Tell Me More

From tablets and iPhones to Twitter and Instagram, technology is changing the way children interact with the world. Host Michel Martin talks with a roundtable of parents about encouraging digital exploration, while keeping kids safe.

A significant number of American workers are dipping into their retirement accounts to help pay for everyday expenses, despite warnings that it could seriously compromise their financial health. Host Michel Martin speaks with Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher about the consequences of tapping retirement funds early.

President Obama wants the nation to produce 8 million more college graduates by the year 2020. But can it be done, and how much would it cost? Host Michel Martin puts those questions to Anthony Carnevale, Director and Research Professor of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Tell Me More's "Social Me" series looks at how young people interact online — with a focus on online identities, privacy issues and breakthroughs in Internet-based learning.

Throughout the series, Rey Junco shares his research as a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He tells NPR's Michel Martin that there's more to online identities than the constant cycle of headlines about cyberbullying, "slut-shaming" and "catfishing."

Al Roker, the veteran weatherman on NBC's Today show, endured years of indignities as an obese teenager and throughout his television career. Then, in 2002, he had bariatric surgery and lost more than 100 pounds. But deciding to have the procedure, which is potentially life-threatening, wasn't easy — and neither was keeping the weight off afterward.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up in the program we will have the first of a series of conversations we're having this week about how young people are using social media. We're calling the series Social Me and that will be later in the program.

As the leader of an African-American church, Korean-American pastor Peter Chin has also chosen to live in a predominately black neighborhood. It hasn't always been easy, but Chin tells host Michel Martin how he has worked through issues with his family, his congregation and himself.

The fact that President Obama's second inauguration took place on the same day as the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday felt right to many people, but some critics say the comparison is all wrong. Host Michel Martin and the Barbershop guys weigh in on that and other news.

Putting guns in schools may make people think more of Terminator than teaching. But Emily Richmond of the National Education Writers Association says that it's time to step back from the hysteria. She talks to host Michel Martin about practical ways to make schools safer.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, first lady Michelle Obama has taken on issues like childhood obesity and support for military families in the first term, but some feminists argue she should be doing more. We'll look at the politics of being first lady in just a few minutes.