do with that information, you know, and they can end up feeling very helpless and disempowered. I think there's a lot of news fatigue for that reason and being able to do service journalism and to give people actions they can take in their lives to live, to live more meaningful lives and safer lives, like the episodes we've done where that could potentially save a life. They feel tied together with my soul's purpose, you know, like why I actually am here is to help people and to make their lives a little easier and potentially help them live longer, you know?
So we have done episodes on how to do CPR and how to prevent kids from drowning, how to do breast cancer screening specifically if you're not eligible for mammograms yet, because I was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 34, and it was a total surprise and I wasn't eligible for mammograms yet. And there's a lot of women who fall through the cracks of the current guidelines. So those have all been incredibly meaningful to me. And then there's also there's the personal finance stuff, which is just like explaining to people how it all works, but also helping them come up with a plan, especially to get out of credit card debt, because that can just crush you. And then there's the mental health part of things, because I feel like a lot of our listeners are really burnt out, and we live in a country where I've heard, I heard somebody say this the other day, I think it was the comedian Josh Johnson, he said “anxiety is like our resting state as Americans,” for a lot of a lot of good reasons, a lot of understandable reasons, but the mindfulness stuff and the mental health frameworks that we present, they really help me as much as I think they've helped listeners. And it feels very meaningful to me too.
Drew: Yeah, I appreciate that. And it sounds like it's drawn from your personal life in some, in some cases, which makes it feel very real. I was curious, it seems like somebody doing a show like this could be easily just chasing fads or trending topics, but it sounds like you're really trying to get to something deeper.
Segarra: Yeah, I am. I think there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of misinformation out there, especially in the podcast world, people have interview shows where they bring someone on who's presenting health tips, but that person is not actually an expert, you know? And they'll be like, oh yeah, you know what? You, should definitely do coffee enemas, you know? And it's like, they make it seem like there is a lot of research behind these things when there's not. And then they have people doing things that could potentially be dangerous or just wasting their money. So, I really like the approach that we take.
We heavily fact-check what we do. And we make sure that we bring people on who have the credentials to talk about what it is that they're talking about. And we don't follow the fads. We do sometimes do segments that are basically like healthy or hype kind of segments. And we will bring in reporters, science reporters from the NPR newsroom who have been covering something and they'll be like, okay, what do we know about, like the sleepy girl cocktail or the sleepy girl mocktail before bed. And does that actually work? You know? I think the answer was basically like “eh” magnesium might help you sleep, but also maybe not, it's probably not going to hurt you. But we will talk about those fads, through a lens of what does the science actually say about this.
Drew: Sort of reasonable skepticism? Like, like a good journalist should bring to it. Right.
Segarra: Yeah.
Drew: How does that dovetail with the public affairs conference and the topic that you're bringing to the, to the conference?
Segarra: Yeah. Well, one of the things we talk about at Life Kit a lot is relationships and not just romantic relationships, though we do have episodes on that, but our relationships with our friends and our family and our coworkers and our neighbors and anyone who's part of the fabric of our lives. And so I think a lot about community and I think a lot about what it means to live a meaningful life. For most of us, living a meaningful life is going to mean living with others, sharing your life with others, whoever it is that you choose. And some people who you don't choose, and so we have a lot of tips that we've learned over time, like talking to different people and just things I've observed in my own life.
I do think that any of us have the option to be introspective in that way, to look at something that happens to you in your day to day life and learn from it. And that's actually something that I think for me is another personal mission of Life Kit is to model self-reflection and learning from the things that happen to us day-to-day. Learning from our moments of annoyance. You know, like I'm going to talk about this experience I had in my neighborhood where my partner and I were like, looking for a parking spot. And there is one across the street from my apartment, but there was a lady sitting in it in a chair with a bunch of plants all around, and she had decided to set up shop and sell her plants in this parking spot.
And it wasn't the first time. And I was genuinely annoyed because I'm like, you know, parking's tight around here, and that's a parking spot. So, I would like it to be open to parking. But then I, you know, I looked at her and she was like asleep in the chair and she was an older lady, maybe the age of like some of my, my aunts, you know, and I was thinking like, if I was seeing her as a person, you know, and as someone who was related to me, how would I want her to be treated? Not with dismissiveness and annoyance, you know? And it's not that I had even shown that to her, but it's just an energy thing. And it's, how do you want to live? Like, do I want to live in annoyance, or do I want to live in connection? And so, I was like, okay, next time she's out there, I'm going to talk to her and maybe I'll buy a plant, you know? And it also got me thinking about public space and why, like why we feel entitled to it and why what, what it's actually for and who is it actually for, you know?
Drew: Yeah. And the fact that we, we have to share it, right? And you have to figure out a way to share it. A lot of what you described there in my own life has been like, it's sort of a knee jerk, almost involuntary reaction to a situation. So, do you have a tip for how people can get past that? Is it just taking a moment and pausing and really reflecting?
Segarra: Yeah, I think it's pausing and flipping your perspective. So, you get to choose your feelings like you actually can shift your emotions. It's not that we're trying to bury what it is that we feel, but if you're feeling annoyed, I mean, this has happened to me other times too. There was someone, a woman who was moving very slowly ahead of me in line at the dollar store and like, just, you know, paying in small increments and coins and “oh, actually, wait, I need to run and get this,” And I'm like, oh my God, you know, but then I was like, she's got a lot of stuff and she's going to have a hard time carrying that, you know?
So, as she was leaving, I offered to walk her to her car with the stuff and like, she could use the help. And suddenly it helped me too, because I wasn't annoyed anymore. I was like, I was connecting, you know. I think we have that opportunity every time we have an experience like that. And it's not to say you should never get angry with people or never like, say, what's on your mind. I mean, I think there's an important role for directness and a role for boundaries and all of those things. But like, sometimes we're just too quick to honk at people, you know, and we can check ourselves on that because like, do you really want to live like that? You know?
Drew: Yeah, I like that. It is really about seeing that other person as a person and connecting with them.
Segarra: Yeah.
Drew: So, people can listen to you on Life Kit. Is there anything else you want to share or make sure people know about?
Segarra: Well, one thing we have coming up for New Year's, I'm going to be doing a whole project about trying again. So, there are often things in our lives that we have fallen off of, but that are important to us.
For me, one of them was swimming. I was like, okay, I'm not a swimmer, I can't swim because I had not a great experience with it. When I was a kid, I was always getting water in my nose. I really didn't like the pool. I didn't like the chlorine smell. And just like bodily fluids of other people, I was very averse to it and I just thought, I can't swim. But it's become clearer and clearer to me how important it is to know how to swim. Also, because of episodes we've done and because I'd like to be a parent, and I know that it's important to teach your kids how to swim. So, I was like, finally motivated enough to try again. And there's so much that comes up in that process. There are so many like bad memories that you end up working through and, narratives that you're creating or stories that you're telling yourself about why you're not this or you can't do this.
And actually, going to the pool and getting started again was so revealing for me because it turns out I can swim. I remembered a lot. I realized that I wasn't starting from zero and the skills came back. I also realized that I'm a different person now than I was the last time I tried. I'm more curious. I'm more patient. I'm more interested in learning how I could do this thing better. I'm less afraid of failing. So that experience made me think like, this is something that a lot of people do at New Year’s, right? They're often trying something that they've tried before that they feel like is important, but they, for some reason, can't stick to it. So, we're going to be interviewing a lot of smart people on this and having some really good conversations and giving people a roadmap for how they can pick what they want to try again and work through some of those, like potential roadblocks and then keep it going once they have done it.
Drew: Well, thank you very much for taking some time to talk with me.
Segarra: Yeah. Thank you.
Note: transcript edited for readability.