TSOU Episode: Harmful Apps: Balancing Education, Discipline, and Child Safety

FORT WORTH, Texas—A 42-year-old Alabama man uploaded to TikTok videos of himself lip-syncing to music and sharing depressive thoughts. A 14-year-old Texas girl responded. Before long, the two were exchanging romantic notes visible to anyone on the platform.

TSOU Episode: Harmful Apps: Balancing Education, Discipline, and Child Safety

Plaintiffs’ lawyers are pitching school boards throughout the country to file lawsuits against social-media companies on allegations that their apps cause classroom disciplinary problems and mental-health issues, diverting resources from education.

TSOU Episode: Left & Right Face a Deep Divide & Loss of Identity

To win Jason Stewart’s vote, a presidential candidate should talk about stopping illegal immigration, taming inflation and keeping academic theories about race out of the classroom. But one overarching task is more important to the 51-year-old Republican than any single issue: rescuing American culture from liberals.

TSOU Episode: 8 Essential Tips to Manage Your Money in College

A lot of students aren’t prepared to manage money on their own. Here’s some advice to get them started. Many of this fall’s college freshmen will be managing their own finances for the first time. And a lot of them won’t be ready. So, we asked Wall Street Journal readers to share their best advice for college students handling their finances on campus.

TSOU Episode: Interest Rates Impacting All Areas of Society Into the Future

In the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, businesses and households became addicted to low interest rates, gorging on debt to fund everything from expensive new cars to crisis-fighting stimulus and leveraged buyouts.

TSOU Episode: Venmo, Cash App, Digital Wallet, Credit Card-What's Best?

A guide to weighing security, convenience and benefits of each payment option. Buyers have more ways to pay for things than ever before: Apple Pay, Venmo, credit cards, and dozens of other options. What you choose might matter as much as the purchase itself.

TSOU Episode: Toxic Lead Cables Across America - Kids at Risk?

AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants have left behind a sprawling network of cables covered in toxic lead that stretches across the U.S., under the water, in the soil and on poles overhead, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. As the lead degrades, it is ending up in places where Americans live, work and play.

TSOU Episode: Nursing Homes, Living Rooms & Bathtubs Decline

Patients spend months waiting in hospitals for nursing-home beds. America’s nursing homes are fading away.

TSOU Episode: Nursing Homes, Living Rooms & Bathtubs Decline

Faced with high mortgage rates, cost-constrained Americans are embracing smaller homes. For many Americans, homeownership may be attainable only if they give up a dining room.

TSOU Episode: The Five Stages of Trump Vs. Biden

The 2024 presidential election has voters passing through the famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I’m currently somewhere between anger and bargaining. I hope never to arrive at No. 5. The sequence unfolds as follows:

TSOU Episode: "TikTok Brain" A New Term Used for Gen Z'ers

Ms. Klein, the mental-health coordinator for a network of sleep-away camps, has a morning routine: responding to queries from anxious parents, who have looked at the photographs posted online the night before. Why does my child look sad? they want to know. Where are their friends?

TSOU Episode: The Threat of a Shutdown & Powerless Speaker

WASHINGTON—Kevin McCarthy made a series of promises to conservative Republicans to win the House speakership and keep legislation on track. Now, many of them are coming due, with a possible government shutdown and potentially his own job on the line. 

TSOU Episode: Moving or Traveling: What's Necessary for A Good Life?

It’s a lot easier to live paycheck to paycheck with opportunities to move ahead, than living paycheck to paycheck with few opportunities in sight, says the author. For three years, I was more financially secure and stable than I have ever been.

TSOU Episode: Six Big Questions to Ask About the Transition to Renewables

The effort to reduce dependence on fossil fuels raises all sorts of issues that won’t be easy to address. But they demand our attention. Should the U.S. speed up the energy transition by becoming more dependent on foreign countries for critical materials for solar panels, batteries and the like?

TSOU Episode: Heal Our Schools and Nation With Great Books

Fifty years ago, Allan Bakke, a white military veteran with a solid academic record, was turned down for medical school at the University of California, Davis. Bakke filed suit, claiming that when the university set aside 16 seats for racial minorities, it violated his right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

TSOU Episode: Where Does the Public Stand on Supreme Court Decisions?

The Supreme Court term that ended Friday concluded with a series of muscular 6-to-3 decisions divided along partisan lines, with the court's six Republican appointees in the majority. Those rulings, on affirmative action, student loans and gay rights, were reminiscent of the transformative conservative decisions issued last June on abortion, guns, religion and climate change.

TSOU Episode: Kids Can't Read and Schools to Blame for Suicide?

Ellis Lariviere was an eighth grader at Saint Ann’s, an elite private school in Brooklyn Heights, and he had a lot going for him. Teachers praised him as an “abundantly talented” artist, in a school that trumpeted the arts, and they described him as a positive presence in his classes.

TSOU Episode: Kids Can't Read and Schools to Blame for Suicide?

In suburban Houston, parents rose up against a top-rated school district, demanding an entirely new reading curriculum. At an elementary school in Hutchinson, Minn., a veteran teacher is crusading for reform, haunted by the fear that, for 28 years, she failed children because she was not trained in the cognitive science behind reading.

TSOU Episode: Does Social Media Harm Teens? It's Difficult to Prove

There have been increasingly loud public warnings that social media is harming teenagers’ mental health — most recently from the United States surgeon general — adding to many parents’ fears about what all the time spent on phones is doing to their children’s brains.

TSOU Episode: Is Life Better Than in 1980?

Nearly every statistic says Americans are richer than they were a generation ago. Yet this seems wrong to many people who feel the American dream slipping out of reach. 

TSOU Episode: Is Life Better Than in 1980?

Jade Akintola and Brandon Thomas Brown are balancing three competing financial priorities — preparing for the birth of their first child, saving up for a down payment on their first home and contributing to their retirement fund. Something, they decided, had to give, so in the short term, that thing was their retirement savings.